The 4th book on my Kerouac bookshelf is On The Road by Jack Kerouac (Signet Books, 1957), and the 4th sentence (in honor of today being the 4th day of the month) is:
Before that I'd often dreamed of going West to see the country, always vaguely planning and never taking off. (p. 5)If you're paying attention, you should be thinking that this sentence looks much like yesterday's sentence. And you'd be right. In counting sentences yesterday, I made a judgement that a 3-period ellipsis did not constitute a sentence end. Where that ellipsis stood in the original scroll edition was replaced by a period in the classic edition, making yesterday's 3rd sentence today's 4th sentence. This provides an interesting comparison between sentences, as yesterday's was:
Prior to that I'd always dreamed of going west, seeing the country, always vaguely planning and never specifically taking off and so on. (On The Road: The Original Scroll, Penguin Books, 2007, p. 109)Obviously, editing happened.
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