Conclusion
When I was writing those long sentences of The Making of Americans,
verbs active present verbs with long dependent adverbial clauses became
a passion with me. I have told you that I recognize verbs and adverbs
aided by prepositions and conjunctions with pronouns as possessing the
whole of the active life of writing.
make eventually for simplicity and therefore I have always
liked dependent adverbial clauses. I have like dependent adverbial clauses
because of their variety of dependence and independence. You can see how
loving the intensity of complication of these things that commas would
be degrading. Why if you want the pleasure of concentrating on the final
simplicity of excessive complication would you want any artificial aid to
bring about that simplicity. Do you see now why I feel about that simplicity.
Do you see now why I feel about the comma as I did and as I do.
Think about anything you really like to do and you will see what I mean.
When it gets really difficult you want to disentangle rather than to
cut the knot, at least of anybody feels who is working with any thread,
so anybody feels who is working with any tool so anybody feels who is
writing any sentence or reading it after it has been written. And what
does a comma do, a comma does nothing but make easy a thing that if you
like it enough is easy enough without the comma. A long complicated sentence
should force itself upon you, make you know yourself knowing it and the comma,
well at the most a comma is a poor period that lets you stop and take a
breath but if you want to take a breath you ought to know yourself that
you want to take a breath. It is not like stopping altogether has something
to do with going on, but taking a breath well you are always taking a breath
and why emphasize one breath rather than another breath. Anyway that is the
way I felt about it and I felt that about it very very strongly. And so I
almost never used a comma. The longer, the more complicated the sentence
the greater the number of the same kinds of words I had following one after
another, the more the very more I had of them the more I felt the passionate
need of their taking care of themselves by themselves and not helping them,
and thereby enfeebling them by putting in a comma.
So that is the way I felt about punctuation in prose, in poetry it is a little
different but more so and later I will go into that. But that is the way I
felt about punctuation in prose.
What do you think?
What punctuation is interesting vs. uninteresting?
Interesting
Uninteresting