What if I wrote like this, continuing the same train of thought, endlessly and forever, not seeing an end in sight, exhausting the same sentence through the clever use of commas, to make my point seem somewhat more intellectual, and, god only knows, more annoying, because after about the 3rd comma it becomes mind numbingly excessive, and, when you read this in your head, at this point, the point you are at right now, reading this post in your kitchen, or on the toilet, or near your bedroom window, where you spy through binoculars on your neighbor, who you suspect is a murderer, but you’re in a wheelchair due to a broken leg, a leg you broke in an adventure photography accident, that of which won’t allow you to walk to your neighbors door, who you suspect of murder, and ask what, in fact, is the big idea, so you instead spy creepily from your ominous window, a window that is located in your bedroom, and, to be clear, a bedroom that is located at the back of your house, or apartment, that is to say, a rear window, where you read this post, or wherever you’re reading this, you are exhausted and out of breath, almost as if you’re running a marathon, but that’s incorrect, in this sense, it’s not really a marathon, in the most basic sense of the word, a word, which in fact, is not just a word, but a place, because, reading this post, it’s actually worse than running a marathon, in which most people, most people who run marathons, voluntarily run marathons, the exception being that of Pheidippides, the Greek soldier who ran the first marathon, in which case, he was not voluntarily running a marathon at all, because, the fact of the matter is, marathons, in the modern definition, did not exist, and his marathon was not meant as sport, but rather, and I cannot stress this enough, it was meant as a message, its contents being related to war, that is to say, a war message, about Greece’s victory, therefore being a Greek victory war message, to be taken from Marathon, again, not just a word, but a place in Greece, to Athens, another place in Greece, the mileage of the journey being 26.2 miles, at the end of which Pheidippides died, exclaiming tragically and dramatically that Greece had won the war, in which reading this post is not like most marathons, but rather like Pheidippides’ marathon, that being you are forced to read through this agonizing style of writing, much like Pheidippides was forced to run between those two places in Greece, he could, however, have probably quit, and, that is to say, you can too, but you won’t be able to say you finished and saw the end, that is to say the metaphorical end, that being Athens, Greece, but, then again, neither can Pheidippides.
This is how Jose Saramago writes. Jose Saramago is a Portuguese author who won the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature. His works include The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, Blindness, and Death with Interruptions. I just recently finished Death with Interruptions.
I am not saying that I didn’t enjoy the book. In fact, I loved it. The story was well put together and, although generally unnamed, the characters were fun and fleshed out.
I loved the book; I did not like his writing style at first. But I’ll admit it grew on me. He’s a lot better at it than I am and at a certain point the long sentences blend nicely making it read like a person telling a story. It’s conversational. It’s also convoluted and repetitive and recursive and confusing, but so are most conversations when listened to. When you really get into the story, the flow seems natural.
I personally love periods. I hate commas. You’ve probably read enough of my writing to know that I enjoy short, terse language. I think it’s more powerful. Explaining something clearly in the shortest sentence possible is something that I was taught to be important. It’s a skill that I’m still working on. I always wanted to emulate writers like Ernest Hemingway or Mark Twain.
However, I struggled trying to parody Saramago’s writing style. It was difficult. And your enjoyment of reading the long sentence above, or lack thereof, can attest to how terrible I am at it. I found that there’s also something powerful about Saramago’s writing style. Because every now and then, he’ll hit you with a short sentence. That one short sentence seems more impactful. His sparse terse language is that much more meaningful.
The parody above is not an accurate representation of Saramago, but it gets close.
But go ahead and give Death with Interruptions a read. It’s a good book that is extremely relevant with the current pandemic and quarantine.
As for me, I’ll stick to emulating Hemingway. Despite growing to appreciate Saramago’s writing style, you won’t find me writing like him any time soon.