I am not kidding, They are difficult to use correctly but when the tool is in the hand of a Master the run-on can convey information and a sense of importance/urgency that is not achievable in any other way.
Here's two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Barbara Tuchman with a fine example:
On a scented Mediterranean May evening in 1904 Mr. Ion Perdicaris, an elderly, wealthy American, was dining with his family on the vine-covered terrace of the Place of Nightingales, his summer villa in the hills above Tangier. Besides a tame demoiselle crane and two monkeys who ate orange blossoms, the family included Mrs. Perdicaris; her son by a former marriage, Cromwell Oliver Varley, who (though wearing a great name backward) was a British subject; and Mrs. Varley. Suddenly a cacophony of shrieks, commands, and barking of dogs burst from the servants' quarters at the rear.
Assuming the uproar to be a further episode in the chronic feud between their German housekeeper and their French-Zouave chef, the family headed for the servants' hail to frustrate mayhem. They ran into the butler flying madly past them, pursued by a number of armed Moors whom at first they took to be their own household guards.
Astonishingly, these persons fell upon the two gentlemen, bound them, clubbed two of the servants with their gunstocks, knocked Mrs. Varley to the floor, drew a knife against Varley's throat when he struggled toward his wife, dragged off the housekeeper, who was screaming into the telephone, "Robbers! Help!," cut the wire, and shoved their captives out of the house with guns pressed in their backs.....
—"Perdicaris Alive or Raisuli Dead"
Barbara Tuchman American Heritage, August 1959
Reprinted in "Practising History", Papermac, 1995
Barbara Tuchman American Heritage, August 1959
Reprinted in "Practising History", Papermac, 1995
...The last thing the housebuilding industry needs is a shakeout of weaker players, given it’s concentrated among eight or so companies that have exploited landbank purchasing rules and artificially choked newbuild supply to siphon off public money via badly designed subsidies that by funneling cash into the mortgage market were targeting completely the wrong thing....That is really, really good.
