There is a reason that Kerouac gets so much credit. I'd explain more but it's not necessary. The following is a quote from The Subterraneans, published in 1958. My copy has coffee stains on it which is all too appropriate. It's a book of rambling run on sentences, not absent punctuation, but instead more often punctuated with pauses than periods.
"Then she was running down the street with her $2, going to the store long before it opened, going for coffee in the cafeteria, sitting at the table alone, digging the world at last, the gloomy hats, the glistening sidewalks, the signs announcing baked flounder, the reflections of rain in paneglass and in pillar mirror, the beauty of the food counters displaying cold spreads and mountains of crullers and the steam of the coffee urn."
