The Compound Sentence

I made a promise in my last post, a promise to do a deeper dive into the work of art called the compound sentence, but I understood well in advance that such an exploration could get carried away in such a manner that any type of message in such a post would get lost within the lengthy explanation required to demonstrate just what a compound sentence is, therefore while I will still discuss the art behind creating such a work of grammatical perfection, I will not push too hard in suggesting whether it should be the preferred tool of choice as you go on your writing journey and develop the kind of process that best expresses your thoughts and desires.

That previous sentence is a bit of a grammatical nightmare, weighing in at a robust 120 words and likely to set off an alarm in the minds of editors. However, it is not what one would call a run-on sentence, but rather it is a compound sentence. The difference is, of course, that a run-on sentence wanders away from the subject and goes in tangential or even unrelated directions. A compound sentence, however, sticks to a central message or discussion point, with each phrase building upon the last one. It may sound like a modest distinction, but that's the important part, and I will explain why.

I was going to reprint the opening sentence from a draft of Newton Berry's The Hanged Man, but I can't seem to find my copy. If you find one, great, but allow me to explain. The book opens with a river raging through a limestone crag, with a man dangling upside-down from the edge of a cliff above, his foot caught in a gnarled root. Now, one could start the book off by focusing upon the man and his struggle to get back up the cliff. However, the author starts with a 234-word sentence describing the river's furious churning through this narrow crag. What does this do? It takes the reader immediately into a force of nature that is the river rapids, and holds them there as the scene builds from the cold water to the churning foam to the hard, relentless limestone cliff walls, then ascends the heights to the man dangling two-hundred feet above this violent situation. In that one compound sentence, the reader is immersed in the scene, not allowed to come up for air until that first period emerges just as the man hanging off the cliff is mentioned. And the reader is hooked.

Now, there are other forms of compound sentences that also pass editorial muster, but they are done in a different manner. In my mission to read James Joyce's Ulysses, there is a 4,391-word soliloquy at the end, taken from the spoken word of one of the characters. Now it's not exactly fair to call such a thing a compound sentence since it is written as a manner of speech, and in speech we can ramble on with stunningly imperfect grammar for hours and hours without stopping if our audience lets us. However, it is written word and done in a way to attract the reader to its message, so it counts and it's rather fascinating to read from the eyes of a writer. (In Jonathan Coe's The Rotters' Club, there is supposedly a sentence registering just shy of 14,000 words in length, but I cannot attest to having read it. It is, however, on my bucket list.)

In short, the compound sentence, when taken to extremes, can give the author an extra tool when it comes to finding ways to draw in the reader - either into a scene, a character, or an emotion. When done right, they are extraordinarily immersive and quite memorable. Just as long as one does not ramble on and on and on and on and...