This Business of And

I have a piece of paper at home, a very expensive piece of paper, which was given to me by a man who’s probably never seen Star Wars. Peter Likins was the president of Lehigh University in 1993, the year I graduated from college with a degree in Journalism and a distinction in Spending Time with my Girlfriend. That piece of paper is all I have to show for my collegiate efforts, which were less than substantial.

I sat through hours upon hours of lectures and seminars (you may know them as small group discussions) whose sole purpose was to assassinate adjectives and strangle, once and for all, the run-on sentence. Far be it for me to challenge the rules of Journalism, which have worked so well for so many, steamrolling the art of description in newspapers and periodicals the world over and governing the literary lives of commas, parentheses, quotation marks, hyphens, colons, semicolons, apostrophes, and that bastard child of all punctuation, the ellipsis, but the run-on sentence, as far as I’m concerned, deserves better. And don’t get me started on the sentence-opening and or but. Or or, for that matter.

One day in the 19th Century, Charles Dickens wrote this sentence: “There are chords in the human heart — strange, varying strings — which are only struck by accident; which will remain mute and senseless to appeals the most passionate and earnest, and respond at last to the slightest casual touch.”

His editor took one look at the monitor, and with a few clicks of his mouse, whittled Chuck’s sentence down to the following literary pearl:“I was looking for love in all the wrong places.”

I have a theory, but I’m warning you, it’s pretty out there. Punctuation should be used to punctuate prose. I am a notorious abuser of commas. I insert them here and there haphazardly, with little regard for form or precedent. But it isn’t really haphazard. When I use a comma, I expect the reader (that’s you) to pause for effect, to rest awhile before soldiering on into the void that is my imagination. Grammatical dictators, or benevolent bullies of the English language as they are known to some, would have you believe that I’m a heretic for suggesting you ignore the rule of law. And before you go Henry Hyde-ing me, obese, inebriated congressman do not have a monopoly on cliché.

I say, “Bunk!” Stick out your chest, straighten your back, and tell your English teachers to take a flying leap. If you’re stuck for eloquent barbs, try this one: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” Keep in mind, this is coming from a man who keeps an AP Stylebook with him at all times and has been known to spell check his e-mails.

It’s all about communication, ya hear? James Joyce wasn’t exactly sleeping with the rulebook under his pillow when he wrote Ulysses, if you know what I mean. Bad example, says you. My drift, you catch. Heart. Yes and yes and yes.

So go nuts! Be generous with your commas! Go ahead and open that sentence with an and like you’ve always wanted to. Run on and on and on for all I care. I won’t correct you.

You might even win a Pulitzer. Just ask Annie Proulx. Or don’t. Either way.

Mount Sinai Mosaic: March/April 2003