DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Charles Siebert published an essay about Roy Horn’s tiger in today’s New York Times Magazine. The piece, Wild Thing, begins,

What on earth was he thinking, Siegfried & Roy’s 7-year-old white Siberian tiger, Montecore, sequestered now “in its usual quarters,” as one report phrased it, at the Mirage hotel in Las Vegas, his future as an entertainer, indeed as a tiger, in serious question.

I admit it’s early in the day; I have not read much yet this morning… but still, eight commas? Two phrases in apposition to the subject pronoun? A restrictive phrase — full of meaning, sure — taxed by a subordinate-clause aside (“as one report phrased it”) and two restrictive prepositional phrase to indicate location — spliced with a comma onto the clause/antecedent/appositive disaster-in-progress? Then yet-another complex phrase, itself containing two subordinate phrases and a prepositional phrase, tacked on after that?

Scraped clean of the loops and detours, we’re left with: “What on earth was he thinking, Roy’s tiger, sequestered, his future in question.” That’s only one-third of the words, but it’s already a mouthful. A brain-ful. Too many facts to hang on a single verb, especially considering the first and main clause is a cliche.

Or as Yoda might say, “Terrible writing that is!” It’s still early in the day, but after an hour’s analysis I continue to be unsure the sentence makes sense.

Initially I intended to diagram it, as an exercise and as word-geek entertainment, to force an upgrade to my mental parser. I haven’t diagrammed a sentence since the third grade, but I have my copy of Shertzer’s The Elements of Grammar handy at all times. How hard could it be?

Too hard, as it turns out.