There was some book I had to read over the summer in preparation for AP English my senior year of high school, and it was all just page length stacks of nested clauses where it would just stop in the middle of a sentence, elaborate on some aspect of it, interrupt to elaborate - at least once, usually more - some more, then continue to keep doing this out to an absurd depth, only to meander back to it most of a page later and then either finish it or start another pile of nested clauses. Like look at how I structured that sentence and imagine something ten times worse, and then imagine it happening at least once in every single paragraph and at least once per page.
Also the story was awful in its own right, terrible prose aside. All I can remember of the plot was that the POV character was a dumbass and killed someone by being a dumbass and it all hinged entirely on inscrutable 19th century superstitious sensibilities.
At the end of the year I gave the book to a junior in one of my classes who was going to take AP English the next year and who had to read that same story over the summer.
The book itself was a modern reprint, and one of the larger paperback sizes - maybe 10" or so, whatever the specific standard size around that is - so the font wasn’t particularly small so much as there was a lot on each page. I got it at a used bookstore, and IIRC what I managed to find specifically was an anthological collection of the author’s work which happened to include the novella I actually needed to read.
There was some book I had to read over the summer in preparation for AP English my senior year of high school, and it was all just page length stacks of nested clauses where it would just stop in the middle of a sentence, elaborate on some aspect of it, interrupt to elaborate - at least once, usually more - some more, then continue to keep doing this out to an absurd depth, only to meander back to it most of a page later and then either finish it or start another pile of nested clauses. Like look at how I structured that sentence and imagine something ten times worse, and then imagine it happening at least once in every single paragraph and at least once per page.
Also the story was awful in its own right, terrible prose aside. All I can remember of the plot was that the POV character was a dumbass and killed someone by being a dumbass and it all hinged entirely on inscrutable 19th century superstitious sensibilities.
At the end of the year I gave the book to a junior in one of my classes who was going to take AP English the next year and who had to read that same story over the summer.
God yes pump it directly in to my prefrontal cortex.
Literally how I write. The run on sentence is my kingdom and each semicolon and parentheses a province.
Did it have the tiny font too? That’s another thing about those older books is how small the font is.
The book itself was a modern reprint, and one of the larger paperback sizes - maybe 10" or so, whatever the specific standard size around that is - so the font wasn’t particularly small so much as there was a lot on each page. I got it at a used bookstore, and IIRC what I managed to find specifically was an anthological collection of the author’s work which happened to include the novella I actually needed to read.