In Praise of the Long Sentence

[Mark Kohut]

Thanks for this....yes infuriating.......very. Reminds of Nabokov being critically ornery. ....I think I remember that sentence from at least one VINELAND Reading.....figuring that P wanted it all to " connect" by showing how one thing led to everything over and over.  I find it so ironic that P himself in GR, speaks of the meaningless of no connection at all.

What he didn't get to in his language self-study is all the ways language is used for meaning not in sentences. the Plist-famous, " Yeah, right" is just one example. In literature the implied author/narrator can often create effects with non-sentences. 

But perhaps he Pynchon ( or his editor) did just put in a comma when a semi-colon is needed? Has anyone looked at a later printing? 
Murname's  difficult complex stupidity, I'll call it, is revealed most when he asserts that the implied author is NOT really Pynchon himself...because Booth....c'mon.....Kermode's statement is simple fact...

One can almost read this as a subversive Borges-like essay--and I felt an impressionistic flash of Sebald when he builds his world. An essay that has to set up straw men in order to contrast his 
Vision of preferred fiction. 

Sent from my iPad

> On Apr 17, 2016, at 10:37 PM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> An infuriating essay I mentioned here a little while ago has had its
> paywall removed.
> 
> The (hugely respected) author spends the first few paragraphs arguing
> that Pynchon and Frank Kermode wouldn't recognise a grammatically
> correct sentence if they stumbled over it.
> 
> https://meanjin.com.au/essays/in-praise-of-the-long-sentence/
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l