Well, Jack, it turns out I'm obsessed with you.
I always knew about you; I knew your name and I knew to connect you with the Beat Poets or the Beat Generation, and I think I knew that you had written a book called On the Road, but I had never read it nor really thought about you until I went to a bar in Lowell Massachusetts last weekend (the Worthen House it was called) that you were supposed to have frequented - because my husband, like you, is originally from Lowell and it's no wonder that you went On the Road but I won't utter another derogatory word about the birthplace of those that I love. My husband had a hot dog in that bar that legend has that you and Edgar Allen Poe called your own - but not at the same time, for you were born long after he and his Annabel Lee were and I hear - that among other things - that you popularized a style of writing called Spontaneous Prose where you used the dash instead of a period. . . and while the dash is not quite as good as ellipses in my book, I think you just might have something there, for it fits my style - I, too, like to go on and on - flinging the punctuation rules to the wind - until my readers want to throw up their hands in disgust.
Spontaneity. It's all about spontaneity.
And run-on sentences.
I had a Moscow Mule.
In that bar that you and Edgar Allen Poe frequented. I had never actually ordered one before but I figured that now (actually, then) was the time because they're all back in style now; copper cups and all, and Drip Dry says he drank them growing up in Lowell, so I figured I would go ahead and order one in your honor: "A Moscow Mule," I said to the waitress when she came to take our drink order - and sure enough, that's what she brought me - and it tasted good but I wish I had ordered the hot dog, for I'm all-but-certain that you ordered many a hot dog at that eatery in your day - and sometimes don't you just crave something has bad and unhealthy as a hot dog?
Can I ask you, Jack, how does one deal with a question mark when writing in Spontaneous Prose?
I'm going to read your book. I ordered it on Audible so I won't really see all of your dashes - all the better, for I can fill them in in my mind - but the punctuation regarding inquiries will still be a dilemma to me. . .
