Why does Cormac McCarthy not use certain punctuation?

CassandraW said:

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Fuego! Fuego!

It's not like he's the only writer who does this. William Faulkner used contractions without apostrophes. Other writers have eschewed quotation marks too; in his Oprah interview McCarthy cites a Civil War novel (whose title I cannot remember offhand) as the first he read without quotation marks.

There's also Jose Saramago and Hubert Selby Jr.

AnotherMorning said:

William Faulkner used contractions without apostrophes.

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and where is he now, huh?

dead. that's where.

William Haskins said:

and where is he now, huh?

dead. that's where.

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Exactly.

I suggest you take warning from e.e. cummings' example and start using some capitalization while you still can.

Stylistic quirks are inevitably fatal sooner or later.

buzhidao said:

Well, yes and no. I find this sort of statement implies to me that you can only fiddle with what someone might consider nonstandard after you've proven yourself a "good writer" which I disagree with, and the idea that "the rest of us" just aren't good enough to ignore all the blah blah about adverbs or whatever doesn't sit well with me.

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That wasn't quite what I meant. Apologies if that was how it came across.

Of course any of us are free to experiment with any technique, but some techniques are harder to do than others. That's why we have writing rules and guidelines. As a general rule, a new writer is more likely to be successful if they follow the rules. That doesn't mean that you can't try or that you have to get to a certain level or anything like that.

Any of us can learn to juggle, but only an expert ought to try juggling with chainsaws.

I tried writing like McCarthy once (!?) and it was an unmitigated disaster. I never felt comfortable with it. It didn't flow. When I read it back to myself I couldn't remember who was speaking.

I had no qualms about giving it a go. It was an experimental short. I was just playing and there was nothing to lose. But I didn't have the skill or temperament or something to pull it off.

I don't mind breaking other rules, but this particular one was a step too far for me. It's a lot harder than it looks.

Y'all know punctuation to mark syntax as we use it now is fairly recent, yes?

Punctuation of this sort starts appearing in the mid to late sixteenth century; it isn't standardized.

Commas, semi-colons and colons are used almost interchangeably, and mostly, the author is entirely in the hands of the printer, who will use what the printer wants to use, based on personal understanding and how many instances of a particular glyph the printer has available in a type drawer.

Commas were not followed by spaces, generally (paper ain't cheap).

Quotation marks are not common for dialogue until later, and then are frequently used only to mark the start of a speech.

Punctuation really starts being standardized in the early 1800s, and even now, standard punctuation is different in British and American publishing and writing.

kkbe said:

...I thought, after reading it, than he'd left out the punctuation because doing so mirrored the world of his mc: sparse, immediate, no time for indulgences...

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I agree with this. I've read other things where the lack of dialogue quotation marks seemed to fit very well and add something, especially when the MC was a down-and-out, on the ragged edge kind of character. It signaled that the usual life conventions were out the window. Right now I'm thinking of Rule of the Bone by Russell Banks.

Well, this has certainly been one of the most entertaining threads I've ever read on this forum. Conflict spilling out from every page. I hope it's not too late to join in on the fun.

To address tylermarab1987's original question, here's a link where McCarthy explains his use of punctuation.

http://www.openculture.com/2013/08/cormac-mccarthys-punctuation-rules.html


I love prose & poetry rich in nature imagery. That's what attracts me to his writing. His stories can be difficult for me to read though, because they revolve around the underbelly of humanity, and as such, aren't exactly "fun" reads. They are thought provoking, and his style is worthy of my respect and admiration.

I didn't care for his earlier "Southern" novels but I loved All The Pretty Horses. I haven't read The Road yet because I don't care for apocalypse/post-apocalyptic fiction. But after reading this thread, I think I'll start it after I finish what I'm currently reading.

I find his style matches his subject exceedingly well. It's stark, hauntingly beautiful, spiritual at times, and at it's finest, transcendental. It takes a great talent to pull that off. It's not a style that's for everyone. Neither is my writing style. Neither is anyone's.

Kudos to tylermarab1987 for starting this thread!

PandaMan said:

To address tylermarab1987's original question, here's a link where McCarthy explains his use of punctuation.

http://www.openculture.com/2013/08/cormac-mccarthys-punctuation-rules.html

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It's interesting that he thinks eliminating the punctuation adds clarity. In the excerpt I read, I found it did the exact opposite for me as a reader. I'm sure it works for some readers, but bad punctuation pulls me out of a story because I have to think about the actual prose. If I'm thinking about your prose, I'm not immersed in the story. For me, the best prose is like a great painting. The prose itself is like the brush strokes. I don't want to see those. I just want to see the final product: the painting itself. If I see your brush strokes, it reminds me that I'm looking at a painting.

Obviously, it works for many, many people, but I'm afraid I'm not one of them. For me, reading is all about experiencing a story. I've read some pretty badly written stuff that I've enjoyed because I still felt I was part of the story. Of course, some stuff is so badly written that you notice the prose in all the wrong ways.

rwm4768 said:

For me, the best prose is like a great painting. The prose itself is like the brush strokes. I don't want to see those. I just want to see the final product: the painting itself. If I see your brush strokes, it reminds me that I'm looking at a painting.

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I can understand that. For me, his prose, style, and techniques are what actually immerses me into his stories.

rwm4768 said:

If I'm thinking about your prose, I'm not immersed in the story. For me, the best prose is like a great painting. The prose itself is like the brush strokes. I don't want to see those. I just want to see the final product: the painting itself. If I see your brush strokes, it reminds me that I'm looking at a painting.

