"The Road" by Cormac McCarthy quotes?

[Penforhire]

I think he's a great author in spite of how he distorts the English language (for the record, James Joyce can bite me, lol). Some people admire his inventive use of language. I found that distracting. You can write lean and spare with punctuation.

Queentess was harsh but that opinion is not unique (as Bill agreed). Some people have no time for poetry or slow movies and that's my perspective on why opinions vary so strongly. Not saying The Road is poetry but it has some aspects in common. For example, a surface reading is not as obviously enjoyable as mulling over the themes. Some of what McCarthy writes just sets a mood with very little dramatic action.

[bill_mchale]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

I think he's a great author in spite of how he distorts the English language (for the record, James Joyce can bite me, lol). Some people admire his inventive use of language. I found that distracting. You can write lean and spare with punctuation.

Queentess was harsh but that opinion is not unique (as Bill agreed). Some people have no time for poetry or slow movies and that's my perspective on why opinions vary so strongly. Not saying The Road is poetry but it has some aspects in common. For example, a surface reading is not as obviously enjoyable as mulling over the themes. Some of what McCarthy writes just sets a mood with very little dramatic action.

Lack of proper punctuation is just part of it. Another part of it for me is that the world is too barren. Note, I am not talking about depressing; I have read other even more depressing apocalyptic novels and did not have the same reaction (On the Beach being most prominent). All vegetation is gone, all animals are gone.. there is just humans remaining? How are humans surviving at all with out the first two. Even aside from the food issue (I figure if you rely exclusively on cannibilism for food, the human population would be extinct in a year or so.), the planet should be rapidly running out of oxygen. McCarthy's unwillingness to tell us anything about how the world got this way, the all but complete lack of others who are trying to do the right thing outside the protagonists (and spoiler warning..... a handful at the end of the book)...it just seemed to me like McCarthy was trying to write a pointless nightmare, than try to create a real world or real characters. For me, if a writer fails to do that, I don't care how great his prose is, he has failed to write a good novel.

--
Bill

[AndrewH]

Thanks, I probably keep my money. I don't think I can justify supporting an "author" who is either too lazy or ignorant to use basic punctuation.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by AndrewH

Thanks, I probably keep my money. I don't think I can justify supporting an "author" who is either too lazy or ignorant to use basic punctuation.

I wonder why the publisher accepted publishing this since it lacks even basic punctuation.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by AndrewH

Thanks, I probably keep my money. I don't think I can justify supporting an "author" who is either too lazy or ignorant to use basic punctuation.

Feel free to exercise your right to buy/not buy, read/not read, like/not like, whatever you see fit... you'll get no complaint from me. But the scare quotes around the word author and the assumption that the only possible reasons an author would write this way are ignorance or laziness, is completely unnecessary.

It's just not your cup of tea... and that's fine.

[AndrewH]

Sorry if I offended.

Language is a beautiful thing to me, and punctuation is part of the written language adding and modifying meaning. See Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss. The decline and corruption of the English language is progressing just fine without tacit approval being given to authors, editors, and publishers who perpetuate such grammatical errors.

[DiapDealer]

Understood.

I just don't view them as errors if it is done intentionally. I'm also sure the approval process was anything but tacit... I'm sure he had to fight tooth and nail with editors and publishers to get it printed the way he wanted.

[bill_mchale]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Feel free to exercise your right to buy/not buy, read/not read, like/not like, whatever you see fit... you'll get no complaint from me. But the scare quotes around the word author and the assumption that the only possible reasons an author would write this way are ignorance or laziness, is completely unnecessary.

It's just not your cup of tea... and that's fine.

According to the McCarthy (in a quote I lifted from Wikipedia's bio on him), "blot the page up with weird little marks."

I don't think that quote implies ignorance or laziness, but it does seem to suggest a rather dysfunctional view of the written language. Punctuation, particularly quotation marks, help make a text easier for the reader to follow. I can think of some authors who would be completely unreadable without quotation marks.

Its been a while since I last tried to read McCarthy, but I suspect that even his writing could be made clearer if he started using quotation marks (at the very least it indicates the difference between a direct and indirect quote).

--
Bill

[bill_mchale]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Understood.

I just don't view them as errors if it is done intentionally. I'm also sure the approval process was anything but tacit... I'm sure he had to fight tooth and nail with editors and publishers to get it printed the way he wanted.

My personal thought on this would be that the case would be stronger if this was a device that McCarthy adopted for a particular book. When you do it for all your books, to me, that is simply an affectation or a quirk that doesn't do a whole lot for his writing except make it harder to read.

--
Bill

[queentess]

While I didn't like the book, I will agree that the lack of punctuation gave it a certain tone and lent to the starkness of the story. I rather liked the style once I got into it.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by bill_mchale

I don't think that quote implies ignorance or laziness, but it does seem to suggest a rather dysfunctional view of the written language.

Oh, I don't doubt it! I'm of the impression that McCarthy suffers from a form of artistic insanity in the first place, so a dysfunctional view of the written language would be in keeping with that.

I'm OK if people hate his work... I suspect it falls squarely under the "love it or hate it" umbrella. I get that. Believe me, no one is more surprised that I enjoy his work more than I am! It's outright dismissal of his talent that tends to raise my hackles (not that I think that's what you've done).

When there's some author's style or body of work that just rubs me the wrong way -- and I can't (for the life of me) understand why so many others like it -- I remind myself it's just possible, that it may be due to a defect of my own.

[queentess]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

When there's some author's style or body of work that just rubs me the wrong way -- and I can't (for the life of me) understand why so many others like it -- I remind myself it's just possible, that it may be due to a defect of my own.

That's a little harsh. Why does it have to be a defect? Why not just a personal preference? As in "I prefer not to read this steaming pile".

[bill_mchale]

So does this mean that Dan Brown might be a great artist?

No offense, but in general, I find that much about how the way the literary elite, indeed the artistic elite in general has developed in the last 50-60 years has generally seemed to embrace the breaking of artistic conventions as art in and of itself. I.e., stuff I have seen literature critics write suggest to me that many of them don't care if the author they are critiquing can write a story (indeed, in some cases, seem to look down at the author if their work has a plot!) if the language is pretty or unusual enough.

--
Bill

[Simon Wood]

The odd or lack of punctuation is a style choice.

I'm about a quarter of the way through and if I'm being honest, I'm not feeling it. :-/

[DiapDealer]

That's a little harsh. Why does it have to be a defect? Why not just a personal preference?

Personal preference is a perfect explanation for why I don't like something. But it doesn't suffice to explain why I would question why others like it (or why I would automatically assume the author must be deficient)... therein lies the defect.