Tags
concurrency, concurrent, congruency, Dune, Frank Herbert, parallelism, participle, past participle, progressive verbs, time nexus, web of dao
I found this grammatically incorrect sentence in the novel Dune by Frank Herbert on page 4, the 2nd page of narrative in my edition. Yes, I said it. The sentence is grammatically incorrect. We know what it means: the Reverend Mother pushed Paul’s mother out of the doorway, closed the door with a thump, and disappeared. We read it so quickly and quietly that we visualize what is happening and move on. We pass over it without a second thought, or it passes over us and only we remain.
That was a joke, son.
A few writer friends of mine, a couple of who are professional writers, took no exception with the sentence when I asked if they saw anything wrong with it. I’ve followed online conversations on similar constructs elsewhere in the interwebs, and most writers take no exception with what I am about to claim. And this sentence did not bother me in my four or five previous reads of the book dating back to 1979. As far as I can find via searching online, no other reader has questioned this sentence.
I recently criticized a fellow writer’s misuse of participle clauses. I have read about their proneness to logic and congruency errors in grammar books and blogs, and I re-read some of these in preparing my last feedback, so these types of sentences and their problems were fresh in my mind. Frank’s sentence jumped out like a grammatical sandworm, and I cringed. I wondered how such a celebrated author could write such an incorrect sentence, especially as I consider the book extremely well written. I have yet to find other such errors in his writing.
In progressive verb constructions, the -ing verb form is preceded by the helping verb to be – was pushing, was closing. The helping verb was is omitted for each progressive verb here but can be implied: And she was gone, she was pushing his mother out, and she was closing the door with a solid thump.
Another other way of reading this sentence is to refer to the progressive verbs as participles. In this interpretation, it might read, And she was gone while pushing his mother out and while closing the door with a solid thump.
Either way, pushing and closing are in progressive tense. Progressive tense shows action that is ongoing and has not been completed or, in a higher sense, action not necessarily happening then but happens regularly. Their action occurs concurrently with the main verb of the sentence.
One problem with this sentence is that the main verb of the sentence has no action. It is a stative linking verb. The object, gone, defines the state of the subject, she. She was gone. This inactive construct cannot be paired with action verbs as it breaks the rule of parallelism which states that corresponding clauses must have equivalent syntactical constructions. Frank’s sentence is like saying she was dead while washing the dishes and mopping the floor. These things cannot happen.
Likewise, with a thump is an adverb that follows an action, but the thump cannot occur until the door closes. In the sentence, the door is only closing; it never closes. These progressive tense verbs are never completed.
Note: I have not covered the most common error with such sentences, actions that cannot be performed simultaneously. Often writers will write something like while she washed the dishes, she was drying them and opening the window to let fresh air in. It is impossible to wash and dry dishes at the same time, at least not effectively, and it is certainly not possible to open a window at the same time unless you have three hands. In the Dune sentence, it is possible to be pushing someone out and closing the door at the same time. The with a thump clause may make it seem impossible, but it’s the thump that is the problem as stated above and not concurrency logic.
It might seem amazing that Frank could have penned such a sentence, but such errors are missed all the time by both writers and editors. I see them in self-published novels, vanity novels, and even traditionally published novels. I see them in my friends’ writing, and no matter how hard I complain, they keep popping up. Even I am guilty of abusing these constructs. And as I wrote, we all understand what happened, and the sentence is so innocent we read right over it. Who even notices but me?
So how should the sentence read? I like using short, declarative sentences to put actions in sequence:
She pushed Jessica out of the doorway, closed the door with a solid thump, and was gone.
Or
After she pushed Jessica out of the doorway, closed the door with a solid thump, she was gone.
These examples are clear and precise, and the verbs are congruous. There is no ambiguity. But they are also boring! Frank’s sentence is much more condensed and visually impactful, so maybe the sacrificed correctness is worth it. Even though Frank’s sentence grates me, would I change it if I were his editor? Not likely.
One of the main themes in Dune is prescience. The essence of the series is a power struggle over controlling not only seeing the future but controlling time, controlling the future of everyone in the universe. The ultimate power struggle. All three people in this scene, the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, Jessica, and Paul are involved in the Bene Gesserit breeding program of the Kwisatz Haderach who is hoped to be the ultimate controller of time. The characters are director, breeder, and subject respectively.
This sentence exhibits a subtle hint of time-shifting: past, present, and future. It is a meta-sentence where form exhibits the theme. The Reverend Mother was gone, a past tense construct, is the final future event that happened before pushing Jessica out and closing the door in which the solid thump floats timelessly. Perhaps this sentence is one of Frank’s hints of prescience, maybe a time nexus in the web of dao. The early chapters where this sentence is found are rife with subtle hints of prescient abilities and the nature of time. I won’t get into them here as that’s a subject for future blog posts, but if this sentence is also a foreshadow of time structures, it fits nicely here.
I wish I could read Frank Herbert’s personal notes. Maybe he has jotted marginalia nobody understands. Maybe I have discovered the key to that note.
Regardless of intent, any day of the week I will allow style and substance to override correctness, which is why my Grammarly scores are so low. By the way, neither Grammarly nor Microsoft Word complains about the sentence.