Why I do love a good, long, sexy paragraph
I love a great big, glorious, hulking prose paragraph because it is a structure like Cologne Cathedral or The South Bank Centre in London, it should be crafted so that it can be explored, traversed, backtracked through and marvelled at as a new corridor or doorway — or an old one that you thought you’d left behind — reveals something you’d forgotten or that you never knew the first time you visited. A paragraph, not simply a long sentence thoughtfully punctuated like the one you just read, is a shock at first. Or a block. An apparently impenetrable wall of curls and circles, vertiginous uprights and crosshairs horizontals depending on the typeface, the font, the weight and decoration (like those two glorious buildings, one seriffed, the other sans). A multi-sentenced paragraph is absolutely a challenge to your concentration and to your curiosity. It is also has the potential for beauty. A good, thick, sensuous paragraph like a long embrace or mutually immersing, wet, dreamt of kiss doesn’t belong everywhere of course. Like those human warmths a paragraph can hold multiple meanings entwined within itself to be writhed around in and enjoyed by the reader.
So, it wouldn’t use one for a sign warning of rabid deer.
I wouldn’t use one in a poem about anything.
Nor in a vicious sottisier.
Nor in a shopping list or bankjob demand.
But a sturdy, pulchritudinous paragraph still has a place in the exploration of human meanings — the ones that aren’t life-dependent on speed over the senses — you know, the usual ones. A multidimensional paragraph demands that you take your time because, like the Taj Mahal or a good bar, a garden shed or a shared bedroom, the dimensions you can enjoy are time, depth, desire, learning, peace and quiet.
TL;DR? That’s a shame.