Pynchon's sentence structure

[David Morris]

Sentences are a construct that can be expanded as far as needed, and with
structure as flexible as imagination. AKA Poetry.

David Morris

On Saturday, March 19, 2016, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

>  I think there just needs to be a semicolon after motel room for the whole
> to work as a single classically correct sentence.
> > On Mar 19, 2016, at 9:31 AM, Jochen Stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com
> <javascript:;>> wrote:
> >
> > I would say those are two long sentences, or one with an "and" missing
> between "motel room" and "after". No real problem for a grammar freak and
> no pretending that I can see. (Although I'd have to say that Kermode could
> have seen that.)
> >
> > 2016-03-19 11:15 GMT+01:00 John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com
> <javascript:;>>:
> > 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."
> > -
> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
> >
>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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