In February 1971, English
class, 9th grade, Concord, I checked out of the school library
“Barnaby Rudge” by Charles Dickens as the book upon which I would write a
report. I guess the teacher figured that if it were in the school library, it
would be an acceptable read.
Surely the subject
material was appropriate. But the difficulty of read would challenge college
level British literature majors, I presumed.
Yet, I continued.
You see, having read the first paragraph, and referring to a
dictionary many times to discover meanings of some words such as “wont” and
“yeoman”, it occurred to me that the whole of the paragraph was one sentence!
And so, purely for fun, I began contemplating the structure of that sentence to
see how it held together, developed an idea, and left an image in mind.
This sentence made me a Dickens fan. But more importantly, it
made me appreciate and enjoy the English language, grammar, and punctuation.
I offer that first paragraph below in italics…
In the year 1775, there stood upon the
borders of Epping Forest, at a distance of about twelve miles from
London—measuring from the Standard in Cornhill, or rather from the spot on or
near to which the Standard used to be in days of yore—a house of public
entertainment called the Maypole; which fact was demonstrated to all such
travellers as could neither read nor write (and at that time a vast number both
of travellers and stay-at-homes were in this condition) by the emblem reared on
the roadside over against the house, which, if not of those goodly proportions
that Maypoles were wont to present in olden times, was a fair young ash, thirty
feet in height, and straight as any arrow that ever English yeoman drew."
In my study of that sentence I counted : eight commas, 2
dashes,1 semi colon, one pair of parentheses. And , concluding, one period.
Thus began my career as an English sentence hobbyist.
Of course I have ventured into poetry, short stories, essays,
but my most fun has been derived from taking an event, image, or thought and
seeing how much narrative detail and device of punctuation I can apply to one
sentence in description of that chosen object.
I have been accused of composing run-on sentences. To which I
reply, “Thank you”.
My compositions have been met with raised eye brow, thereby affirming
my esteem and intent.
I have been erroneously “corrected” wherefore I, in
self-defense, offered the legitimacy of my sentence.
I have been legitimately corrected, and, subsequently, and
sincerely offered gratitude to my corrector.
Of course, I do not
claim to have the command of language as did Dickens. I merely enjoy composing
such silliness as follows…
“Why
acquiesce to one perfectly adequate word when a second superfluous synonym can
decorate the sentence with a charming grandiosity, however otherwise redundant
it may be?"
That sentence describes quite
accurately my philosophy of the matter of the conveyance of thought by word and
punctuation.
Well, for class in 1971, I did not finish
the book which ran on for more than six hundred pages. And I paid little
attention to the plot or its resolution. So I based my report on the structures
of chosen sentences and paragraphs.
Here, fifty years later, I
have checked out the book once again, this time from the Elkhart Public
Library. I think I will read it for plot, finally.
