WEBVTT - From the Vault: The Paragraph, Part 1 0:00:06.240 --> 0:00:08.360 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name 0:00:08.400 --> 0:00:09.480 is Robert Lamb. 0:00:09.320 --> 0:00:12.000 And I'm Joe McCormick. And hey, we had a day 0:00:12.000 --> 0:00:14.200 off this week, so we are bringing you an episode 0:00:14.240 --> 0:00:17.080 from the vault, and this is part one of our 0:00:17.160 --> 0:00:22.120 series on the paragraph. Yes, the literary device, the chunk 0:00:22.200 --> 0:00:25.160 of text. What is the paragraph? Where does it come from? 0:00:25.200 --> 0:00:28.479 How does it work? This episode originally published on August 0:00:28.480 --> 0:00:30.280 twenty third, twenty twenty two. 0:00:30.760 --> 0:00:31.920 All right, let's jump right in. 0:00:35.159 --> 0:00:38.919 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:45.000 --> 0:00:47.400 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name 0:00:47.440 --> 0:00:48.040 is Robert. 0:00:47.880 --> 0:00:52.120 Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And in today's episode, I 0:00:52.159 --> 0:00:55.560 wanted to take a look at a writing convention and 0:00:55.600 --> 0:01:00.160 that is the paragraph or the paragraph break. I think 0:01:00.200 --> 0:01:03.920 there was a single moment of genesis in my desire 0:01:04.000 --> 0:01:07.480 to do this episode, and it's that, you know, some 0:01:07.640 --> 0:01:10.240 number of weeks back, I was doing research for some 0:01:10.360 --> 0:01:13.559 episode and I ended up looking up an archived plain 0:01:13.880 --> 0:01:15.959 text version of an old book. 0:01:16.360 --> 0:01:16.560 Rob. 0:01:16.560 --> 0:01:19.000 I'm sure you've had this issue on the show before. 0:01:19.319 --> 0:01:23.000 So you get plain text and the text is there, 0:01:23.040 --> 0:01:26.679 but all the original parag breaks are messed up. Like 0:01:26.720 --> 0:01:29.800 they're either in the wrong place or there are no breaks, 0:01:30.400 --> 0:01:32.360 and I was like trying to read it. I was 0:01:32.480 --> 0:01:36.440 just like, this is horrible. I hate this. Even though 0:01:36.440 --> 0:01:41.320 the whole text is here, I'm basically incapable of reading it. Somehow, 0:01:41.360 --> 0:01:46.520 the existence of paragraphs with reasonable breaks is what makes 0:01:46.560 --> 0:01:49.200 a massive text physically consumable to. 0:01:49.200 --> 0:01:53.080 Me, right, and certainly, if it is supposed to be paragraphs, 0:01:53.120 --> 0:01:56.440 it's supposed to have paragraph breaks in it. It's like 0:01:57.000 --> 0:01:59.600 if someone were to bring a seven course meal to 0:01:59.680 --> 0:02:02.880 you and say, here, here it is in stew form, 0:02:03.720 --> 0:02:06.160 please enjoy it. I mean, and it hasn't been blended 0:02:06.240 --> 0:02:07.840 up in this scenario at all. So it's not like 0:02:07.880 --> 0:02:10.840 it is garbled. All of it is still there, but 0:02:11.040 --> 0:02:13.080 here it is without the little breaks. Here it is 0:02:13.120 --> 0:02:15.600 just all, you know, either either in the same pot 0:02:15.720 --> 0:02:17.840 or even just mashed together on the same plate. No, no, no, 0:02:18.000 --> 0:02:20.519 I want these. We need these breaks between these different 0:02:20.840 --> 0:02:23.959 things that we're going to consume. There needs to be 0:02:24.000 --> 0:02:26.160 an order to what is occurring. 0:02:26.000 --> 0:02:28.080 Right, Why not just put the tira massou in the 0:02:28.080 --> 0:02:31.679 clam chowder and then you get it all at once. Yeah, 0:02:31.760 --> 0:02:35.359 And so this got me thinking about paragraphs in general, 0:02:36.000 --> 0:02:40.280 and wondering about where they come from historically, and why 0:02:40.320 --> 0:02:42.480 we build them the way that we do, if there 0:02:42.800 --> 0:02:45.440 even is a consistent way that we build them, and 0:02:45.480 --> 0:02:48.200 all kinds of questions like this, And one thing I 0:02:48.200 --> 0:02:50.720 thought might be interesting to get us kicked off today 0:02:51.560 --> 0:02:55.840 is to just talk about the literary effect, the effect 0:02:55.880 --> 0:02:58.640 on the reader when you're reading a book with a 0:02:58.680 --> 0:03:02.520 lot of long paragraph versus short paragraphs, Like how does 0:03:02.560 --> 0:03:06.640 that change the experience of reading and the impression created. 