Margin Notes

What I Was Reading:

I found this excerpt from He Cleans, the upcoming novel by Valeria Gordeev (translated by Imogen Taylor) in the New Writing section of Granta. If you aren’t familiar with Granta, you can learn more here. It is an excellent source for contemporary fiction, essays, memoir, interviews, and writing about art and photography. Some content is for subscribers only but there are texts in every issue that are available for free.

The opening sentences of He Cleans captured my attention immediately:

He cleans. Cleans the sink, cleans the plughole, takes out the sink strainer and cleans the underside. He takes the strainer apart, lifting the rubber washer and removing the foul ring of dirt that oozes out at the edge. He also cleans the washer, spraying it with vinegar cleaner and dabbing it on both sides with kitchen paper (he made the vinegar cleaner himself out of vinegar concentrate, distilled water and a few drops of Japanese mint oil – the mint oil is his trademark). Then he screws the parts together again and stands there for a moment, the impeccably clean sink strainer sparkling in his hand, polished to a shine. The overflow holes are next: five vertical slots at the top of the sink, only a few millimetres wide, designed to prevent flooding. The sink is rarely filled to this point, so a lot of mouldering dirt builds up undisturbed behind these slots. If he had the choice, he’d use a stainless-steel cleaner. As well as cleaning the sink this weekend, he’d decided to polish all the stainless-steel surfaces in and out of the kitchen – to clean them, care for them, make them as good as new, using the cleaning agent that is no ordinary cleaning agent but more like a polish (it’s astonishing how seldom and sloppily household objects and surfaces are cleaned when they’re made of stainless steel). All through his seminar this morning he was going through the flat in his mind for possible objects, pots and pans, casings, door handles, but someone – his mother – must have knocked the bottle over, spilling the contents all over the cupboard under the sink. She must, he supposes, have taken the bottle out, opened it, sniffed at it sceptically and then failed to replace the lid properly. This laziness when it comes to screwing on lids! It would be a blessing for humanity if people could learn to screw them on properly, but no – unscrewing lids is just about within their power but screwing them back on is beyond them. The result: a hardened puddle that has spread to every corner of the cupboard, sticking the cloths and sponges together and coating the bottoms of all the other bottles of special cleaning agent. A mess. Now the rinsed containers are drying on a clean tea towel, and later, when the cupboard under the sink is dry – he took the opportunity to give it a thorough clean, together with the filthy U-bend (the ew-bend) that hangs down into the cupboard, easy to take apart but tricky to put together again (it was clogged with clumps of hair and globs of slime and should have been done years ago; the surfaces get the odd once-over, while the hellhound is left to lurk in the drain), and as for these frayed, greying cloths, cut out of old clothes (he recognises a pair of underpants, his childhood pyjamas) who, in this century, still cuts clothes into rags to make cleaning cloths? – later, when the gleaming, fresh-smelling cupboard is dry, the bottles of cleaning agent will go back in.

What Moves I Notice the Author Making:

• We are immediately dropped into this scene without any context. As we read, we learn that the unnamed “he” is an expert and fastidious cleaner.
• These sentences are only the first few of a very long paragraph. They exemplify the style and craft of the entire piece: a wide variety of sentence lengths, structures, beginnings, and endings using a range of punctuation for different purposes. This passage would be a terrific addition to a sentence or punctuation craft inquiry or mini-lesson.
• There are several examples of fragment sentences used for effect (This laziness when it comes to screwing on lids!).
• You could easily incorporate this series of sentences into a fluency mini-lesson that invites students to describe how the punctuation guides their reading expression.
• The aspect that stands out most to me in this passage is the use of parenthetical phrases set off between brackets or dashes. This gives me the impression that this extremely detailed play-by-play is being interrupted with background information that provide an additional layer of insight. The final sentence in this passage contains a very long parenthetical phrase between two dashes within which there are two additional parentheticals set off by brackets.

Possibilities for Writers:

• Notice and name other interesting craft moves in this passage.
• Look for patterns in sentence variety and discuss how they contribute to the flow of this passage.
• Explore the types of punctuation and their unique purposes in the sentence.
• Reflect on how the punctuation impacts the way you read it. Watch for interesting pacing strategies in other texts you read.
• Try out Gordeev’s technique of incorporating parentheticals to provide additional details for the reader.
• Look for examples of parenthetical phrases, set off by commas, brackets, or dashes, in your independent reading. Consider their purpose ad effect.
• Revise a draft in your writer’s notebook by incorporating some of the craft moves you notice in this excerpt.