Pynchon's sentence structure

[ish mailian]

 There are lots of arguments to support long sentences, short
sentences, simple, compound, complex, compound complex sentences...all
major and minor types and kinds. Fragments and nonsense. First, it is
a long sentence in a work of fiction. A sentence of this length and
complexity might not work in a business letter or in a newspaper. The
grammar of it, in terms of what Chomsky and others call sensible
prescriptivism or standard English, is easy enough to parse, but the
rhetorical function of the sentence far exceeds any strict or formal
measure of its practical grammar. And, as you note, even when measured
by formal grammar we need to consider if it works? Sure it does. I
know exactly what the narrator is saying. And,  from a rhetorical
perspective it works on several levels that a limited grammatical
evaluation will ignore.  These levels are difficult to achieve within
the confines of strict grammar rules.  Pynchon, like all good and
great writers makes a tone from the structure of a sentence, at times
the shape is commensurate with the meaning. Rumor has it he was once
interested in writing poetry.

On Sat, Mar 19, 2016 at 6:15 AM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've been reading a recent essay by one of Australia's pre-eminent
> novelists, Gerald Murnane, an extremely private man (the more common
> description is 'reclusive') only two years younger than Thomas Pynchon
> and whose work is characterised by obscenely long sentences that are
> nonetheless grammatically correct. His great obsession is Proust and
> most would say he is the Antipodean answer to Proust. The essay is on
> the long sentence's profound potential to produce meaning - which he
> associates with 'connections' - that short, descriptive, declarative
> sentences can't access. But as an obsessive grammarian, he begins the
> work decrying Kermode's review of Vineland, in which is quoted the
> following loooong sentence. Murnane says it isn't a sentence, but a 66
> word sentence followed by a bunch of unconnected clauses. He goes on
> to call Pynchon and Kermode 'pretenders' as a result (did I mention
> Murnane is a serious grammar freak?) but eventually produces quite an
> interesting essay.
>
> My question is: I can see how he can't parse the following as a
> classically correct sentence past "another motel room" but I can also
> see how it does work. I don't know how to argue for it, however. A
> puzzle fit for a P-list.
>
> The 'after a while her visits to Sasha' clause is where things get hairy.
>
> "By the time she began to see that she might, nonetheless, have gone
> through with it, Brock Vond had reentered the picture, at the head of
> a small motorcade of unmarked Buicks, forcing her over near Pico and
> Fairfax, ordering her up against her car, kicking apart her legs and
> frisking her himself, and before she knew it there they were in
> another motel room, after a while her visits to Sasha dropped off and
> when she made them she came in reeking with Vond sweat, Vond semen —
> couldn't Sasha smell what was going on? — and his erect penis had
> become the joystick with which, hurtling into the future, she would
> keep trying to steer among the hazards and obstacles, the swooping
> monsters and alien projectiles of each game she would come, year by
> year, to stand before, once again out long after curfew, calls home
> forgotten, supply of coins dwindling, leaning over the bright display
> among the back aisles of a forbidden arcade, rows of other players
> silent, unnoticed, closing time never announced, playing for nothing
> but the score itself, the row of numbers, a chance of entering her
> initials among those of other strangers for a brief time, no longer
> the time the world observed but game time, underground time, time that
> could take her nowhere outside its own tight and falsely deathless
> perimeter."
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