Cormac McCarthy: no apostrophes = distracting

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Enterprise

Hhhm. First, no, you did not say “it appeals to you and works for you,” you said it was a stylistic device which was successful at relating a certain larger concept of the work and, as such, was justified.

Maybe you think you can drive me to madness by making me question reality. Fortunately, I can just scroll up:

@me

The apostrophe/quotation mark thing doesn’t really bother me.
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Like Dio, I think it conveys a sense of spare-ness to the prose, a punctuational nod to the lack of fripperies in the lives of his characters.
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I felt that this stylistic antiflourish gives his writing a bit of flavor.
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The lack of apostrophes, of quotation marks, somehow emphasizes that for me:
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But those of us who like him like him for genuine reasons, not because we’re trying to seem cool.

@Enterprise

Second, I thought we are arguing on that basis

I didn’t even think an argument is appropriate. What you do think, you’re going to convince me I didn’t like him after all, or that maybe I liked him, but my reasons for liking him were shitty and insufficient? I thought instead we were talking about him and our reactions to him.

[Enterprise]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

Maybe you think you can drive me to madness by making me question reality. Fortunately, I can just scroll up:

But not particularly well, it doesn’t seem. You wrote:

It’s not that his style emphasizes some sort of lack of frippery (what you’re calling pretentionlessness). Rather, the style emphasizes the characters’ lack of frippery.

If this isn’t a categorical statement of poetic effect, I don’t know what else would be.

He doesn’t tend to write about showmen, about glamor girls, about glitz and dazzle. He writes about hardscrabble people living hardscrabble lives, struggling to keep their heads above water. His characters don’t have much luxury. The lack of apostrophes, of quotation marks, somehow emphasizes that for me: it makes his characters feel extra-spare. He engages in stylistic choices that draw attention to themselves precisely in order to emphasize this aspect of the characters.

I didn’t even think an argument is appropriate. What you do think, you’re going to convince me I didn’t like him after all, or that maybe I liked him, but my reasons for liking him were shitty and insufficient? I thought instead we were talking about him and our reactions to him.

If a literary argument is not appropriate in the discussion of literature, and all that’s to be said is “well, works for me,” that’s a bit sad. As I said, I was thinking we were at a somewhat more advanced level than that, but apparently not. Sorry about that, then.

But yes, incidentally: if you feel the characters are extra spare because McCarthy doesn’t use quotation marks (and since he never uses them, that would then mean ALL his characters are spare?), but don’t feel they are oddly capable of poetic reflection and understanding of Latinate or other obscure languages and concepts, then you actually are missing part of what’s going on, to answer your question. You are missing something that the text does.

Anyway, we can drop it here.