In a Language Log post by Neal Goldfarb on 21 April 2018, there is a great analysis of the phrase “and himself jail”:
In “More Cohen Businesses Coming to Light,” on Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall writes:
The biggest taxi operator in New York, Evgeny “Gene” Friedman, now manages Cohen’s 30+ NYC medallions or at least did the last time we spoke to him. Friedman has been struggling for the last year to keep his taxi businesses out of bankruptcy and himself jail.
Goldfarb explains that this striking because of the double ellipsis: and [to keep] himself [out of] jail
Two deletions are a problem and the second is ungrammatical:
As far as I can tell, the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language doesn’t even address the possibility of prepositions being ellipted, which can be read to suggest that such ellipting never occurs, or at least is vanishingly rare. And CGEL says that even when ellipsis is otherwise grammatical (I went by car and Bill went by bus) it is ungrammatical if the ellipted chunk ends with a preposition (*I went by car and Bill went by bus).
Comments on the post suggest that this phrasing may be accidental or a fossil surviving editing — whatever its provenance, I love it. This is poetry to me.
So much of poetry is ellipsis. Deletion. Compression and thereby yoking of ideas across gaps that have been closed up. The collisions creating new thoughts and feelings. Collisions and compression also create anxiety — “what does this poem mean?”, “as I read it, what am I meant to think / feel?”
And much bad poetry is a result of insufficient or reverse ellipsis (inclipsis?): additional verbiage pandering to metre or rhyme scheme.
Going back to the original construction, does changing the conjunction make it easier on the ear and eye?
- Bill will travel by car, and Fred bus.
- Bill will travel by car, but Fred bus.
I do not know why, but I find [2] easier.
Easier still, in my view, if it is punctuated differently — arguably compressing and eliding even more:
Bill will travel by car. Fred? Bus.
Ultimately, I want poetry to beat grammar.
_Remove the space.Join the unjoined. Create new and wonderful paths. Photo by Trevor Cole on Unsplash _