In other moods...

I've decided I have to read this story.

'"Innocence’ by Harold Brodkey –

https://apersonalanthology.com/2023/01/13/innocence-by-harold-brodkey/

"'Innocence’ deploys the semicolon as texturizing agent in the paragraph. Like flour and oil, semicolons thicken the mix and build stickiness when stacked; they intensify the list with their rich, gooey stitch. Proust would not exist without his semicolon suave— that distinct baroque swerve of accretive syntax—nor would sex in Brodkey. His semicolons implicate us in the lustrous tangling and indulgent all-at-once-ness of sex.

As a low-status punctuation mark, more ornamental than necessary, the semicolon asserts itself aesthetically, like a gold earring or a faux mink coat. This cloying extravagance is amenable to risking kitsch. The semicolon is the acrobat of the line – it gushes, and then withdraws, leaving us to feel the world changed by its effusion. Brodkey uses it to establish rhythm that builds towards sexual climax, and then shortens his syntax to designate withdrawal. What Wiley wants evolves from simple sexual pleasure to self-discovery: “It was the feeling she aroused in me, a feeling that was, to be honest, made up of tenderness and concern and a kind of mere affection, a brotherliness as if she were my brother, not different from me at all.”

I just realized I went about it the hard way because I found out the whole anthology can be checked out in a Project Gutenberg online library, if you sign up for a free library card, but I guess I could have just clicked on the link at the bottom of the post. 

I've decided it looks better to read it in the online library.