0:03:07.400 --> 0:03:10.200 I'm sure other people have different ways of answering this, 0:03:10.320 --> 0:03:13.680 but one immediate distinction I thought of in my own 0:03:13.760 --> 0:03:16.840 reading experience has to do with the feeling of substance 0:03:17.080 --> 0:03:21.000 versus the feeling of momentum, and I would explain it 0:03:21.080 --> 0:03:23.360 like this. When I think about good books with very 0:03:23.440 --> 0:03:28.840 short paragraphs, I tend to think about readability and hookiness. 0:03:29.000 --> 0:03:33.600 Like Airport thriller novels. They tend to have very short paragraphs, 0:03:33.960 --> 0:03:36.800 and those short paragraphs are I think effective for what 0:03:36.840 --> 0:03:39.840 they're meant to do. That they tend to make the 0:03:39.920 --> 0:03:42.320 text easy to read. They make it feel like it's 0:03:42.440 --> 0:03:45.920 fast moving and inviting. It wants to keep you reading, 0:03:46.360 --> 0:03:49.720 making you less likely to put the book down. Meanwhile, 0:03:49.760 --> 0:03:52.640 when I think about good books with very long paragraphs, 0:03:52.720 --> 0:03:58.000 I tend to think about literary richness, like obsessive observation 0:03:58.320 --> 0:04:01.800 or description or insight texts that feel like they are 0:04:02.400 --> 0:04:07.560 packed with detail and texture and thoughtfulness. So, in trying 0:04:07.600 --> 0:04:10.760 to like balance out those two different advantages you get 0:04:10.760 --> 0:04:13.840 from different paragraph lengths, I came up with a kind 0:04:13.880 --> 0:04:17.600 of perhaps silly metaphor, but I started thinking about trips 0:04:17.640 --> 0:04:19.800 to bring groceries in from the car. You know, you 0:04:19.839 --> 0:04:21.919 ever go out shopping, you have a bunch of different things, 0:04:21.960 --> 0:04:24.240 and you can, you know, you can take one or 0:04:24.240 --> 0:04:26.560 two bags each time, or you can try to do 0:04:26.680 --> 0:04:29.400 everything in one go, but sometimes that's impossible and you 0:04:29.440 --> 0:04:31.960 have to stop halfway to the door. So like when 0:04:31.960 --> 0:04:34.719 your paragraphs are too short, it's almost like you're trying 0:04:34.760 --> 0:04:37.360 to bring the groceries in one item at a time. 0:04:37.480 --> 0:04:41.280 Something just starts to feel kind of insubstantial and absurd 0:04:41.360 --> 0:04:44.359 about what you're doing. But if paragraphs are too long, 0:04:44.480 --> 0:04:46.560 that's kind of like trying to bring everything in in 0:04:46.600 --> 0:04:48.760 one trip, and you just stop, like you have to 0:04:48.800 --> 0:04:51.359 put it down and decide, okay, I can't do this, 0:04:51.560 --> 0:04:55.400 So you're kind of balancing mobility, the mobility of carrying 0:04:55.480 --> 0:04:57.720 less with the substance of carrying more. 0:04:58.400 --> 0:05:00.280 I think that's a good that's an interesting life thinking 0:05:00.279 --> 0:05:03.240 about it that certainly, because the other side of that 0:05:03.320 --> 0:05:07.200 is I'm instantly thinking of the person that is obscenely 0:05:07.240 --> 0:05:10.080 trying to carry all the groceries in in one go, 0:05:10.560 --> 0:05:12.840 like you know, and I think I've tried to do 0:05:12.880 --> 0:05:17.400 this before, where you're just you have multiple grocery bag 0:05:17.440 --> 0:05:20.960 straps on each hand, you have something on your arm, 0:05:21.560 --> 0:05:24.040 a sort of cradling something. Yeah, and then yeah, I 0:05:24.040 --> 0:05:26.720 guess you're planning on opening the door with your foot 0:05:26.880 --> 0:05:28.960 or just slamming into it, or hoping there's somebody on 0:05:28.960 --> 0:05:31.240 the other side to help you in. And here's the thing, 0:05:31.279 --> 0:05:34.440 as the reader, like I'm either the door or I'm 0:05:34.480 --> 0:05:36.440 the person on the other side of the scenario, and 0:05:36.720 --> 0:05:39.440 you just want to be like calmed down a little bit, 0:05:39.520 --> 0:05:43.000 like I bought the book, or I rented the book, 0:05:43.080 --> 0:05:44.839 or I borrowed the book from the library, whatever the 0:05:44.839 --> 0:05:47.200 case may be. We can get to all this. We 0:05:47.240 --> 0:05:50.239 don't have to have it all in the first paragraph. 