Complex sentence: His father was an illiterate Italian immigrant shoe-shiner who worked down in a subway station, developed a bad back, and "coughed his lungs out from breathin' in that wax all day".
Split into simpler sentences: His father was an illiterate Italian immigrant shoe-shiner, who worked down in a subway station. He developed a bad back, and "coughed his lungs out from breathin' in that wax all day".