the banshee and the holy ghost

Four distinct types of sentences (all taken from Joyce's Grace):

Simple: "A thin stream of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth."

"The gentlemen began to talk of the accident."

Compound: "The manager said something about a hospital and some of the bystanders gave advice."

"The three men left the bar and the crowd sifted through the doors into the laneway."

Complex: "The man, without answering, began to twirl the ends of his moustache." and "While the point was being debated a tall agile gentleman of fair complexion, wearing a long yellow ulster, came from the far end of the bar."

Compound-Complex: "Mr Kernan was hoisted on to the car and, while Mr Power was giving directions to the carman, he expressed his gratitude to the young man and regretted that they could not have a little drink together."

Grace is a story. Joyce doesn't try to bother us with complex syntactical styles, he just tells Kernan's story. This story is definitely written in verb-style--the sentences are based on action and contain plenty of verbs. Take a look at a few sentences from the opening paragraph of Grace: "He lay curled up at the foot of the stairs down which he had fallen." And "His eyes were closed and he breathed with a grunting noise." The concentration of the sentence is all on the action.

Moreover, the style of this story is written in periodic parataxis, peppered with a few sentences that lean hypotactic. Joyce sews independent and dependent clauses together to make his longer sentences and then punctuates those with an a shorter, one clause sentence. Yet his parataxis is not painstakingly contrived or self-conscious like Hemingway's. Joyce simply lets the action and dialogue carry the weight of the story, not bothering us with syntax that may or not be allegorical. This allows for a straight reading of the story, for the story, with nothing looming in the background that we have to tackle later.

For example, in the following paragraph, all we are concerned with when reading is the action of the story. We just want to know what the hell happened to Mr Kernan and the bloody details of the present state of his mouth:

The other leaned over the wheel of the car and peered into Mr Kernana's mouth but he could not see. He struck a match and, sheltering it in the shell of his hands, peered again into the mouth which Mr Kernan opened obediently. The swaying movement of the car brought the match to and from the opened mouth. The lower teeth and gums were covered with clotted blood and a minute piece of the tongue seemed to have been bitten off. The match was blown out.

Joyce uses a lot of straightforward clauses to string the story along. The majority of these clauses are independent and the ones that are dependent are not some annoying parenthetical side note that dependent clauses often are. Joyce's voice in this passage (and in the story in general) is rather detached. Again, the main concern here is just telling the story, not sidetracking the reader with added the narrator's voice. But Joyce doesn't need to have a voice in this story--the action does all the talking. The verbs and adjectives Joyce picked to describe the examination of Mr Kernan's injury are vivid and tangible without trying to be. Look again at these first two sentences: "The other leaned over the wheel of the car and peered into Mr Kernana's mouth but he could not see. He struck a match and, sheltering it in the shell of his hands, peered again into the mouth which Mr Kernan opened obediently. " Not only are the prepositional phrases here simple, they are extremely telling and simply paint the story's image in the reader's mind.

Moreover, Joyce uses a repetition and a bit of alliteration, but he is not forward about it. This is a prose story, not a poem or prose that tries too hard. He repeats "mouth" and "peered" and alliterates "s" (see, struck, sheltering, shell, swaying). In the next two sentences he alliterates further with combined sounds of hard and soft of "b", "t", and "th" : "The swaying movement of the car brought the match to and from the opened mouth. The lower teeth and gums were covered with clotted blood and a minute piece of the tongue seemed to have been bitten off. The match was blown out." The simplicity of this style makes the story so powerful, and I appreciate Joyce for that.