Indeed. He's sabotaging a whole perceptual system by framing fragments within the more traditional structure and then suddenly breaking from the structure so that the fragments are freed to be themselves. It is the death knell of traditional, coherent prose, as Joyce so amply and magnificently displayed -- and (who's afraid of) Virginia Woolf didn't do a bad job either. Dr. Peter C. Montgomery Dept. of English Camosun College 3100 Foul Bay Rd. Victoria, BC CANADA V8P 5J2 [log in to unmask] www.camosun.bc.ca/~peterm -----Original Message----- From: Rickard A. Parker [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Wednesday, January 08, 2003 6:20 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Screw grammar. > I sabotage the sentence! With me is the naked word. > I spike the verb all parts of speech are pushed over on their backs. > I am the master of all that is half-uttered and imperfectly heard. > Return with me where I am crying out with the gorilla and the bird. > > from "One Way Song" by Percy Wyndham Lewis. Eliot sabotages sentences too: At the violet hour, when the eyes and back Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits Like a taxi throbbing waiting, I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives, Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea, The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights Her stove, and lays out food in tins. Regards, Rick Parker