I was always fascinated by the famous closing section of Ulysses, where Joyce dispenses with conventional punctuation. There are pages and pages of what a junior-high-school grammar teacher would call run-on sentences. But it works. And as a reader, when you realize that it works, it can feel transformative. Magical. There’s a thrilling defiance of the conventional rules, a bold transgression of the way things supposedly have to be done. And yet you encounter order and sense anyway—maybe even new or redoubled layers of resonance and meaning, because it isn’t done the same old way.
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