James Baldwin doesn't often make me laugh, which is maybe why I like this scene from his story "The Outing" so much:

"Last year Sister McCandless had held an impromptu service in the unbelieving subway car she played the tambourine and sang and exhorted sinners and passed through the train distributing tracts. Not everyone had found this admirable, to some [in the church] it seemed that Sister McCandless was being a little ostentatious. 'I praise my Redeemer wherever I go,' she retorted defiantly. 'Holy Ghost don't leave me when I leave the church. I got a every day religion.'"

But of course, to a timid grammatical conservative such as myself, Baldwin's fast-and-loose sentence construction seems so reckless--first, a run-on; then a comma splice. Ack. I have to spend days talking myself into a misplaced comma.

But it's working for him, as it works (differently) for Iris Murdoch, another famous comma splicer. And I do love the subtle dialogue control of "a every day religion." Amazing how simply dropping an "n" and splitting a compound word can create a living, breathing, pain-in-the-ass human voice.