0:05:49.960 --> 0:05:52.599 Right, And this is not I think this is not 0:05:52.720 --> 0:05:55.200 unique to modern readers. I mean, people who are writing 0:05:55.640 --> 0:06:00.840 handbooks of composition and rhetoric in centuries past warned that 0:06:00.920 --> 0:06:04.520 overly long paragraphs have the effect of quote over taxing 0:06:04.600 --> 0:06:09.359 the reader. There's something about unbroken blocks of text that 0:06:09.600 --> 0:06:13.440 just gets tiresome. And somehow, even though the text continues 0:06:13.520 --> 0:06:17.240 either way, just putting more breaks in between, separating that 0:06:17.360 --> 0:06:21.040 in the smaller chunks, smaller paragraphs somehow makes the text 0:06:21.120 --> 0:06:23.920 feel lighter and like you're just sort of like skipping 0:06:23.960 --> 0:06:26.760 over it at at a breezy pace, as opposed to 0:06:26.760 --> 0:06:29.400 getting bogged down and feeling this weight. 0:06:29.920 --> 0:06:32.760 I was looking around for different writings on paragraphs and 0:06:33.080 --> 0:06:36.160 I actually came across a nineteen sixty eight paper titled 0:06:36.200 --> 0:06:40.960 writing Paragraphs by Culkin at All and it is J. R. 0:06:41.120 --> 0:06:44.039 Tolkien himself, and wow, weird weirdly enough, one of the 0:06:44.040 --> 0:06:47.320 co authors was a professor at Memphis State in Tennessee. 0:06:48.200 --> 0:06:50.880 I didn't get to the bottom of how these individuals 0:06:50.920 --> 0:06:53.680 all came together being credited on the same paper, but 0:06:54.000 --> 0:06:56.520 it gets into some of the basics and challenges and 0:06:56.560 --> 0:07:00.839 goals of teaching effective writing. But even in this paper, 0:07:00.920 --> 0:07:03.520 the authors point out that the unity of a given 0:07:03.600 --> 0:07:07.960 paragraph is often illusory, a longer paragraph, they point out, 0:07:08.080 --> 0:07:11.040 can often be broken into without upsetting anything. And they 0:07:11.080 --> 0:07:14.280 point out, for instance, this is often done at certainly 0:07:14.280 --> 0:07:17.880 at the editing phase and newspapers. The author wrote a 0:07:17.920 --> 0:07:20.520 paragraph it's a little bit too long looking on the screen, 0:07:20.720 --> 0:07:22.600 you just chop that sucker in half, and a lot 0:07:22.640 --> 0:07:24.840 of times you can do that without any ill effect. 0:07:25.160 --> 0:07:27.440 And likewise they point out that the reverse is true. 0:07:27.480 --> 0:07:29.960 In many cases. You can take shorter paragraphs and kind 0:07:29.960 --> 0:07:32.920 of combine them together and you're not going to effectively 0:07:32.960 --> 0:07:35.720 break anything. So that's I think that's something interesting to 0:07:35.760 --> 0:07:37.320 keep in mind, even though at the same time they 0:07:37.320 --> 0:07:40.240 are acknowledging that, yeah, a lot of paragraph writing is 0:07:40.280 --> 0:07:43.960 about Okay, here's your this is the stuff we all 0:07:44.000 --> 0:07:47.360 learn in school, right here is our topic sentence. Then 0:07:47.400 --> 0:07:50.560 we have supporting sentences, and the paragraph is supposed to 0:07:50.560 --> 0:07:54.120 be this one concise nugget of thought for us to consume. 