Consider the Oyster
MFK Fisher’s Consider the Oyster is a collection of essays about, you guessed it, oysters. How to eat them, when to eat them, where to find them, what to eat them with - all things oyster, Fisher covers. The book as a whole wasn’t my favorite, especially because I am not a huge fan of oysters, but Fisher’s beautiful and surprising sentence structure kept me hooked. As a writer, I gobbled the structures and startling descriptions, impressed and jealous.
“R is for Oyster,” my favorite essay from the collection, is rife with sentence variety; her style and voice are unique and plainly showcased in each sentence, emphasized by her word and punctuation choices. The essay in question begins by describing a man who died of a bad oyster and prompts a discussion of why and how people could die of bad oysters, especially if bad oysters are obviously bad and good oysters are obviously good. She goes so far as to say that oysters, like mushrooms, are often “…blamed for sickness that could equally be caused by many things like piggishness or nerves or even other poisons” (16). Fisher then goes into the well-known adage that oysters should not be bought during months that don’t have an R in them, but challenges it with contradicting evidence that others have eaten oysters in July and sworn they were the best they’ve ever had.
But Fisher’s mastery of the sentence in making her case are what make the essay brilliant; she is not cliché and still not overly surprising in her sentence structure, causing the words to sing though she is talking about my least favorite food, oysters.
Fisher takes her time with her descriptions. In paragraph three, after establishing that a man has died of a bad oyster, she writes of his probable experience, “He felt faint, and cold fingers whuddered over his skin, so that he reeled and shivered” (15). Cold fingers catches the eye first, providing a chilling image to supplement the simplicity of felt faint, but it is quickly disrupted by the use of the word “whuddered.”
When typed in a Word Document or even in the google search bar, red squiggly lines and “Did you mean…?” proclaim the word to be incorrect. No official definitions from renowned dictionaries exist; in fact, Etymonline.com (an etymology website) says “no results found.” However, from the use of the word, the reader can deduce that Fisher must mean something similar to “shudder” or “shiver” or even “waver” or “whither;” perhaps she means them all, coming up with a brilliant word to describe them at once. In any case, the image is vivid – “cold fingers whuddered.” More hints to the meaning as the sentence continues: “…so that he reeled and shivered.”
In only one sentence, Fisher has smashed through overused descriptions, going as far as to make up her own word.
As the essay continues, she uses many other forms of sentence to paint her scenes without dulling the reader. Rather than saying the man is dying of thirst or extremely thirsty, she says, “And, God, he was thirsty, thirsty…” (15). She does not need to overly emphasize the fact that he’s dying by using, again, the word “dying,” and she doesn’t need adjectives limping alongside an already strong adjective: thirsty. Including the exclamation of “God” in the beginning and repeating the main state of his being, “thirsty,” followed by an ellipsis as if the thirst never ends.
Further into the essay, Fisher makes the claim that a man would not intentionally eat a bad oyster “…unless he was half under the table he sat at” (16). This particular descriptor goes against a writer’s initial instinct, which is to end the sentence with an adjective or noun. He was stupid, or a moron, or drunk, or half-asleep. Rather, Fisher paints another, more brilliant image of a man slipping in his seat, for only such a man would not immediately taste than an oyster was bad. Without being overly surprising in a frustrating way for the reader, Fisher delights the reader with images that are understandable but not cliché.
Finally, though the examples written above highlight how Fisher doesn’t use adjectives to do all the writing work for her, she does end many of her sentences with more adjectives or further descriptors to enhance or emphasize her point. They are almost like asides or afterthoughts, in a way, like Fisher thought of one more way to drive her point home, and it somehow brought the whole sentence together.
She says, “It is true, too, that some men have eaten rotten oysters and died…” and could have ended the sentence there; rather, she continues, “…hideously, racked with vomiting” (16). And later in the essay, she says “…and of course within six hours or less they would have been sick as hell, or even dead,” the comma separating the majority of the sentence with another bit of useful insight to drive her point home.
Fisher’s use of sentence structure and word choice are what make her writing so wonderful to read; she is surprising and innovative, and never cliché. While this is the only collection of essays I’ve read thus far by Fisher, I definitely recommend Consider the Oyster, particularly if you love oysters and fabulous sentences.
