Quote:
Originally Posted by usuallee
I just read Louise Erdrich's The Round House. Pretty good book. But no quotation marks were used to denote dialogue. As far as I can determine, Cormac McCarthy started doing this and now lots of literary authors are mimicking the trend.
To me, there is no stylistic reason to omit quotation marks, except to self-consciously announce an author's intention that This Is A Literary Work. I find it utterly pretentious. Your thoughts....
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I've stayed away from Cormac McCarthy largely because of this, which is perhaps an unfair thing to do, since that means I can't really offer an informed opinion. Instead I have prejudged
and agree that it seems utterly pretentious. I thought literary work was supposed to be about the quality of the writing, not tricks with syntax, but then I'm not a literary writer, so what do I know?
I can accept that it is possible to write a book this way and still have it comprehensible, but the writing must be deliberately constrained to fit with this style (you couldn't just go to any book and strip the quotes). Some people like to do things because they can, so fine, someone goes out and proves that it is possible to write a book without quotations marks. Great, point proven. We're all suitable impressed, let's all move on.