Novel consisting of one long sentence
Dates: 2/25/02,11:11 AM through 2/25/02,4:52 PM (4 postings)
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Novel consisting of one long sentence
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FROM: Ricki Nordmeyer <[removed]@skokie.lib.il.us>
REC'D: 2/25/02, 11:11 AM
One of our patrons inquired as to the title and author of a novel consisting
of one long sentence. Her English teacher told her about it, but didn't know
the title or author...
Has anyone heard of this novel?
Ricki Nordmeyer
Skokie Public Library
FROM: David Wright <[removed]@yahoo.com>
REC'D: 2/25/02, 2:01 PM
Here's a book that meets your question:
Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age, by
BOHUMIL HRABAL
TRANSLATED FROM CZECH BY MICHAEL HENRY HEIM
ISBN 1 86046 215 4
In this short novel, composed of a single
sentence, an old shoemaker who once wore a
pince-nez and carried a stick with a silver
mounting because he wanted to look like a
composer, tells the story of his life to six
beautiful young sunbathers. One drunken thought
triggers another. Amorous conquests alternate
with
sundry mishaps and, in the haphazard telling,
acquire the same weight as earth-shattering
events. Recollection and opinion and
unconventional thoughts on history, politics and
morality are lavished on his captive audience.
The self-styled 'engineer of human feet' bends
facts into fiction in his breathless monologue.
Like his creator, the old shoemaker possesses
never-ending curiosity and unstoppable joy in
life and this is reflected in the rich texture of
the prose. This is Hrabal, the inimitable Czech
master, at his witty, heart-searching best,
ranging easily from everyday observation to
speculations about the innermost meaning of life.
Faulkner has a 1,300 word stretch in Absalom,
Absalom! (41 ˝ pages), that is sometimes used in
this logic exercise:
Your teacher may have given you the following
demonstration. Let's say that you think that
you've found the largest number. Well, I'll prove
to you it
isn't the largest number; I'll add a 1 to it, and
that's a number that's even larger. It's the same
thing with
language. The Guinness Book of World Records
actually claimed to have found the world's
longest
sentence. It was a sentence by Faulkner in his
novel Absalom, Absalom, and it was 1300 words
long, and
it began something like, "They both bore it as
though in desultory flagellation," or some
sequence of
words that I can't even remember. But I'll prove
to you that that is not the world's longest
sentence,
because I can say, "Pinker said that Faulkner
wrote that they both bore it as though in
desultory
flagellation." And you can say, "Who cares that
Pinker said that Faulkner wrote. . . ?" And
someone else
could say, "Jeffrey said, 'Who cares that. . .
,'" etcetera. So in that sense, in principle
there's no limit to
the number of sentences that a human mind can
create and understand -- except for the fact, of
course,
that eventually we die, so we can't process
literally an infinitely long sentence.
David Wright
Seattle Public Library
--- Ricki Nordmeyer <[removed]@skokie.lib.il.us>
wrote:
>
>
> One of our patrons inquired as to the title and
> author of a novel consisting
> of one long sentence. Her English teacher told
> her about it, but didn't know
> the title or author...
> Has anyone heard of this novel?
>
> Ricki Nordmeyer
> Skokie Public Library
>
>
......................................................................
> Need to subscribe, unsubscribe, search the
> archives?
> Everything Fiction_L:
http://www.webrary.org/rs/flmenu.html
=====
David Wright Seattle Public Library
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Sports - Coverage of the 2002 Olympic Games
http://sports.yahoo.com
FROM: Ricki Nordmeyer <[removed]@skokie.lib.il.us>
REC'D: 2/25/02, 2:22 PM
Ricki Nordmeyer
-----Original Message-----
From: David Wright [[removed]@yahoo.com]
Sent: Monday, February 25, 2002 1:51 PM
To: Fiction_L
Subject: RE: Novel consisting of one long sentence
According to Timothy Fullerton (Triviata: A
Compendium of Useless Information, 1975), the
longest sentence can be found in Les Miserables,
by Victor Hugo. The sentence contains 823 words,
93 commas, 51 semi- colons, and four dashes.
