It is often said that short is sweet but sometimes stories need long, sprawling sentences to have a bigger impact. These long monologues and multi-line descriptions are known as the run-on sentence. And over the years, some of the authors have taken the nun-on technique as far as it can go writing some of the longest sentences in English in the process.
What is a run-on?
Run-on sentences are sentences that contain too many ideas, often without proper punctuation Typically, they include independent causes that are joined together without any connecting word or punctuation to separate the clauses.
However, not all long sentences are run-on sentences. For instance, the 800-word sentence in Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables” is one of the longest grammatically correct lines to appear in any work of literature But Hugo’s sentence is not a run on.
Setting word records
James Joyce and William Faulkner, both renowned authors and poets, were among the earliest to master the run-on. Joyce held the world record for the longest nun-on with a 3,687 word sentence in Ulysses”. The novel contains the character Molly Bloom’s 36 page, two sentence monologue.
In 1983, Faulkner was featured in the Guinness Book of World Records for his lengthy passage from his 1936 book. “Absalom, Absalom!” The huge run on sentence consists of as many as 1,288 words and countless clauses. Once you get into its rhythm, the sentence immerses you in Faulkners stream of consciousness (unfiltered flow of thoughts). Faulkners experimental sentence style proved an inspiration to modern writers such as Samuel Beckett. Virginia Woolf and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Recent examples
Post modem writers are still influenced by Faulkners nun-on technique. The current record holder the longest English sentence is Jonathan Coe for his staggering 33-page 13,955-word sentence in “The Rotter’s Club (2001).
Last year, Lucy Ellmann’s “Ducks” which consists of a single sentence (published in parts throughout the novel) running over 1,000 pages, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
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