What do you think of this sentence about afternoon tea?

[MsAmerica]

Not sure if this belong here, or in Pedants, but what do you think of this second sentence, purely as a sentence, but also in terms of punctuation?

There was a silver tea-pot, and a silver kettle with a little spirit-lamp underneath, and a silver cream jug and a covered silver dish full of muffins. There was also hot buttered toast and honey and gentleman’s relish and a chocolate cake, a cherry cake, a seed cake and a fruit cake and some tomato sandwiches and pepper and salt and currant bread and butter.

It’s a bit like a marmite equivalent kind of thing - a very strong anchovy paste that you spread thinly on toast.

https://www.waitrose.com/ecom/products/patum-peperium-anchovy-relish/023210-11279-11280

So.... the top post is my attempt to convey the excitement in today's language.
The second post is Gemini doing the same - I asked it to rewrite as an influencer on twitter.

The thing missing in your sentence @MsAmerica is the emotion - wonder and amazement at the spread and the sheer lavishness of both the setup as well as the food.

That is why the salt and pepper is there - the eye goes over the table and things just go on and on and on... even the salt and pepper.
That's why I think even the salt and pepper belongs there.

Gemini agrees with you on the salt and pepper though 😆

Agree that the extra unnecessary 'and's are a stylistic choice to emphasise the excitement and excess of the spread. Definitely reminiscent of CS Lewis describing the tea at the Beavers' house.

I've got my New Thing for today very early! Thanks.

I've not read the original but I very much like the sentence. It's a sort of breathless, wonderous recounting of the spread much like a child might tell you what the birthday tea was after they had been to a party.

I like all the 'ands'. They are clearly functional, though unconventional. Ditto the commas that cuddle the bit about the kettle.
The only bit I don't like is "There was also ...". Why not "There were also ..."? There may well be a reason.

I'm so glad you put this in Cunning Linguists rather than Pedants' Corner. I had forgotten this category existed. I can't remember now what the boundaries were intended to be between the two topics. But I do remember that the name Pedants' Corner was originally intended as a joke. These days it seems to be treated literally, and the threads there always seem to be about boring obsessions with correct grammar (even when writing informally on a chat forum),and with regional accents.

This thread is so much more fun. Not obsessing about rules, but exploring function.

I'm wondering which novel this is. (I will google, but I enjoy a quick wonder first.) Waugh's novels are so clearly in two categories - the more psychological ones and the more cartoonish ones (though both seem to convey the same bleak extremity of alienation and despair) - and I'm trying to work out which these 'ands', etc. belong with.

I see it this way too.

I hope you're not saying that it's somehow forbidden for any reader to feel superior in some situation or other, that the worst sentence by any writer is better than the best sentence by any reader, that readers are supposed to grovel in the presence of novelists?

Mr Waugh 10/10. OP 3/10. 《《Gavel》》

I wouldn't say a renowned writer can't write a bad sentence, but I would say that it's safe to assume that they've made a choice, not a mistake. You might not appreciate that choice, but it's worth considering why they made it. What do you think Waugh is trying to do here, OP? He's obviously capable of writing a list with commas if he wanted to, but here he has chosen not to.

I'm not sure that "mistake" and "choice" are mutually exclusive.

It puts me in mind of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Some of his writing is brilliant, but a few years ago I read an anthology of his incollected stories, and I was appalled. They were the ones written hurriedly because he was in need of money, and I very much doubt that he made a careful "choice" at each juncture.

You've made a list. The original created a picture of a plentiful, crowded, cosy, tempting table of food.

The original gives us the double layer of feeling and meaning to go with the description.

The original gives us prose with a tempo to get lost in while we immerse ourselves in the story.

The list is dry - a little interesting but doesn't anchor us to the story.

Sorry, but I disagree.

I don't think it's tempting to say there were tomato sandwiches. Now, if he'd said: There was a plate of fresh-cut tomato sandwiches, delicately buttered, with chives peeping out, piled on the antique Staffordshire china - That might be tempting.

Maybe if you are writing the blurb for a box of M&S tomato sandwiches, or an intro to a Nigella special on tomato sandwiches.

That's the copy that draws you into appreciating the tomato sandwiches.

The prose you quoted is not trying to get you interested in tomato sandwiches, it's creating a world for you step into to absorb the story you are about to read.