Kathryn Schulz wrote a great little listicle for Vulture called “The 5 Best Punctuation Marks in Literature,” which discusses, for example, Nabokov’s hilarious parentheses and George Eliot’s superb em-dash. Do you all have any favorite uses of exclamation marks, ampersands, ellipses, et cetera? It could be in prose, poetry, or something else entirely.
The first great punctuation that sprang to my mind was Clarice Lispector’s enigmatic six em-dashes after the last sentence of The Passion According to G.H.:
What are they doing there? Why are there six, and not five, or seven? Is it meant to denote the continuation of the narrator’s existence after the final sentence, or the end of it? Does it stand in for a missing sentence or word? Does she finally, and completely stop understanding her self-expression?
Ian Fleming, in Moonraker (1955), Bond is calling upon M at a social club, and he is identified as “Admiral Sir M---- M-------” A decade later, in The Man With the Golden Gun, M is identified as Admiral Sir Miles Messervy, and the blanks are filled in exactly right.
Not exactly literature, but Ben Franklin (hey, it’s his birthday today!) wrote a letter to a friend in London in the mid-1770s as the Revolution loomed, and concluded his letter with:
Nope. Nobody wants to ask his name. It reminds me of the Victorian(?) novel fashion where they would blank out even fictional characters’ names. Of course, there is a TVTrope.
There was a piece I read somewhere about Russian writers and their favourite punctuation marks, and how it expressed their styles. I remember Bely and Gogol being mentioned, as well as a couple others, but I can’t remember any details at all. It may have even been something Nabokov wrote about Russian writers – I just don’t know.
I feel it may be relevant to this discussion, but unfortunately I can’t locate it right now. Does anyone know what I am talking about and/or can find it?
Im not sure if I like Cormac McCarthys no apostrophe affectation and wouldnt think someone of Irish ancestry would discard such an important piece of writers punctuation.
“After dinner, the men moved into the living room.” A sentence of Thurber’s, edited by Harold Ross. I’ll always love that comma for the laugh it gave me via Thurber’s explanation.
McCarthy also has the habit of pushing together two words when they have one meeting. Examples: sockfeet, machinegun. It’s sort of interesting to track while you’re reading him.
