What is up with Faulkner?

Felicity Shoulders

Wednesday March 14, 2007 @ 12:53 AM (PDT)

Admittedly, I’m up past my bedtime, but I’ll be reading along in a short story by Wm. Faulkner, and I’ll come up against something like this:

Because they are dead too, who had learned to respect that whose respect in turn their hardness had commanded before there were welded center sections and parachutes and ships that would not spin. (from ‘All the Dead Pilots’)

Is it just sleepy ol’ me, or is that seriously hard to parse?

Comments

Reference, self

It is a bit Escherish and German in its construction.
This would have been a clearer way of putting it, I think:

Because they are dead too, who were hardened by their learned respect commanded by the then lack of welded center sections and parachutes and ships that would not spin.

Or perhaps simply:

Those who learned the hard way to respect the contemporary lack of welded center sections and parachutes and ships that would not spin are all dead.

Wednesday March 14, 2007 @ 04:44 AM (PDT) Posted by GreyStork

That's nothing!

Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo.

Wednesday March 14, 2007 @ 09:51 AM (PDT) Posted by wonko

Yick.

My sympathies, friend. This is why Awesome was able to take a course devoted to naught but him and Morrison in college.

Wednesday March 21, 2007 @ 04:51 PM (PDT) Posted by sister sledge