0:07:54.440 --> 0:07:56.920 Well, that's a great transition to the next thing I 0:07:56.960 --> 0:07:59.040 wanted to get at, which is that you know, of 0:07:59.080 --> 0:08:03.040 course we're talking about reporting our subjective feelings as a 0:08:03.080 --> 0:08:06.600 reader on you know, reading paragraphs of different lengths. But 0:08:06.720 --> 0:08:09.160 the other side of the approach to paragraphs is the 0:08:09.200 --> 0:08:13.000 more prescriptive approach. You know, here's what a paragraph must do, 0:08:13.720 --> 0:08:17.640 with the most famous or if you like, infamous prescription 0:08:18.080 --> 0:08:21.920 being that a paragraph must develop a single idea, and 0:08:22.000 --> 0:08:24.560 that idea must be announced near the beginning of the 0:08:24.600 --> 0:08:27.440 paragraph in a topic sentence, and then there must be 0:08:27.600 --> 0:08:31.600 supporting sentences. And you know, we can talk more about 0:08:31.600 --> 0:08:35.199 the prescriptive idea of the paragraph later, I guess. But anyway, 0:08:35.320 --> 0:08:38.800 I find it interesting to consider the surface level paradox 0:08:38.880 --> 0:08:43.200 that paragraphs are absolutely essential to most modern readers. I 0:08:43.200 --> 0:08:45.480 think you and I are probably not unique in this. 0:08:45.720 --> 0:08:48.240 Like the prospect of reading a book or even a 0:08:48.280 --> 0:08:52.160 long article that's just a single, unbroken block of text 0:08:52.600 --> 0:08:55.240 makes my blood run cold. I could not do it. 0:08:55.800 --> 0:08:59.680 And yet it is difficult to explain exactly what the 0:08:59.760 --> 0:09:03.640 rule rules are for creating paragraphs like they're essential. But 0:09:04.480 --> 0:09:09.680 attempts to codify them in a universal way, I would argue, 0:09:10.040 --> 0:09:12.920 and I think we will argue later on pretty much 0:09:13.000 --> 0:09:16.560 universally failures, at at least at describing the way paragraphs 0:09:16.559 --> 0:09:20.120 are actually used in popular writing. You know, so, questions 0:09:20.120 --> 0:09:22.880 about where do we break the line and why are 0:09:23.120 --> 0:09:26.760 in some ways still kind of elusive, even though breaking 0:09:26.800 --> 0:09:28.200 the line is a must. 0:09:28.720 --> 0:09:29.080 Yeah. 0:09:29.280 --> 0:09:31.400 Now, I don't know how successful this will be, but 0:09:31.520 --> 0:09:34.240 I did at least think, is it possible to mention 0:09:34.480 --> 0:09:38.880 favorite paragraph breaks in writing? I was struggling to have 0:09:39.360 --> 0:09:42.200 any like obviously I have a lot of bits of 0:09:42.240 --> 0:09:46.160 writing that are a paragraph, but I was struggling to 0:09:46.160 --> 0:09:49.240 think of examples where the break of the paragraph is 0:09:49.280 --> 0:09:51.679 what I admire in the writing, as essential as it 0:09:51.760 --> 0:09:53.199 is to a piece of writing as a whole. 0:09:53.679 --> 0:09:56.040 Yeah, I was once you brought this up. I was 0:09:56.120 --> 0:09:59.000 thinking on it on my own here, and I was thinking, well, okay, 0:09:59.040 --> 0:10:01.200 what are bits that stand out to me in writing? 0:10:01.240 --> 0:10:02.800 And I found that a lot of times the things 0:10:02.800 --> 0:10:06.319 that come to me the easiest are opening lines or 0:10:06.360 --> 0:10:11.440 sometimes closing lines from novels, and a lot of those 0:10:11.440 --> 0:10:13.199 a lot of the time, if not all the time. 0:10:13.440 --> 0:10:16.600 It's super short. It's often not even perhaps a true 0:10:16.600 --> 0:10:20.720 clinical paragraph in that it is actually just one line. 0:10:21.160 --> 0:10:24.280 And like a couple of examples that I instantly thought of, 0:10:24.760 --> 0:10:27.480 Dante's Inferno has a great one in the of course 0:10:27.480 --> 0:10:29.880 we're getting into poetry here, we're getting into stanzas, but 0:10:30.960 --> 0:10:33.199 it is effectively a sentence in the middle of the 0:10:33.280 --> 0:10:35.760 journey of our life. I came to myself in a 0:10:35.840 --> 0:10:39.880 dark wood for the straightway was lost. An even better example, 0:10:39.920 --> 0:10:41.959 and this is from an actual novel. This is from 0:10:42.240 --> 0:10:46.120 Alan Rogue Grills The Voyeur. It just begins with a 0:10:46.160 --> 0:10:49.439 short sentence it was as if no one had heard. 0:10:49.679 --> 0:10:52.280 And I always loved that one because it's so evocative, 0:10:53.040 --> 0:10:55.720 like what is the thing that no one had heard? 