In closing, I direct your attention to a perfect sentence. Yes, they exist. One of the pleasures of my profession is discovering these elusive unicorns in the books sent for my review. I read half a score of books each week; I am a fast reader, and generally underwhelmed by what passes for good writing these days. But once in a while, among the gaudy offerings, I come across one of those luminous sentences that make the soul vibrate. I share with you a recent find:
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
I can’t remember exactly where I read it—it was a busy day, as I was buying a new typewriter and handing in the manuscript of my latest book, The Janus-Faced Chimera: Missives from a Reader—and Writer!—of the Prose Arts. The provenance of the sentence is not the issue; its terse, fierce beauty most assuredly is. Who is this brown fox, and how did he get so fast?
More from Harper's here.