Iconoclastic techniques

goatpiper · Apr 27, 2008

So when is it okay to emulate the great masters of writing, as regards their original format choices?

James Joyce didn't use quotation marks, he used dashes.

Cormac McCarthy doesn't use quotation marks, period. He just lets the dialogue flow into the rest of the writing. And he only uses apostrophes when the word without apostrophes would be indecipherable. Like wasnt as opposed to there'd.

Matera the Mad · Apr 27, 2008

Danger Jane · Apr 27, 2008

It works when you have the skill, the panache, and the attitude to pull it off. Do you have that?

sanctuary6284 · Apr 27, 2008

I don't suggest emulating a style. That was their style. If you have your own use that in your writing. I doubt it would be a good idea if you haven't published at least one work. From what I hear agents and publisher aren't really keen on work that seems like the author was trying to stand out by using a gimick. If you already have an agent or editor I'd suggest discussing this with them.

nevada · Apr 27, 2008

James Joyce used em-dashes because that was the norm. If you look at old editions of european books, books that were printed in Europe you will see that they all used em-dashes, not quotation marks. So it was not a stylistic choice on his part, it was what everyone did. I have several books from my grandfather, my mother, and even books that I received as a child, all with em-dashes instead of quotation marks.

LaceWing · Apr 27, 2008

Interesting, nevada.

In The Road, typographic bleakness matches the landscape. Also, one can imagine that narration to have been made in the future when standards could be changed. Plus, quotation marks, so easy to scan, bring dialog out of the page, emphasizing a difference between spoken and written. So, one can further imagine it was all spoken and machine transcribed -- or something. The format is just a little eerie to match the story.

Madison · Apr 27, 2008

Cold Mountain uses em-dashes. It's cool - the dialogue flows right into the story. It's a much quieter approach and Frazier uses it really well.

I love that book, btw. One of my all time favorites!

David I · Apr 28, 2008

goatpiper said:
So when is it okay to emulate the great masters of writing, as regards their original format choices?

James Joyce didn't use quotation marks, he used dashes.

Cormac McCarthy doesn't use quotation marks, period. He just lets the dialogue flow into the rest of the writing. And he only uses apostrophes when the word without apostrophes would be indecipherable. Like wasnt as opposed to there'd.

I basically like McCarthy, but I find his punctuation style precious and affected, and it's something I have to work past rather than relish. I think his work is poorer for it, since there are times where his dialogue gets confused with his narrative, and a lot of his dropping of apostrophes looks to me like poor copyediting. And the advantage is...?

Dashes for dialogue, on the other hand, have a long history, and it isn't only Joyce who used them, but some very straightforward novelists like Alan Paton. So why did they fade out? Because quote marks are far more effective, allowing the dialogue to resume at any time without any possible confusion.

It seems to me that writing is tricky enough without introducing further ambiguities, and that it has been evolving toward increasing clarity in terms of punctuation. Want to color outside the lines? Go ahead? Will it make for better writing? Hard to see how.

goatpiper · Apr 28, 2008

No, I don't think I have the skill to pull stuff like that off, and I don't necessarily want to. This is a curiousity of mine, and I'm also curious how many other published authors utilize similar techniques.

McCarthy doesn't use quotation marks in anything of his I've read, and he leaves the apostrophes out as well. I was surprised when I first started reading him that it didn't trip me up at all, and I therefore wondered about language evolution tending toward more simplicity. Some stuff sticks, some stuff don't.

Heehaw.

Penguin Queen · Apr 28, 2008

Ive left out quotation marks in some stories when I felt the flow or rush of the narrative would have been interrupted by nonessential punctuation.
Ive written a story in two voices where the text of the first voice is aligned left and the text of the other aligned right.
I like experimenting.
I like breaking rules and jolting poeple out of what they expect. If it's done well. And there's a reason.

Sometimes I think it works and the editor and publisher dont. Unless I feel very strongly about it, I will go with their advice and experience. If I do feel very strongly about it, I will dig my heels in until they either convince me, or I them.

Basically, IMO it works when it works.
It doesnt work when you just do it for the sake of it, without a reason.

Joe Moore · Apr 28, 2008

David I said:
I basically like McCarthy, but I find his punctuation style precious and affected, and it's something I have to work past rather than relish. I think his work is poorer for it, since there are times where his dialogue gets confused with his narrative, and a lot of his dropping of apostrophes looks to me like poor copyediting. And the advantage is...?

