I don’t know what it means to say that continuity is for wimps. I do know that I am capable of reading a four word sentence—almost any four word sentence—and egregiously overinterpreting it. Sometimes what makes a sentence great is that it provides fertile ground for overinterpretation. Without that possibility, it would be just another boring sentence.
In the context of words, continuity may have something to do with flow. In turn, flow may be related to the passage of time. When we read a good paragraph, we say it conveys a sense of continuity to the extent that it carries us seamlessly through time from start to finish. The conjunctions and, but, and or (language’s logical operators) contribute mightily to that sense of flow. But the use of conjunctions by itself isn’t enough; their use has to be apt. “Montezuma shouted at Mary, but the dog had died.” This may be a fine use of a conjunction. However, we can’t know this without context. The dog might have no connection whatsoever to the relationship between Montezuma and Mary. A dishonest author may have tried to falsify the existence of a relationship.
The word but can anticipate a reservation, too: “I like you, but … ” Nobody wants to hear the second half of that sentence. In situations like this, we cry out to the speaker: if you feel a compulsion to make your sentences flow, now would be a good time to resist; chop things up like a fresh green salad.
Speaking of fresh green salad, I think of all the times during Trump’s term in office when I heard people complain about how the orange wonder’s speech came off sounding like word salad. America’s foremost pussy-grabbing toupee wearer has a mind remarkably untroubled by concerns for continuity. The stuff in his brain at the beginning of a sentence may not be the same stuff in his brain at the end of a sentence. Pit him against a consummate prose stylist, Julian Barnes, for example, and the difference is stark. Reading Barnes is like drinking a smooth 21 year old single malt. Listening to Trump is like drinking screech scraped from the sides of a barrel and boiled in a tin bucket.
Even if we suppose continuity is for wimps, I’m inclined to think it still depends on who’s pulling the levers. There are extraordinarily discontinuous writers—most notably poets—who still manage to produce compelling work. It’s not so much that they’ve turned their backs on continuity so much as that they’ve foisted responsibility for it onto their readers.
