Earlier this month I read The Cider House Rules. The years in the book were 192_, 193_, etc. I thought that was unusal.
Two books later it was Frankenstein (an older book). The years were 17__.
Then I read stories by Edgar Allen Poe (older stories). The years were 17__. Side note: He also would also use underscores in names, such as Mr. G_____.
Is this common (and maybe now I’m noticing it)? Was this more common in older books? Why is this done?
For The Cider House Rules, this made sense because the book broken down into different eras and so when he put 192_ you knew the age of the characters. But that didn’t apply in the other books.
It was common in the 19th century. It was used to imply that the events of the story actually happened to a real person, but the dashes (not generally underscores) were used to disguise things to protect the innocent.
The practice has faded away, though it’s occasionally used for effect.
The most recently I can remember seeing this used is in Nobuhiko Ôbayashi’s Kawaii Akuma (1982) where the opening title sets the film in Summer 197X Japan.
Okay. Makes sense to me. It was more common in the past. And John Irving used this because it made sense for that particular book. And I just happened to read two older books (for Halloween) and the John Irvin book close to each other. Thanks.
Yeah. As I recall, in Crime and Punishment, events are described as happening on M_ street, etc.
I read alot of old Brit Lit, and where I see this the most is with proper names.
In addition to verisimilitude by implying redacted details, it’s frequently used in dates (usually with X, not a dash) to give a fuzzy timeline, to smooth over anachronisms (if set near the present or in the past) or prevent ‘where’s my damn hoverboard?’ moments if set in the near future.
I’ve been using underscores all my life and it’s never gotten me a date.
So we could say you’re…
…
…
…under*scoring?
I get a bit annoyed when I’m reading a book where the obfuscated dates aren’t used consistently. I remember reading one book that mentioned events happening in 1827, five years later in 183-, then three years later in 18-- (e.g.).
I’m a little embarrassed to have instantly recalled this but I can beat a 1982 cite. The 1988 Nintendo NES game Double Dragon II has the following text during a cut scene:
“In the year 199X, violence ruled the streets of New York after the nuclear war.”
I suppose a video game for children (and adults, too) predicting the year a nuclear holocaust is set to occur might be in poor taste.
I’ve seen it used for both dates and names in non-fiction; primarily autobiographies from the 1800s.
Sometimes there’s a sense that the author explicitly wanted to protect somebody’s privacy; other times I’ve gotten the impression that the author simply wanted to leave certain facts a little bit fuzzy for whatever reason.