Can you tame a pressed ham?

Perhaps you're a sucker for a writer who is unable to tame the English language, and so constructs endless run on sentences. Perhaps.

Sorry, but the American need to make writing "appealing to an 8th grader" (no thanks, Vonnegut) leaves out many of my favorite authors: Celine, Robbe-Grillet, etc. (Currently: Check out Eileen Myles' "The Importance of Being Iceland" for some wonderful long sentences that are sinewy with thought and flow.) Thanks, Brandon.

Whoops, Brendan. All apologies.

@2 is right. That's run-on gibberish. The writer needs to investigate some other punctuation marks besides commas. The real long-sentence masters, Henry James, f'rinstance, would be appalled. Not that it made him an interesting writer but he knew what a semi-colon was for. Even Louis-Ferdinand Celine knew to use ellipses instead.

Oh, and "pressed ham" has one and only one meaning in the Stranger universe.

#2 and #7. It's not a single sentence; it's just punctuated all wrong.

#2 and #6. fixed.

I'll take ellipses over commas, too, Fnarf, though I was thinking more about the ranty sections of "Journey to the End of the Night" than the full-on "Death on the Installment Plan" Celine.