0:10:55.800 --> 0:10:58.240 Why had they not heard it? And who is making 0:10:58.400 --> 0:11:00.520 or what is making the sound? Like it asked so 0:11:00.520 --> 0:11:04.120 many questions that I have to keep moving. Another good 0:11:04.160 --> 0:11:07.000 one Fahrenheit four fifty one by Ray Bradberry. It was 0:11:07.040 --> 0:11:08.079 a pleasure to burn. 0:11:08.679 --> 0:11:11.360 Oh that's interesting. So these prose works. I've read these, 0:11:11.400 --> 0:11:15.839 but I did not recall the opening paragraphs being a 0:11:15.880 --> 0:11:16.680 single line. 0:11:16.920 --> 0:11:19.240 Yeah. A couple of other ones that came to mind. 0:11:19.880 --> 0:11:22.880 Neurom Anser by William Gibson. The sky above the port 0:11:23.000 --> 0:11:25.760 was the color of television turned to a dead channel 0:11:26.400 --> 0:11:28.360 or this is a famous one as well. From Fear 0:11:28.400 --> 0:11:31.040 and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson. We 0:11:31.040 --> 0:11:33.440 were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert 0:11:33.480 --> 0:11:36.959 when the drugs began to take hold, Yeah, that's another 0:11:37.000 --> 0:11:37.439 good one. 0:11:37.640 --> 0:11:41.520 So you're a fan of the short, possibly single sentence 0:11:41.600 --> 0:11:43.839 opening paragraph in fiction at least. 0:11:44.160 --> 0:11:46.760 Yeah, Yeah, there's something about just like that one line 0:11:46.800 --> 0:11:49.560 that's really there. Really either either it really makes me 0:11:49.640 --> 0:11:52.200 think and established as kind of a vibe, or in 0:11:52.240 --> 0:11:55.800 some cases it establishes a different definite setting or scenario 0:11:55.960 --> 0:12:00.679 rather succinctly. For instance, the Gibson one a certain it's 0:12:00.720 --> 0:12:04.840 really more about vibe. The Voyeur quote is more about vibe. 0:12:05.120 --> 0:12:08.000 The Hunter S. Thompson one is vibe and setting. It 0:12:08.000 --> 0:12:10.280 gives you a sense of where we're going and sort 0:12:10.320 --> 0:12:13.199 of what is going on. I was obviously I'm a 0:12:13.200 --> 0:12:15.240 big fan of Dune, so I thought, well, what was 0:12:15.240 --> 0:12:16.680 the first line of doing I can't remember it off 0:12:16.720 --> 0:12:18.920 the top of my head. There, if you skip past 0:12:18.960 --> 0:12:23.840 the quote from the Princess, the first line is in 0:12:23.880 --> 0:12:26.760 the week before their departure to Aracus, when all the 0:12:26.800 --> 0:12:30.720 final scurrying about had reached a nearly unbearable frenzy, an 0:12:30.720 --> 0:12:33.559 old crone came to visit the mother of the boy Paul. 0:12:34.160 --> 0:12:36.440 Now that's that's not a paragraph that I would just say, 0:12:36.480 --> 0:12:38.280 oh I put that on a T shirt for me, 0:12:38.400 --> 0:12:40.720 or or can I have that inscribed in my flesh. 0:12:40.960 --> 0:12:44.960 But it is a great, a great opening line that 0:12:45.120 --> 0:12:48.800 just establishes exactly what is going on and gives you, 0:12:48.800 --> 0:12:50.760 you know, it gives you some mystery. I guess you 0:12:50.760 --> 0:12:53.400 don't know what Aracus is at this point, and you 0:12:53.440 --> 0:12:56.640 were instantly wondering, well, who is this old crone? And 0:12:57.040 --> 0:12:59.560 it sets the story and it does a good job 0:12:59.559 --> 0:13:03.199 of just just having us dived directly into the action. Really, 0:13:03.640 --> 0:13:06.920 but I couldn't remember or just looking around really quickly 0:13:06.960 --> 0:13:11.600 find an example of a multi sentence paragraph, particularly an 0:13:11.679 --> 0:13:15.760 opening paragraph from a work that I held to a 0:13:15.800 --> 0:13:17.720 really high standard. I don't know how about you, Joe. 0:13:17.800 --> 0:13:19.640 I'm sure if I had more time thinking about this, 0:13:19.679 --> 0:13:22.040 I could come up with good examples, but I have not, 0:13:22.480 --> 0:13:25.080 because again, I think paragraph breaks are essential, but I 0:13:25.160 --> 0:13:30.720 have not scrutinized individual breaks enough that they really like 0:13:30.760 --> 0:13:33.360 stick with me, there's something that is essential, but they 0:13:33.400 --> 0:13:36.040 mostly to me, become invisible in a text. I don't 0:13:36.080 --> 0:13:38.959 remember where the line breaks happen. 