This prose from 'Count of Montre Cristo' is horrible

>>9605696
please don't read it. it's trash.

>>9605696
Back then children could not afford books, so writers wrote for people with better short term memories.

I don't know /lit/ too well but it seams like 19th century writers preferred clauses to sentences.

Dickens is a master of it. As far as I can tell the lack of inflection in English makes clausing a critical component of writing, and should one wish to carry on in a manner such as this, I should only caution that they might exhaust the reader, which reader, if he is modern, is especially susceptible to getting bored without the consistent arrival of full stops at an expected pace which matches his haphazard attention,short of challenging his mind by constructing sentences that undulate and flow, flow past the peaks and hollows of the finite realm it normally traverses on its way to the oceanic bliss of comprehension, causing him to earn his salt-water through a careful, long flow with many turns and meanders, nonetheless making its course as any river does.

>>9605696
Being paid by the word will do that to you.

>>9605736
Well done, anon. Like old times.

>>9605696

Alexandre Dumas was black (smugly)

-Herr one German guy from Django Unchained

>>9605749
I try to stomp this out of my writing because it feels like I'm doing something wrong when it happens.

Because it was written in French in 1845, and you're reading a shitty translation in 2017.

>>9605798
should have been first and last post

>>9605777
Writing of all varieties often 'feel wrong' in the morning, senpai. /You/ write well, and that was a fine illustration of the subject.
Personally, I read Dumas (this one) when I was 14 or so and loved it. The monomaniac concern with vengeance, and carrying it all out so cleanly-- surely an extended metaphor for getting shit done, like say.. a book.

not one of you pretentious pseuds has even pointed out the obvious bloody answer:

Balzac, Dumas, Dickens and co. were writing for shitty newspapers and magazines, paid by line, and dashed that shit off in between banging their mistresses, escaping their creditors and living the high life in general.

The Count of Montecristo is very high on the continuity-error scheme of things, so much so that Morcerf change names a few times throughout, as well as social background. Dumas had no time or didn't bother to edit the thing when it came to publishing it in book form.

That also explains the cliffhangers at the end of every chapter. Newspaper readers had short memories and just wanted to get on with the suspense from day to day over the course of months. Not like a book you plebs would read in one long fucking sitting.

>>9605736

You can easily make long sentences that people understand and appreciate as long as you keep your vocabulary tight and your action flowing. What you did here is just string random words together that make no sense, everybody is going to have trouble reading that.

>>9605736
I prefer this way of writing being honest.

>>9605736
I prefer clauses but I will say your example here, anon, is a bit overdone.

Sebald is a master of the long sentence.

>>9605696
But the translation is confusing:

>weird word order
>use of past tense instead of present
>heavier punctuation
>wrong translations like "the feeling of hatred" for "le génie de la haine", etc.

Here is the original, which is much better:

>Laissons Danglars, aux prises avec le génie de la haine, essayer de souffler contre son camarade quelque maligne supposition à l’oreille de l’armateur, et suivons Dantès, qui, après avoir parcouru la Canebière dans toute sa longueur, prend la rue de Noailles, entre dans une petite maison située du côté gauche des Allées de Meilhan, monte vivement les quatre étages d’un escalier obscur, et, se retenant à la rampe d’une main, comprimant de l’autre les battements de son cœur, s’arrête devant une porte entre baillée, qui laisse voir jusqu’au fond d’une petite chambre.
>Cette chambre était celle qu’habitait le père de Dantès.
>La nouvelle de l’arrivée du Pharaon n’était encore parvenue au vieillard, qui s’occupait, monté sur une chaise, à palissader d’une main tremblante quelques capucines mêlées de clématites, qui montaient en grimpant le long du treillage de sa fenêtre.

>>9608478
Too bad no one here knows rainbowspeak

>>9608520
>/lit/

>>9605696
>reading for prose
I guess you're not quit as pleb as some who read for plot.

>>9608865
I don't reads for the orthography either, and yet I expect every word to be spelled correctly.

I love this clause heavy style of writing.