Authors who don't use quotation marks: why?

there's a gag in that, isn't there

But having to use such a signifier actually seems to suggest the opposite: "I don't feel secure that people will get the true literaryness of my novel, therefore I will add a special signifier to show it."

This is one of those stylistic choices that, if you decide it's "literary" and pretentious (and/or pointless and annoying), the text will pretty much always seem to support your decision. Or you can decide it's just another implement in the auctorial toolbox and judge case-by-case whether it works ("works").

What am I doing here? he asked. Why ask such a question?

So who says the second bit, the character or the narrator. Either way, author-person, fuck off until you've learned to use quotation marks/long dashes.

Another annoying permutation is that used by the Australian writer Nick Earls, who uses nothing to mark characters speaking, and italics for the narrator speaking.

if yr. writing more descriptively, then its a difft story of course.

but, i mean, how else to render:

"Yeah. I remember it.
You did not believe me.
I believed you.
You spoke to your friend?
Yeah. I spoke to him.
But your words carried no weight with him.
No. They didn't.
And now I cannot help you. You see.
I didn't come here for your help."

etc.

I mean, can you imagine quotes around each bit of it -- the natural rhythm and beat to the language and back-and-forth would be totally destroyed.

But, not to belabor the obvious, if the author used quotation marks, then you wouldn't have that ambiguity!

As for quotes ruining the rhythm of the language - I can see what you mean, but to me the _lack_ of quotes seems to stick out more - Elmore Leonard is a master of that kind of back-and-forth, and he uses quote marks with no problem.

i'm fairly certain i don't actually believe that.

Well, I mean. It's fun.

also: GADDIS

Whatever the case, doing away with quotation marks is stylistically a "look at me, Mum!" type thing to do. We internalise conventions, and when someone does away with a convention, it turns attention on the writing style, rather than the content (what's said). I'm not saying that's bad, because every good piece of work twists a convention in some way. But if there's no good reason to overturn the convention except to draw attention to the fact that a convention has been overturned...

I'm almost through McCarthy's No Country For Old Men now, and I think it's pretty good. But this punctuation thing does annoy me. Not just his lack of quotation marks, but his leaving out apostrophes in a seemingly random way, and I can't be bothered to check but I get the impression that there is not a single comma in the entire novel. I don't think these eccentricities really add anything to the novel, they're just distractions.

Well, that's Ignorant Jim Joyce told then.

1. Re: "What am I doing here? he asked. Why ask such a question?" I think—at least in Joyce's—case that looking for the paragraph breaks will help determine the boundaries of dialogue.

2. In some authors (I am thinking mainly of Kelman here) the lack of "speech marks" seems an attempt to fuse narration with a single character; to show the character telling his own story rather than employing an overarching level of narration (the omniscient and possibly Imperial).

I think I disagree with this, the lack of apostrophes was meant to enhance the impression of unpretentious, country-not-school-smart good ol boys talkin.

I would hate to hear Cormac McCarthy talk about politics and stuff but I sure do like his books.

If you're talking about JR and implying William Gaddis is a bad writer,

I'LL FIGHT YE!

Oh srsly?

Here's an author who puts quotation marks on his name...

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/514XGhsSuqL._SX310_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

ya because jock can mean an athlete, a dj or a hobbyist, but his is probably just a term of endearment, like a diminutive of his real name

Nonetheless, odd to have it in quotation marks on the cover, and spine, of a book? His real name is William btw. Was, rather.

i know what you're saying

it does seem strange

there are people in my family whose nicknames have no relationship to their given names though

like maybe it arose from a funny incident that became legendary in the davidson family

i think in summary: he's doing the usual thing of putting a nickname in quotations but unusually not putting his actual given name before it and also putting it on a book cover.

also is the possessive part of the full title or is that another irregularity from this exceedingly irregular fellow