0:13:39.120 --> 0:13:43.040 Usually, Yeah, if a paragraph is put together effectively and 0:13:43.080 --> 0:13:45.280 it's doing its job, you don't notice. That's one of 0:13:45.360 --> 0:13:49.840 the things about it. I've never had the experience of 0:13:49.880 --> 0:13:52.760 reading something to think, yeah, that's a great place for 0:13:52.800 --> 0:13:55.480 a paragraph break, I might think the other the opposite 0:13:55.520 --> 0:13:57.560 of that, I might think, couldn't we have broken this 0:13:57.640 --> 0:14:01.080 up a little bit more Frank Herbert or whoever I'm 0:14:01.120 --> 0:14:04.320 happening to read, And it's not necessarily I was thinking 0:14:04.360 --> 0:14:07.160 about this as well, like, what is the experience of 0:14:07.280 --> 0:14:10.400 reading a text that is not just one big breakless 0:14:10.440 --> 0:14:14.640 paragraph but has, but does have some rather expansive paragraphs. 0:14:15.080 --> 0:14:18.720 I find that sometimes when I'm looking at this page, 0:14:18.720 --> 0:14:22.000 I still have a gut instinct that it looks like work, 0:14:22.320 --> 0:14:24.520 Like you know what I'm saying, Like, even though the 0:14:24.520 --> 0:14:26.640 thing is, if it's a book that I'm even halfway 0:14:26.680 --> 0:14:29.600 interested in, it's not like big paragraphs are a stumbling 0:14:29.600 --> 0:14:31.280 block to me. It's not like I get lost in 0:14:31.320 --> 0:14:33.920 them or I'm not going to finish them. It's not 0:14:34.000 --> 0:14:37.000 like I need to, you know, artificially throw in paragraph breaks. 0:14:37.000 --> 0:14:39.840 From my own reading, it works just fine. But there's 0:14:39.880 --> 0:14:44.840 something maybe it's like a callback to early reading experiences, 0:14:45.280 --> 0:14:49.080 but there's sort of that initial impact in my psyche 0:14:49.120 --> 0:14:51.000 where it's like, oh, these paragraphs are too long, what 0:14:51.080 --> 0:14:52.280 is this author doing? Oh? 0:14:52.320 --> 0:14:55.520 This is funny though, because inserting your own paragraph breaks 0:14:55.600 --> 0:14:59.240 in the work of an author who otherwise creates really 0:14:59.320 --> 0:15:04.400 unholy chunks. This is something that some teachers actually do, 0:15:04.640 --> 0:15:07.680 and one specific writer I was reading for this episode 0:15:08.000 --> 0:15:10.800 talks about doing so. One of the main things I 0:15:10.880 --> 0:15:13.640 was reading in preparation for this was a great essay 0:15:14.200 --> 0:15:17.840 by a scholar named Richard Hughes Gibson called Past Lives 0:15:17.840 --> 0:15:21.080 of the Paragraph which was published in the Hedgehog Review. 0:15:21.720 --> 0:15:25.479 That's an interdisciplinary culture journal based out of the University 0:15:25.520 --> 0:15:27.960 of Virginia. And I'll refer back to this article several 0:15:27.960 --> 0:15:32.000 times in the episode, but towards the end of his article, 0:15:32.280 --> 0:15:36.240 Gibson tells a story about how several years back he 0:15:36.480 --> 0:15:40.680 was trying to prepare a reading for students, and this 0:15:40.840 --> 0:15:44.200 was by a critic who, well, i'll just hear read 0:15:44.240 --> 0:15:48.480 from what Gibson writes. Quote said critic had a pensioned 0:15:48.480 --> 0:15:52.400 for composing labyrinthine paragraphs, which I now realized would quickly 0:15:52.440 --> 0:15:56.000 exhaust my students. Although I felt a tinge of compunction 0:15:56.120 --> 0:15:59.000 about tampering with those paragraphs, I set to work and, 0:15:59.040 --> 0:16:01.800 knowing this was the only way of salvaging the reading, 0:16:02.200 --> 0:16:04.520 the breaks came easily, though, and I soon found the 0:16:04.520 --> 0:16:07.400 work enjoyable. I was seeing the piece in a new way, 0:16:07.480 --> 0:16:11.400 and I quote discovered several remarkable sentences that I had 0:16:11.480 --> 0:16:15.840 overlooked while navigating my way through the labyrinths. And then 0:16:15.880 --> 0:16:19.360 he also says that this did indeed make this article 0:16:19.440 --> 0:16:22.000 much more enjoyable for the students, and he just started 0:16:22.040 --> 0:16:24.120 doing it in all his other classes. When somebody has 0:16:24.240 --> 0:16:26.920 huge paragraphs, he would just go in and edit them 0:16:26.960 --> 0:16:30.360 to add in paragraph breaks, and you could see. I 0:16:30.360 --> 0:16:32.560 don't know, an author might be mad to find out 0:16:32.560 --> 0:16:34.440 somebody was doing that to their work, but you can 0:16:34.480 --> 0:16:36.320 also clearly see the advantage. 0:16:36.640 --> 0:16:39.200 Yeah. Yeah, It does make me wonder if there are 0:16:39.280 --> 0:16:42.440 new editions of books that come out that engage in this, 0:16:42.960 --> 0:16:47.280 or is it considered forbidden? You know, I don't know. 0:16:47.800 --> 0:16:51.680 I'd be very curious to hear about this. When I 0:16:51.760 --> 0:16:54.280 was looking around for some other info about this, I 0:16:54.360 --> 0:16:58.840 did run across a paper titled how to write a 0:16:58.840 --> 0:17:02.480 thesis according to to Echo by unburd to Echo, And 0:17:02.880 --> 0:17:05.760 in it, he briefly touches on the paragraph and he 0:17:06.520 --> 0:17:10.760 writes the following quote begin new paragraphs. Often do so 0:17:10.840 --> 0:17:13.679 when logically necessary and when the pace of the text 0:17:13.680 --> 0:17:16.320 requires it. But the more you do it, the better. 0:17:16.840 --> 0:17:19.760 That's funny because Echo has a tendency to write some 0:17:19.880 --> 0:17:23.600 really long paragraphs. But I mean, in his defense, a 0:17:23.680 --> 0:17:26.359 lot of his long paragraphs are full of exactly that 0:17:26.480 --> 0:17:29.720 quality of richness that I was mentioning earlier, Like the 0:17:30.440 --> 0:17:34.960 long paragraphs feel substantial, They're full of detail and insight. 0:17:35.480 --> 0:17:38.560 Yeah. This, of course, I was thinking about other authors 0:17:38.560 --> 0:17:40.120 that I've really loved over the years, and I started 0:17:40.119 --> 0:17:43.320 thinking about Cormick McCarthy, of course, who is often very succinct, 0:17:43.400 --> 0:17:46.159 especially in his later works, or really most of his 0:17:46.240 --> 0:17:51.000 works passed like the first novel its name leaves me 0:17:51.040 --> 0:17:53.320 at the moment, but his first novel is a little 0:17:53.320 --> 0:17:57.800 bit denser. But a lot of his later work, especially 0:17:57.840 --> 0:18:00.439 his more recent work, is often characterized by being just, 0:18:00.480 --> 0:18:05.320 you know, very succinct, short sentences, no quotation marks. But 0:18:05.520 --> 0:18:08.560 occasionally you get a nice, like super run on long 0:18:08.760 --> 0:18:12.720 sentence that is essentially like a big paragraph that is 0:18:12.760 --> 0:18:15.560 almost the opposite of what we're talking about here, where 0:18:15.600 --> 0:18:17.880 it just keeps going and going, but at the same 0:18:17.920 --> 0:18:21.080 time it has a rhythm to it and an intensity, 0:18:21.080 --> 0:18:23.680 and the mere fact that it won't end. Is like 0:18:24.240 --> 0:18:27.560 it's like a crazed thought being poured directly into your 0:18:27.600 --> 0:18:29.480 brain and you can't quite turn it off. 0:18:29.760 --> 0:18:32.280 Yeah, long paragraphs can definitely lend themselves to a kind 0:18:32.320 --> 0:18:36.320 of obsessive, immersive or stream of consciousness quality to the text. 0:18:36.359 --> 0:18:39.600 It's you know, when you are like stuck deep in 0:18:39.720 --> 0:18:42.480 somebody else's brain and you're not coming up for air, 0:18:42.680 --> 0:18:45.080 that that's often going to be a long paragraph. 