The Road, by Cormac McCarthy

[Foxbat]

The one thing I cannot wrap my head around is whyhe chose to suppress all the apostrophes when contracting negations ("cant", "wont", "isnt" etc.) Is that a thing?

It most definitely is.

I once attended a class given by an ‘award winning‘ Scottish writer (I’ve never read any of her work) and she handed out a piece of work for us to critique (not her own work). When it came to me, I told her how much I disliked it‘s lack of punctuation. Words are about communication, I continued, and it seemed crazy to me to deliberately garble that communication by omitting things that make it easier for us to discern narrative and dialogue etc. I also used the word ‘pretentious’. The writer did not look happy and I could feel the daggers coming from her eyes. I was told later on that omitting punctuation was her ‘thing’ too.

 

[The Crawling Chaos]

It most definitely is.

I once attended a class given by an ‘award winning‘ Scottish writer (I’ve never read any of her work) and she handed out a piece of work for us to critique (not her own work). When it came to me, I told her how much I disliked it‘s lack of punctuation. Words are about communication, I continued, and it seemed crazy to me to deliberately garble that communication by omitting things that make it easier for us to discern narrative and dialogue etc. I also used the word ‘pretentious’. The writer did not look happy and I could feel the daggers coming from her eyes. I was told later on that omitting punctuation was her ‘thing’ too.

Nice anecdote. I see. Well in McCarthy's case, I hear he's quite famous for doing that, and while it didn't bother me overall (although there were a couple of instances where I had to read a dialogue 5 times to make sense of who was saying what), I have to say that this missing apostrophes business seems rather pointless and, yes, pretentious in that 'let's do things differently for the sake of it' way... I wondered if this was something he had only done in The Road and if maybe there was some poetic reasoning behind it all but... no (?).

 

[Toby Frost]

Words are about communication

I agree. It seems to me that the basic purpose of writing is to communicate an idea, even if the idea is only a vague one such as a sense of unease. An idea can be communicated in a lot of different ways, but where the writing contains things - such as bad punctuation - that make communication harder for no gain, something has gone wrong.

 

[HareBrain]

I can see that it might have a point -- absence of normal punctuation (or breaking of other language rules/conventions) can give a sense of things breaking down that might reinforce the feel of the story itself. In other words it is communicating, but not only within the words themselves. Riddley Walker is only great because it is difficult to read (but there's more justification for that because it purports to be a written text from a time of degraded English).

 

[Venusian Broon]

I wondered if this was something he had only done in The Road and if maybe there was some poetic reasoning behind it all but... no (?).

Pretty sure he's written his prose like that since 1965 (his first published work), well before then I assume.

From wikipedia:

McCarthy makes sparse use of punctuation, even replacing most commas with "and" to create polysyndetons. He told Oprah Winfrey that he prefers "simple declarative sentences" and that he uses capital letters, periods, an occasional comma, a colon for setting off a list, but never semicolons. He does not use quotation marks for dialogue and believes there is no reason to "blot the page up with weird little marks"

 

[Ursa major]

Is The Road SFF? Goodreads believes** it is, as it's at #14 in its list of The 100 Most Popular Sci-Fi Books on Goodreads. (I wasn't out to "prove" anything by searching for such a list; the list was mentioned in John Scalzi's most recent blogpost and I thought I'd take a look at it.)

Interestingly enough, #1 on that list is a book that's also been mentioned in this thread: 1984. (And The Handmaid's Tale is at #5.)


** - How the list was created (in a quote from the Goodreads page):

To create our list, we ran the data to reveal the most reviewed books on our site. Additionally, each title needed at least a 3.5-star rating from your fellow readers to join this list. And, since science fiction is known for its continuing voyages, in the case of multiple titles from the same series, we chose the one with the most reviews.

 

[HareBrain]

He does not use quotation marks for dialogue and believes there is no reason to "blot the page up with weird little marks"

Oh, well, bang goes my attempt at justification.

 

[Venusian Broon]

Oh, well, bang goes my attempt at justification.

Well he does seem to write a certain type of story (i.e. mostly pretty messed up and broken ) , so I think your justification could remain valid.

I'm not sure his stylings would work on an Enid Blyton Secret Seven type of story, for example.

 

[Toby Frost]

Don't tempt me.