Sentence construction as a fashion statement

PLAYING BO PEEP WITH THE COPY EDITOR

• My own writing has been criticized—quite fairly, I admit—for being long-winded and using over-complex sentence construction. At the polar extreme, Jeff Albertson spawned a host of imitators when he wore a T-shirt declaiming, "Worst Episode Ever." My starched-collar grammar checker tartly comments, "This may be a sentence fragment." The Albertson catchphrase is often written and punctuated in the form of "Worst. Whatever.  Ever." because of the way Albertson delivers such comments when voiced by Frank Azaria. My grammar checker remains silent on this development.

I settled down with English Traits by Ralph Waldo Emerson and the first sentence of the second paragraph brought my reading to a screeching halt:

Like most young men at that time, I was much indebted to the men of Edinburgh and of the Edinburgh Review, — to Jeffrey, Mackintosh, Hallam, and to Scott, Playfair and De Quincey; and my narrow and desultory reading had inspired the wish to see the faces of three or four writers, — Coleridge, Wordsworth, Landor, De Quincey, and the latest and strongest contributor to the critical journals, Carlyle; and I suppose if I had sifted the reasons that led me to Europe, when I was ill and was advised to travel, it was mainly the attraction of these persons.

~ Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson in 12 vols. Fireside Edition
(Boston and New York, 1909) Vol.5 English Traits.

That long, heavily-punctuated, single sentence was written in 1856 by someone who is widely acknowledged as a first-rate essayist. The literary critic Harold Bloom compared Emerson favorably with Michel de Montaigne. Remarkably, the sentence following that first one changes the pace radically:

If Goethe had been still living I might have wandered into Germany also.

~ Ibid. 

Clearly there are fashion dimensions to writing styles. Montaigne (1553-1592) and Emerson (1803-1882) represent the distant past; Albertson (whose first public appearance was in 1991 when he was a middle-aged man) represents the present. Mark Twain (1835-1910) privately described a quotation from Emerson as follows: "I do not mean that the grammar is not correct, I merely mean that in one place it all at once arrests the flow of your serenity for a moment, like gravel in the bread." Although Twain was a contemporary of Emerson and not a contemporary of our times, he was clearly a more modern writer.

In the penultimate sentence of that second paragraph, Emerson writes of crossing "…sea and land to play bo-peep with celebrated scribes." The usage is archaic. Wikipedia explains; "The phrase 'to play bo peep'" (the expression is not hyphenated by the author/editor of the Wikipedia entry) was in use from the 14th century to refer to the punishment of being stood in a pillory." Examples are then given from the years 1364 and 1542, which both precede even Montaigne.

Oh well, it's back to the reading. I hope I can make it through the third paragraph before nightfall or sleep overtake me, or worst of all that there is gravel in the bread.