0:18:45.280 --> 0:18:48.040 Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's almost like there's a conversational 0:18:48.240 --> 0:18:52.280 aspect to paragraph breaks, like this is the amount of 0:18:52.680 --> 0:18:55.639 text that is occurring before the speaker pauses, has a 0:18:55.640 --> 0:18:58.920 sip of their beverage, gives you an opportunity to think 0:18:59.040 --> 0:19:01.840 or say something in return. But it's just that paragraph. 0:19:01.960 --> 0:19:12.560 Then perhaps you're being preached at I was thinking of. 0:19:12.760 --> 0:19:16.160 I also was thinking, Okay, obviously, paragraph breaks. I think 0:19:16.200 --> 0:19:18.320 we all agree that these are great. But surely there's 0:19:18.359 --> 0:19:21.440 somebody out there who's gotten a bit experimental and decided 0:19:21.480 --> 0:19:24.159 I will craft a work of fiction that has no 0:19:24.240 --> 0:19:29.359 paragraph breaks. And I don't remember ever encountering anything like this. 0:19:29.440 --> 0:19:32.679 I've certainly read books that, for instance, don't have quotation 0:19:32.800 --> 0:19:35.320 marks for dialogue or I think I've read books that 0:19:35.359 --> 0:19:39.080 don't have indentions on new paragraphs. I'm trying to remember 0:19:39.080 --> 0:19:40.560 what this would have been. I think it was an 0:19:40.600 --> 0:19:46.600 Anthony Burgess book, but I don't recall. I've certainly read 0:19:46.600 --> 0:19:48.560 books where you have, you know, large sections written in 0:19:48.680 --> 0:19:52.320 fictional slang, etc. But I've never encountered anything that is 0:19:52.400 --> 0:19:55.640 one massive chunk of text. I looked around to see 0:19:55.640 --> 0:19:57.680 if such a thing existed, and I did find some 0:19:57.760 --> 0:20:01.520 threads on like a creative writing board message board where 0:20:01.560 --> 0:20:04.280 someone was like, Hey, I'm thinking of writing something with 0:20:04.720 --> 0:20:08.919 no paragraph breaks. What does everyone think? And there were 0:20:08.960 --> 0:20:11.080 some great answers, you know, people were like, well, I 0:20:11.119 --> 0:20:13.680 think it's gonna be hard for folks to digest. I 0:20:13.720 --> 0:20:16.800 think it's gonna you know, they're gonna potentially recoil from 0:20:16.840 --> 0:20:19.639 seeing that big, massive block of text. And so it 0:20:19.760 --> 0:20:21.960 was interesting because, yeah, there's so many things you can 0:20:22.200 --> 0:20:25.600 you can break and play with as a writer potentially, 0:20:26.119 --> 0:20:28.760 and more so if you know what you're doing. But 0:20:28.880 --> 0:20:32.040 when it comes to the paragraph break, it does seem 0:20:32.080 --> 0:20:34.639 like there is something from the modern standpoint anyway, that 0:20:34.720 --> 0:20:35.720 is essential about it. 0:20:36.000 --> 0:20:38.040 Yes, and I think this will make a great transition 0:20:38.160 --> 0:20:40.720 to talking a bit about the history of the paragraph, 0:20:40.760 --> 0:20:44.440 where paragraphs come from, because if you go back far 0:20:44.560 --> 0:20:47.520 enough in history, you're going to find a lot of 0:20:47.760 --> 0:20:53.720 literature that is made entirely with that block of text mentality. Man, 0:20:53.800 --> 0:20:57.040 you hate big, blocky masses of text. Look at like 0:20:57.080 --> 0:21:01.000 an ancient Greek manuscript and just feel the chill. 0:21:01.560 --> 0:21:04.280 Yeah, that's and I was. I was looking at some 0:21:04.280 --> 0:21:06.679 of these examples, and and so I couldn't help but 0:21:06.720 --> 0:21:09.480 think a lot about the medium involved too. So, like 0:21:09.520 --> 0:21:12.240 if you go back and look at super old examples 0:21:12.240 --> 0:21:15.720 of writing that have survived, you're looking at things like 0:21:15.800 --> 0:21:19.560 oracle bones, which you know, oftentimes you're dealing with with 0:21:19.680 --> 0:21:21.760 like say the bones from a turtle, part of the shell, 0:21:21.840 --> 0:21:24.320 that sort of thing with inscriptions on it, or you're 0:21:24.359 --> 0:21:28.400 dealing with with like wooden strips. You see that sometimes 0:21:28.400 --> 0:21:32.240 from from from from from from you know, Indian traditions. 0:21:32.800 --> 0:21:36.520