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AWWW recently discussed how 'Of an evening' and like phrases are used to indicate recurrence of events. Though the 'of' had seemed to be the feature of interest , apparently the 'a' alone can work to similar and just as intriguing effects: this from Colm Tóibín's new book:
She shared a room in a flat in Herbert Street and went out with her friends on Friday and Saturday nights and on a Sunday night she drove back to Enniscorthy.
-a nice way to say that out of a recurring set of events , there is a subset that is a little less frequent.
I reread this post several times trying to get the point (which seems a bit fuzzy). Even checked the original source to make sure it was verbatim and punctuated the way the Tóibín wrote it. It was. But I do not see your point about "recurrence."
I can read that passage either of two ways ...
1. She shared a room in a flat in Herbert Street and went out with her friends on Friday and Saturday nights and on [one particular] Sunday night she drove back to Enniscorthy.
2. She shared a room in a flat in Herbert Street and went out with her friends on Friday and Saturday nights and [on every] Sunday night she drove back to Enniscorthy.
Unclear to me what the author meant by the context. Seems it could be either. If I meant the former, I'd put a comma after "nights." If I meant the latter, I'd drop the "a" before "Sunday." Could you expand a bit on what you meant by your last line?
Robert said: a nice way to say that out of a recurring set of events , there is a subset that is a little less frequent.
More texts, better context:
Every Friday at four Elizabeth Gibney left the office and drove to Dublin. She shared a room in a flat in Herbert Street and went out with her friends on Friday and Saturday nights and on a Sunday night she drove back to Enniscorthy. On Saturday afternoons she went shopping in Grafton street.
The Sunday thing is placed right in there among the several routines, so it's one of them, a routine itself, not just one Sunday. And yet it's given special treatment, to look different from the others. It's not that way accidentally; he's saying the Sunday return trip does not always happen (perhaps because the woman has a room in town), or not always that late. So effortless and smooth for all that.
Peano said: I don’t find it effortless and smooth. More like confused and confusing.
And I would agree with that assessment. Sure, Tóibín is an Irish writer, so I'd expect some excursion from standard American English, but as I said in my previous comment, and even with the context pointed out by Robert, it still leaves me with two different interpretations.
If the writers point is to be clear about chronological recurrence, I don't find it at all elegant or smooth (at least within American English).
If you haven't listened to the broadcast about this, be sure to hear it. I don't hear this phrase, of an evening, any more but when I was younger it was very familiar to me and it meant exactly what Grant and Martha said, a recurrence of some event at a given time period. I think this would be called an idiom and it is probably mostly southern. (Although I heard it regularly in Texas)
I really believe that Tóibín’s phrase is the Irish equivalent of this same thing. He is saying that every Sunday she drove back, just like every Friday and Saturday there are specific things being done.
Even though I am not at all familiar with Irish idioms, it seems so much like the idiom I am familiar with that I think it is the same. Robert recognized this in the first paragraph of his original post.
My first mother-in-law, Beelzebub, used this expression frequently. Not daily, but more often than that.
She spent her life residing and working near Marion, Indiana. If you aren't familiar with Indiana, it only appears to be in the North on maps. Most industrialized state in the union, due to low wages and strong anti-union feelings. Birthplace of the Klan, and the John Bitch Society. Many Hoosiers fought for the South in the civil war. The lynching of two black men in1930 in Marion was the last racial hanging north of the Mason-Dixon line. Texas, by comparison, is part of the North.
Dick said
I really believe that Tóibín’s phrase is the Irish equivalent of this same thing. He is saying that every Sunday she drove back, just like every Friday and Saturday there are specific things being done.
I think the problem with the Toibin excerpt (three sentences) is that it is ambiguous. Several readers, including me, have said they can read it as meaning either of two things, and it isn't clear what the writer meant.
That's not an unreasonable observation. However, it is important to consider the known works and known habits of known writers: Tóibín's is the incorrigible habit of paring words and pruning sentences to the simplest possible; his chronic meticulousness with that precludes chances or accidents or ambiguities. Once the reader accepts that, the only thing left to do is to understand him.
I just listened to the piece from the show on 'of an evening' and I was not totally convinced by it. Here is an example of what I thought was a typical use of that construction. In one of my Julia Child cookbooks she says about a Christmas pudding, "I would gladly eat it of a cool mid-summer evening." That looks like she is substituting "of" for "on" because I don't get any sense of recurrence - she isn't eating Christmas pudding on every cool mid-summer evening. So, in this case, why of and not on?
PS: I make this pudding every Christmas and it has such long shelf life that I have enjoyed it of a cool mid-summer evening. I mean on a cool mid-summer evening.
Robert said
it is important to consider the known works and known habits of known writers:
True, but I'd say it's even more important for writers to consider and understand the expectations of readers. George Gopen has written two excellent books about writing from the reader's perspective.
The Sense of Structure: Writing from the Reader's Perspective
Expectations: Teaching Writing from the Reader's Perspective
I an across a line in a book that had someone "breathing deeply of the night air". instead of simply breathing deeply the night air", so I happened to check "of" in the dictionary, and found that it ad an entry for of an evening.
of an evening (or morning, etc.)
INFORMAL
1 on most evenings (or mornings, etc.).
2 at some time in the evenings (or mornings, etc.).
(New Oxford American Dictionary)
Not perzackly what was said on the show, but close enough for government work
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
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