Authors who don't use quotation marks: why?

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

Not all messages are displayed: show all messages (52 of them)

View Previous Page...

"breach"

― Mr. Que (Mr.Que), Friday, 19 January 2007 15:57 (seventeen years ago) link

My guess: they're ignorant, and so are their editors.

Well, that's Ignorant Jim Joyce told then.

― God Bows to Meth (noodle vague), Friday, 19 January 2007 16:18 (seventeen years ago) link

Yep-a-yep. The 'I shall heap scorn on the head of the culprit and run roughshod to victory' approach doesn't work so well when the culprit is the most heavily-praised author of the previous century.

― Aimless (Aimless), Friday, 19 January 2007 17:52 (seventeen years ago) link

Somehow this reminds me of the story about Jimmy J saying that Flaubert's French wasn't so good, randomly flipping through a book and producing three mistakes as evidence.

― The Redd And The Blecch (Ken L), Friday, 19 January 2007 18:32 (seventeen years ago) link

Although later on they turned out not to be mistakes.

― The Redd And The Blecch (Ken L), Friday, 19 January 2007 18:32 (seventeen years ago) link

Two things I am thinking of:

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).

― fields of salmon (fieldsofsalmon), Saturday, 20 January 2007 18:49 (seventeen years ago) link

pt. 2 otm -- it feels like it lends itself to a real concise yarn-spinnin sort of thing, like also a signifier of "don't worry, there won't be any single voice fr. too long"

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Sunday, 21 January 2007 02:13 (seventeen years ago) link

two weeks pass...

I think the use of the dashes to offset dialogue is easy enough to follow and not likely to alienate many readers. I understand why readers are bugged by the complete absence of dialogue-signaling punctuation, but often I like how words look on the page without quotation marks, dashes, or many graf breaks. And once I acclimate to their absence, which usually only takes a page or two, I don't find it terribly confusing, as long as things are attributed, as in: I can't find my shoes, he said. I especially like how Norman Rush and W.G. Sebald do/did it. So far I've stuck with quotation marks in my own writing, though.

― dylan (dylan), Wednesday, 7 February 2007 20:07 (seventeen years ago) link

teh one thing i hate is writers with characters whose speech falls into samey patterns and then they have back&forths that are lengthy and i forget who was talking and its too much of a pain to go back and try to keep score to figure out who sez what.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Thursday, 8 February 2007 23:26 (seventeen years ago) link

good writers don't do uninterrupted dialogue without some occasional descriptive bits that keep you sure of whose sayin what.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Thursday, 8 February 2007 23:26 (seventeen years ago) link

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.

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.

― Jordan (Jordan), Thursday, 8 February 2007 23:53 (seventeen years ago) link

my impression is that he's really liberal actually?

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Friday, 9 February 2007 00:30 (seventeen years ago) link

good writers don't do uninterrupted dialogue without some occasional descriptive bits that keep you sure of whose sayin what.

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

I'LL FIGHT YE!

― franny (frannyglass), Friday, 9 February 2007 01:59 (seventeen years ago) link

my impression is that he's really liberal actually?

Oh srsly?

― Jordan (Jordan), Friday, 9 February 2007 15:29 (seventeen years ago) link

ten years pass...

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

― Whiney Houston (Tom D.), Tuesday, 16 January 2018 18:51 (six years ago) link

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

― infinity (∞), Wednesday, 17 January 2018 17:44 (six years ago) link

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

― Whiney Houston (Tom D.), Wednesday, 17 January 2018 17:50 (six years ago) link

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

― infinity (∞), Wednesday, 17 January 2018 17:59 (six years ago) link

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.

― khat person (jim in vancouver), Wednesday, 17 January 2018 18:00 (six years ago) link

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

― j., Thursday, 18 January 2018 01:07 (six years ago) link

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.