Question about Cormac McCarthy's style and prose

[Indian Boy]

I've just finished reading three books by Cormac McCarthy, The Road, Outer Darkness, Child of God, and now I'm about to begin Blood Meridian. I find his style pretty interesting and unique. He doesn't use any quotation marks around any of his dialogue. I have two questions. First, does anybody know of any other authors who don't use quotation marks around dialogue, and second I was just wondering what other peoples opinions were of Cormac McCarthy as an author.

[dfloyd]

James Joyce for one. I don't know about this authors style, but the stream of conscious authors didn't use them.

[shortstoryfan]

I've never read a Cormac McCarthy book. I tried to read The Road, but found it impossible, because I couldn't keep from crying. I wasn't even twenty pages into the book. I think that pretty much sums up what I think of him as an author.

[sixsmith]

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[mayneverhave]

James Joyce for one. I don't know about this authors style, but the stream of conscious authors didn't use them.

I wouldn't link this to the fact that he often employs the stream of consciousness technique. Joyce uses a dash at the start of a sentence to mark it as dialogue, and it is up to the reader to decide when the actual speech ends and a description of the speech begins (sometimes an annoying process). As this dialogue marking technique is used throughout Ulysses, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Dubliners, and the stream of consciousness is not, I would say its just a Joycean idiosyncrasy instead of anything necessarily associated with the stream of consciousness.

Apparently Joyce simply found the quotation mark an eyesore.

[Indian Boy]

i seem to remember 'Child of God' as being a rather blatant Faulkner pastiche


Can you elaborate on that comment please? Why and how is 'Child of God' a pastiche of Faulkner? Because its plot involves dead corpses? Is that it? I don't think it's very fair to say that. 'Child of God' is an original piece of literature, interesting and comical throughout.

[Lokasenna]

I don't think Daniel Defoe used quotation marks (he certainly didn't in Moll Flanders). I've never read it, but I'm sure a friend once told me that Alice Walker's The Color Purple didn't have them either.

[Barbarous]

I wouldn't link this to the fact that he often employs the stream of consciousness technique. Joyce uses a dash at the start of a sentence to mark it as dialogue, and it is up to the reader to decide when the actual speech ends and a description of the speech begins (sometimes an annoying process). As this dialogue marking technique is used throughout Ulysses, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Dubliners, and the stream of consciousness is not, I would say its just a Joycean idiosyncrasy instead of anything necessarily associated with the stream of consciousness.

Apparently Joyce simply found the quotation mark an eyesore.

I don't think Joyce leaves quotations marks out to leave a choice for the reader to decide what is apparently said (or not said) because what is said is actually said, there is little interpreting to do. You mentioned Ulysses, one of my favorite books, so he is an example of what I'm explaining. It's towards the end of the Nestor episode.

"Stephen jerked his thumb towards the window, saying: -- That is God
Hooray! Ay! Whrrwhee!
-- What? Mr Deasy asked.
-- A shout in the street, Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders."

You know Dedalus is talking and you know exactly what is said. Stephen did not say "A shout in the street, shrugging his shoulders", he simply said a shout in the street. Interpreting dialogue in Joyce, I have found is really only needed when the situation is dense. The interpreting is not needed to understand what is being said, but what is going on besides this dialogue. After reading Joyce's major works twice over, I can say I haven't ran into the process of picking and choosing as you have, only because I definitely don't think that's the reason why Joyce chose to ostracize quotation marks. I definitely agree with you when you spoke of it being due to Joyce being Joyce and NOT apart of this stream-of-consciousness vogue.

To answer the threadstarter's question, William Gaddis often encompasses this abstract use of dialogue in his works. I also want to say Thomas Pynchon explores a similar style in Gravity's Rainbow, at times, though I could be wrong. Pynchon employs the usual use of quotation marks in the piece I've just mentioned more times than he would the Joycean method, let's call it. Also, Saramago's Blindness doesn't really use any quotation marks

[Poutine]

I believe that Zora Neale Hurston doesn't use quotation marks in her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God.

I've never read any of Cormac McCarthy's novels but I've heard great things about his work, especially Blood Meridian, which I thought I'd mention, as it's coincidentally the next on your list.

Happy reading :)

[Indian Boy]

Just thought I'd add to the list. Junot Diaz, author of Drown, never uses quotation marks around dialogue.

I'm still unsure whether I really like this 'no quotation marks' style or whether I hate it.

I'm wondering what other people think about it? Do you find it confusing because you don't really know whether it's dialogue or not at the beginning of the sentence? Or do you think it's effective? Or maybe you think it doesn't really make a difference?

[Modest Proposal]

I think most of the artists who chose it, Indian Boy, are talented enough enough to get things across. I can't imagine that a publisher would let through such a novel if the author hadn't both proven themself and made sure that the particular book 'worked'.

[TheFifthElement]

Jose Saramago doesn't use quotation marks. In fact his dialogue is pretty difficult to follow because he doesn't separate it out at all. I'll give you an example, from The Cave, this is a conversation between Cipriano Algor and his daughter Marta:

Right then, he said, I'll choose one and then you choose one until we've got six, but remember we have to bear in mind the ease of the work and the known or presumed taste of our customers, OK, you begin, The jester, said the father, The clown said the daughter, The nurse, said the father, The Eskimo, said the daughter, The mandarin, said the father, The naked man, said the daughter, No, you can't choose the naked man, you'll have to choose another one, the Center won't want a naked man, Why not, Well because he's naked, The naked woman then, That's even worse, But she's covering herself up, Covering yourself up like that is worse than showing everything, How come you know so much about the subject, Because I've lived, I've looked, I've read and I've felt, What does reading do, You can learn almost everything from reading, But I read too, So you must know something,

[Basil Valentine]

I believe Irvine Welsh also does without quotation marks, though I've not read any of his work...

As for McCarthy... the first of his that I read was 'Blood Meridian', which I loved (it remains one of my favourite modern novels). I've since read all of his other novels except 'Suttree' and haven't found any of them as compelling as BM.

I remember after reading the three 'Border' novels, I actually started to feel a bit tired of his style, but I'm still interested enough that I'll likely read anything else he publishes.

I'm another big 'Ulysses'/'Dubliners' fan, but I can't say I feel that Joyce's style would have been much affected had he used quotation marks. I guess it would maybe feel more formal and less free-flowing... I remember reading something about why Joyce chose to do without them, but can't recall exactly what it was...

[Basil Valentine]

I found the comments from Joyce concerning quotation marks - he found them "most unsightly", "an eyesore" and said that they give "an impression of unreality".

It's worth mentioning that, when the first edition of Dubliners (1250 copies) was finally published, quotation marks were included at the insistence of the publisher, Grant Richards.