For decades, the literary heavyweight champion of the run-on sentence has been James Joyce’s Ulysses—specifically, the final chapter, known as Molly Bloom’s soliloquy. It clocks in at a staggering 36,000 words. No full stops. Just one, glorious, breathless, stream-of-consciousness ramble.
To put that in perspective: the average novel has about 80,000 words. Molly’s single sentence is almost half a novel. It’s like ordering a single french fry that weighs as much as the entire Happy Meal. You don’t know whether to applaud or call for a break.
But wait, there’s a wannabe
In 2019, some very determined person named Orlando Figes wrote a sentence of 73,000 words for a book called The Europeans. It’s considered the longest published sentence in a novel. But let’s be honest—reading it feels less like literature and more like being stuck in an elevator with an overly enthusiastic tour guide. You nod, you smile, and you desperately look for an escape.
If you tried to read it out loud, you’d need oxygen. I’m picturing a stage actor with a medical team on standby, holding a damp towel and a tiny fan. “Breathe, Barry, breathe! You’re only at the part about the Prussian railways!”