David, I had the same reaction and forced myself to want to enjoy THE ROAD. I know, I know, it was supposed to portray the nameless, bleakness of the landscape, blah blah blah. But even with a great writer like McCarthy, it was still a gimmick. Sort of like Picasso forcing you to view his painting through a telescope to emphasize the distance between human emotions or some such. For me McCarthy's style got in the way of the story. At some point about half way through, I grew tired of the unconventional technique, put the book down, and moved on to other things

IceCreamEmpress · Apr 28, 2008

goatpiper said:
McCarthy doesn't use quotation marks in anything of his I've read, and he leaves the apostrophes out as well. I was surprised when I first started reading him that it didn't trip me up at all, and I therefore wondered about language evolution tending toward more simplicity. Some stuff sticks, some stuff don't.

Gimmick != evolution. I hate that stuff in McCarthy, because there's no motivation for it--he doesn't use apostrophes whether or not his characters would use them if they were writing.

Now, Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker is written in a weird postapocalyptic style--but then, it was depicting a weird postapocalyptic world.

And as others have said, Joyce wasn't being experimental; he was using a punctuation convention that was one of the norms current at the time he was writing.

Jackfishwoman · Apr 28, 2008

I think if it fits for what you are doing, then do it. I read a couple of books recently where the author did not use quotation marks at all and I found it quite liberating as a reader (these were recent releases within the last couple of years - I think one was A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews).

Phaeal · Apr 28, 2008

Using nonstandard punctuation with the excuse "But Famous Writer does it!" is asking for the time-honored putdown, "But you're not Famous Writer."

Use unusual punctuation only if you have a very good reason. The most obvious one I can think of is if the story is in whole or part a character's written account, journal or letters. If that character would use unusual punctuation, whether out of ignorance or cussedness or disorientation or inspiration, then the sections he is "writing" would use unusual punctuation.

Unusual punctuation for its own sake? Affectation, in my book. The author's free to do whatever his publisher will let him get away with. I'm free not to read him.

Manat · Apr 28, 2008

I never liked James Joyce, though I had a lot of fun drinking whisky in an Irish pub he frequented and wrote about.

JBI · Apr 28, 2008

Probably the most authentic and iconoclastic technique by a living writer is Jose Saramago's. He doesn't punctuate sentences, and the only thing marking dialogue is a comma that he uses to change speakers. His sentences and paragraphs often trail several pages, in what becomes a long prose poem.

And yes, Nevada is right. Dashes were quite common then. However, other devices Joyce invented, such as writing as if the story is a news report, unconventional use of leitmotifs, his obscure grammar and portmanteaus, and his famous monologue at the end of Ulysses, not to mention the entire book of Finnegans wake, are quite unique, and revolutionary.

You can emulate all you want, it is inevitable. People have been emulating Joyce, and Faulkner, and all the other great authors for a long time. Most without even knowing it.

Zoombie · Apr 28, 2008

IceCreamEmpress said:
Gimmick != evolution.

Gah, this is true. I'm a professed hater of these kinds of weird things. Then I go and write a story entirly from the persepective a voice in someone's head.

That was like writing only dialoug...excpet you only get one side of it. Gimmiky!

Color me hypocritical!

eyeblink · Apr 28, 2008

David I said:
Dashes for dialogue, on the other hand, have a long history, and it isn't only Joyce who used them, but some very straightforward novelists like Alan Paton.

Roddy Doyle uses em-dashes consistently. Another recent novelist who does this is Hal Duncan - I happen to know he's a Joyce fan.

There are quite a few who have used them occasionally for particular stories or for particular parts of stories.

IceCreamEmpress · Apr 28, 2008

JBI said:
Probably the most authentic and iconoclastic technique by a living writer is Jose Saramago's. He doesn't punctuate sentences

Saramago punctuates sentences, and so do his translators. However, Saramago only punctuates sentences with commas and periods--no quotation marks, no question marks, no exclamation points, no semi-colons, no colons. You can see an excerpt from the English translation of Ensaio sobre a cegueira--the English title is Blindness, though the Portuguese title is best translated "An Essay on Blindness"--at Amazon here.

Of course, there are a lot of European writers who don't use quotation marks--John Berger, for instance, and Julia Franck, the winner of the 2007 Deutscher Buchpreis, are two who come to mind.

For some reason, it only bugs me when US writers don't use the quotation marks. With McCarthy, it feels like a gimmick. With Berger, it's part of a tradition.

Iconoclastic techniques

goatpiper

Distraction Junkie

Matera the Mad

Bartender, gimme a Linux Mint

Danger Jane

sanctuary6284

Mental Supernova

nevada

LaceWing

Madison

summertime...

David I

goatpiper

Distraction Junkie

Penguin Queen

Break the rules.

Joe Moore

IceCreamEmpress

Hapless Virago

Jackfishwoman

Phaeal

Whatever I did, I didn't do it.

Manat

JBI

Zoombie

Dragon of the Multiverse

eyeblink

Barbara says hi

IceCreamEmpress

Hapless Virago