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This may be one of the keys. Some people like "invisible prose." Other people like skillful wordsmithing that is noticeable as craft in itself.

I am usually in the former camp, but sometimes I am in the mood for a writer who does things with language that most writers can't, and McCarthy is one of those.

(One of the reasons I hated The Road is that the story sucked and so the prose was only an annoyance rather than an enhancement. Whereas Blood Meridian made me say gawdamn, this man can write....)

Throughout this entire thread I've seen tossing opinion as fact, implications of 'not getting it' and 'his brilliance isn't hampered by convention' and 'people are just mad because he's doing it and they're not' and 'he's lazy' and 'he thinks he's too good for rules' and 'he's pretentious'. I'm sure someone even accused him of being ugly, I can't say for certain because my eyes start to cross with all this.

I do want to say this.

If you give a sentence that is supposed to be an example of any author's good writing and someone else doesn't find your example all that compelling?

Either re-examine your choice or give a larger sample size. But to give one sentence, that is already out of context, have someone say 'eh, doesn't do much for me, I'll pass' and then wave your arms that you can't read a sentence out of context to judge something...well, then don't give a sentence that is out of context as an example of his good writing?

For myself, I don't want to read The Road because I have heard about the bleak crapsack world he presents. I don't care how beautifully it's written, I don't read to ugly cry and my research tells me that is what will happen.

bearilou said:

Throughout this entire thread I've seen tossing opinion as fact, implications of 'not getting it' and 'his brilliance isn't hampered by convention' and 'people are just mad because he's doing it and they're not' and 'he's lazy' and 'he thinks he's too good for rules' and 'he's pretentious'. I'm sure someone even accused him of being ugly, I can't say for certain because my eyes start to cross with all this.

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I haven't seen a single person imply anyone was "not getting it," and "his brilliance isn't hampered by convention" is also a stretch.

If you give a sentence that is supposed to be an example of any author's good writing and someone else doesn't find your example all that compelling?

Either re-examine your choice or give a larger sample size. But to give one sentence, that is already out of context, have someone say 'eh, doesn't do much for me, I'll pass' and then wave your arms that you can't read a sentence out of context to judge something...well, then don't give a sentence that is out of context as an example of his good writing?

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Or... different people have different tastes.

(Of course your tastes are wrong and mine are right, but...)









Oh, I probably need to add an emoticon there, don't I?

For myself, I don't want to read The Road because I have heard about the bleak crapsack world he presents. I don't care how beautifully it's written, I don't read to ugly cry and my research tells me that is what will happen.

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That's fair enough, though that would be an indication of the appeal of the story and not the style.

Amadan said:

Oh, I probably need to add an emoticon there, don't I?

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Nah. Because I know it's you.

Amadan said:

That's fair enough, though that would be an indication of the appeal of the story and not the style.

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Both actually. It's the story that is preventing me from giving his style of storytelling a try.

And if his style of storytelling were more appealing, I might brace up and give the story a try.

AnotherMorning said:

It's not like he's the only writer who does this. William Faulkner used contractions without apostrophes. Other writers have eschewed quotation marks too; in his Oprah interview McCarthy cites a Civil War novel (whose title I cannot remember offhand) as the first he read without quotation marks.

There's also Jose Saramago and Hubert Selby Jr.

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The entire French nation does quite well without quotation marks. It's one of the least interesting things about McCarthy's style.

benbenberi said:

The entire French nation does quite well without quotation marks. It's one of the least interesting things about McCarthy's style.

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They use em dashes to mark direct speech, though, something done in English most famously by James Joyce (who didn't like what he called "perverted commas") and more recently by Roddy Doyle in his adult novels.

Somewhen in the 1990s, when Joyce (who died in 1941) went out of copyright in the UK before going back in again when the copyright term was changed to seventy years after death from fifty, I saw an edition of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man which had replaced all of Joyce's em dashes with inverted commas. I mentioned this to a Joyce fan I know who was appalled (and who uses em dashes himself in his own fiction).

I haven't read McCarthy, but I have read other writers who don't use quotation marks and/or use em dashes. A recent example of the former for me was Tim Winton's collection The Turning.

Fruitbat said:

I agree with this. I've read other things where the lack of dialogue quotation marks seemed to fit very well and add something, especially when the MC was a down-and-out, on the ragged edge kind of character. It signaled that the usual life conventions were out the window. Right now I'm thinking of Rule of the Bone by Russell Banks.

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I agree as well. I've used the same approach with certain characters of my own whose grip on reality is tenuous. If the situation gets bad enough, the formatting on the page starts to go as well. Not only does the change act as a signal that the usual is past but it also creates a dissociated or dreamlike feeling in the reader that can mirror a character's state of mind.

benbenberi said:

The entire French nation does quite well without quotation marks. It's one of the least interesting things about McCarthy's style.

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It's my understanding that Chinese didn't have any punctuation until the early 20th century.

eyeblink said:

They use em dashes to mark direct speech, though,

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Only when the direct speech begins a paragraph. If there's any speech inside the paragraph, it's unmarked.

Maryn said:

I'm in the other camp. I find him so difficult to read I never make it more than 20 pages--and yes, I can read some fairly difficult material. When I can't tell internal monologue from words spoken aloud, when it's hard to see where the POV character's individual thoughts and observations begin and end, when I cannot distinguish wishes from actions, well, I'm done.


Maryn, with plenty of books waiting to be read

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My feelings, exactly. I struggled through one of his books and vowed to never read another. It's too bad, too, because his characterization was so good, I'd like to read more, if it wasn't so much work.