Icannot make myself understood. ‘i am not just a jock,’ i say slowly. distinctly. ‘my transcript for the last year might have been dickied a bit, maybe, but that was to get me over a rough spot. the grades prior to that are de moi.’ my eyes are closed; the room is silent. ‘i cannot make myself understood, now.’ i am speaking slowly and distinctly. ‘call it something i ate.’

it’s funny what you don’t recall. our first home, in the suburb of weston, which i barely remember—my eldest brother orin says he can remember being in the home’s backyard with our mother in the early spring, the moms till some sort of garden out of the cold yard. march or early april. the garden’s area was a rough rectangle laid out with popsicle sticks and twine.

which element of structure most contributes to the postmodern quality of this excerpt?

answer:

explanation:

wallace´s outstanding novel has many characters, some of which, most notably hal, are portrayed as possessing incredible skills, such as eidetic memory in this case. although being so well predisposed to life and its intricacies, these characters are nonetheless unable to function properly according to society´s norms and expectations —mediocre or even evil, as they are understood by the characters themselves—, perhaps because of their unrealized (or unrealizable potential), making them, in turn, incapable of figuring out their own mental constitution and pushing them, like hal, to a point of unfathomable madness.

may i know the title of the book?

sentences vary by structure as well as by function. there are compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences.

simple sentence

i like to read.

a simple sentence has one independent clause.

compound sentence

i like to read, and i also like to write.

a compound sentence includes more than one independent clause, connected by a coordinating conjunction (and, but, for, nor, or, so, or yet).

complex sentence

i prefer to read books that are bestsellers.

a complex sentence includes one independent clause and one or more dependent clauses. (a dependent clause is one that cannot stand alone.) types of dependent clauses include relative clauses (i kicked the boy who pinched me), adverb clauses (i am going home now because i have a curfew), and noun clauses (i don't know what to do next).

compound-complex sentence

although i prefer to read current bestsellers, i do like to read old agatha christie mysteries, and i also like some 20th-century science fiction.

compound-complex sentences take a bunch of clauses (multiple independent clauses, and one or more dependent clauses) and toss them together like a salad. although these sentences take practice to write in a grammatically correct fashion, they can hold a tremendous amount of meaning, and are common in academic writing.