This has clearly been surpassed by The
Rotter's Club, by Jonathan Coe, which has a
sentence that is 13,955 words long, giving him
the current record for writers in English. By
contrast, Molly Bloom's soliloquy in Ulysses is
4,391 words long. A Polish novel by Jerzy
Andrzejewski translated as Gates of Paradise has
a sentence that is 40,000 words long.
Here's a book that meets your question:
Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age, by
BOHUMIL HRABAL
TRANSLATED FROM CZECH BY MICHAEL HENRY HEIM
ISBN 1 86046 215 4
In this short novel, composed of a single
sentence, an old shoemaker who once wore a
pince-nez and carried a stick with a silver
mounting because he wanted to look like a
composer, tells the story of his life to six
beautiful young sunbathers. One drunken thought
triggers another. Amorous conquests alternate
with
sundry mishaps and, in the haphazard telling,
acquire the same weight as earth-shattering
events. Recollection and opinion and
unconventional thoughts on history, politics and
morality are lavished on his captive audience.
The self-styled 'engineer of human feet' bends
facts into fiction in his breathless monologue.
Like his creator, the old shoemaker possesses
never-ending curiosity and unstoppable joy in
life and this is reflected in the rich texture of
the prose. This is Hrabal, the inimitable Czech
master, at his witty, heart-searching best,
ranging easily from everyday observation to
speculations about the innermost meaning of life.
Faulkner has a 1,300 word stretch in Absalom,
Absalom! (41 ˝ pages), that is sometimes used in
this logic exercise:
Your teacher may have given you the following
demonstration. Let's say that you think that
you've found the largest number. Well, I'll prove
to you it
isn't the largest number; I'll add a 1 to it, and
that's a number that's even larger. It's the same
thing with
language. The Guinness Book of World Records
actually claimed to have found the world's
longest
sentence. It was a sentence by Faulkner in his
novel Absalom, Absalom, and it was 1300 words
long, and
it began something like, "They both bore it as
though in desultory flagellation," or some
sequence of
words that I can't even remember. But I'll prove
to you that that is not the world's longest
sentence,
because I can say, "Pinker said that Faulkner
wrote that they both bore it as though in
desultory
flagellation." And you can say, "Who cares that
Pinker said that Faulkner wrote. . . ?" And
someone else
could say, "Jeffrey said, 'Who cares that. . .
,'" etcetera. So in that sense, in principle
there's no limit to
the number of sentences that a human mind can
create and understand -- except for the fact, of
course,
that eventually we die, so we can't process
literally an infinitely long sentence.
David Wright
Seattle Public Library
--- Ricki Nordmeyer <[removed]@skokie.lib.il.us>
wrote:
>
>
> One of our patrons inquired as to the title and
> author of a novel consisting
> of one long sentence. Her English teacher told
> her about it, but didn't know
> the title or author...
> Has anyone heard of this novel?
>
> Ricki Nordmeyer
> Skokie Public Library
>
>
......................................................................
> Need to subscribe, unsubscribe, search the
> archives?
> Everything Fiction_L:
http://www.webrary.org/rs/flmenu.html
=====
David Wright Seattle Public Library
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Sports - Coverage of the 2002 Olympic Games
http://sports.yahoo.com
FROM: Molly Williams <[removed]@adelphia.net>
REC'D: 2/25/02, 4:52 PM
Also, in _Finnegans Wake_ by James Joyce, the last sentence of the
600-page work is part of the first sentence, which is why the first
sentence begins in a lower-case letter. But there are intervening
sentences.
~ Molly Wms.
--
Molly Williams, Volunteer, Waterboro Public Library (Maine)
daily library weblog: http://www.waterboro.lib.me.us/blog.htm
Ricki Nordmeyer wrote:
>
> One of our patrons inquired as to the title and author of a novel consisting
> of one long sentence. Her English teacher told her about it, but didn't know
> the title or author...
> Has anyone heard of this novel?
>
> Ricki Nordmeyer
> Skokie Public Library
>
> ......................................................................
> Need to subscribe, unsubscribe, search the archives?
> Everything Fiction_L: http://www.webrary.org/rs/flmenu.html
>
>
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