No quotation marks

There are quite a few books without quotation marks. I think that Sue Gee's excellent Reading In Bed uses em-dashes instead, and it works well.

The short answer: Some writers are quirky and are either cantankerous enough or good enough, or both, to do whatever they want. Charles Frazier (Cold Mountain) likes to be quirky as well (and was a former friend on FB until he got too many friends).

I personally find it a bit affected, but Mr. McCarthy has such a body of work that I wouldn't argue with him about his sincerity of not using quotation marks. I've found that most writers, agents, and editors have at least one pet peeve they like to make a big deal about.

He doesn't use many commas either. I guess he's doing it to make the words flow a certain way into your brain, and it does give the books a dreamy, free-flowing feel, but I also found it took some getting used to.

I think McCarthy is a Marmite writer. I stopped reading No Country about 2 chapters in cos I just couldn't stand the lack of punctuation. But some people love it.

Slightly off-topic . . .

Do you like audio books, RG? If so, there are a couple of excellent ones of McCarthy's Cities of the Plains series.

And our trivia factoid of the day: Mr. McCarthy, born in RI, attended the University of Tennessee, but never graduated. There was a special McCarthy event at UT a few years ago; I'm not sure whether McCarthy attended or not.

... have read novels from 60 odd years back. A number of them didn't use quotation marks to set off dialogue. One set them off with dashes: a dash preceding the first sentence, and that was that. (It was an English novel. Maybe that was the practice over there at the time?) So I guess quotation marks are in someways a convention rather than a rule and one which writers and publishers redefine from time to time. One thing you don't want to do is confuse your readers too much, though, as this celebrated author appears to have done.

The book Will Grayson, Will Grayson (John Green, David Levithan) has a two POVs, and the second's dialogue is written like:

sam: hi
me: hey

It wasn't as confusing as this seemed to be, but still, no quotation marks!


-t.

Are you sure it wasn't an Irish novel? Sixty years would be the 1950s and I've read books printed then. I don't remember the em dash.

rhymegirl said:

I don't like the idea of writers making up their own rules if it's going to create confusion for readers.

Click to expand...

It depends on the author's ideal audience. (I'm talking in general, not just about Cormac McCarthy's works.) Certain readers don't think of narrative or orthographic confusion as a bad thing, as long as it's offset by whatever benefits the mode/method that produced that confusion might provide.

mirandashell said:

Are you sure it wasn't an Irish novel? Sixty years would be the 1950s and I've read books printed then. I don't remember the em dash.

Click to expand...

... can't recall the title or author. It's been awhile.

The novel was set in London and published in 1949. (I think the author was British?) It's about a guy who believes that a neighbor of his has seen his wife naked in the bathroom window of his house. Imagining that they're carrying on an affair, he winds up driving himself mad. Good book, btw.

No, I don't know that one. If you remember the title, let me know. Sounds like something I would like.

... managed to recall it.
"The Body," by William Sansom.
(I don't know if it was ever reprinted. I got an original, 1949 copy through my library.)

Amazon has got a used copy for $30.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0571271111/?tag=absowrit-20

Tim Winton does it too.

It seems to work best for slightly surreal, dreamy or poetic flow-of-consciousness writing. It does take a bit of getting used to, but after a couple of pages with these guys I actually stop noticing and it does seem to have an impact on how my brain processes what I'm reading.

But those two guys are phenomenal writers (in my opinon) and you'd certainly want to back yourself if trying that style. I can't imagine too many editors or agents reacting favourably to a submission with a total lack of punctuation!

rhymegirl said:

Since we've all learned to follow the rules when writing, why is it that an author was allowed to break the rules?

Click to expand...

Because he's Cormac McCarthy, and he sells books.

Old Hack said:

There are quite a few books without quotation marks. I think that Sue Gee's excellent Reading In Bed uses em-dashes instead, and it works well.

Click to expand...

Louis Bayard does this as well. I absolutely loved his MR. TIMOTHY.

Sides, its not like breaking the rules of writing is anything new.

Case in point: pretty much anything Faulkner ever wrote.

Charlie Houston uses dashes. It's a bit quirky, but I found it very easy to read.

I am now given license to break the rules. WEEEE!

...











/that was a joke

It's something that I strongly dislike and so far, has caused me to put books down rather than continue reading them. But it's obviously working for some authors regardless of my personal feelings! I'd think it's a bit of a risky move for the average writer, though.

It's one of the deal breakers for me the reader/buyer. I always flip open a book to make sure there's plenty of dialog (that is, not page after page of tedious description) and if it's some non-standard form, nope.

I want to write transparently. I want the reader to be engaged in my story, not focusing on my typography. It's also why I don't submit ms in [FONT=&quot]Harlow Bold Italic [/FONT]font.

Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt didn't use quotation marks. No em dashes either IIRC, just paragraph breaks.

Come, Thou Tortoise by Jessica Grant is another.
I loved the book, but it took a while to get into it because of this.