The Three Punctuation Rules of Cormac McCarthy (RIP), and How They All Go Back to James Joyce

Cor­mac McCarthy has been—as one 1965 review­er of his first nov­el, The Orchard Keep­er, dubbed him—a “dis­ci­ple of William Faulkn­er.” He makes admirable use of Faulkner­ian traits in his prose, and I’d always assumed he inher­it­ed his punc­tu­a­tion style from Faulkn­er as well. But in his very rare 2008 tele­vised inter­view with Oprah Win­frey, McCarthy cites two oth­er antecedents: James Joyce and for­got­ten nov­el­ist MacKin­lay Kan­tor, whose Ander­son­ville won the Pulitzer Prize in 1955. Joyce’s influ­ence dom­i­nates, and in dis­cus­sion of punc­tu­a­tion, McCarthy stress­es that his min­i­mal­ist approach works in the inter­est of max­i­mum clar­i­ty. Speak­ing of Joyce, he says,

James Joyce is a good mod­el for punc­tu­a­tion. He keeps it to an absolute min­i­mum. There’s no rea­son to blot the page up with weird lit­tle marks. I mean, if you write prop­er­ly you shouldn’t have to punc­tu­ate.

So what “weird lit­tle marks” does McCarthy allow, or not, and why? Below is a brief sum­ma­ry of his stat­ed rules for punc­tu­a­tion:

1. Quo­ta­tion Marks:

McCarthy does­n’t use ’em. In his Oprah inter­view, he says MacKin­lay Kan­tor was the first writer he read who left them out. McCarthy stress­es that this way of writ­ing dia­logue requires par­tic­u­lar delib­er­a­tion. Speak­ing of writ­ers who have imi­tat­ed him, he says, “You real­ly have to be aware that there are no quo­ta­tion marks, and write in such a way as to guide peo­ple as to who’s speak­ing.” Oth­er­wise, con­fu­sion reigns.

2. Colons and semi­colons:

Care­ful McCarthy read­er Oprah says she “saw a colon once” in McCarthy’s prose, but she nev­er encoun­tered a semi­colon. McCarthy con­firms: “No semi­colons.”

Of the colon, he says: “You can use a colon, if you’re get­ting ready to give a list of some­thing that fol­lows from what you just said. Like, these are the rea­sons.” This is a spe­cif­ic occa­sion that does not present itself often. The colon, one might say, gen­u­flects to a very spe­cif­ic log­i­cal devel­op­ment, enu­mer­a­tion. McCarthy deems most oth­er punc­tu­a­tion uses need­less.

3. All oth­er punc­tu­a­tion:

Aside from his restric­tive rationing of the colon, McCarthy declares his styl­is­tic con­vic­tions with sim­plic­i­ty: “I believe in peri­ods, in cap­i­tals, in the occa­sion­al com­ma, and that’s it.” It’s a dis­ci­pline he learned first in a col­lege Eng­lish class, where he worked to sim­pli­fy 18th cen­tu­ry essays for a text­book the pro­fes­sor was edit­ing. Ear­ly mod­ern Eng­lish is noto­ri­ous­ly clut­tered with con­found­ing punc­tu­a­tion, which did not become stan­dard­ized until com­par­a­tive­ly recent­ly.

McCarthy, enam­ored of the prose style of the Neo­clas­si­cal Eng­lish writ­ers but annoyed by their over-reliance on semi­colons, remem­bers par­ing down an essay “by Swift or some­thing” and hear­ing his pro­fes­sor say, “this is very good, this is exact­ly what’s need­ed.” Encour­aged, he con­tin­ued to sim­pli­fy, work­ing, he says to Oprah, “to make it eas­i­er, not to make it hard­er” to deci­pher his prose. For those who find McCarthy some­times mad­den­ing­ly opaque, this state­ment of intent may not help clar­i­fy things much. But lovers of his work may find renewed appre­ci­a­tion for his stream­lined syn­tax.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Wern­er Her­zog Reads From Cor­mac McCarthy’s All the Pret­ty Hors­es

Sev­en Tips From William Faulkn­er on How to Write Fic­tion

David Fos­ter Wal­lace Breaks Down Five Com­mon Word Usage Mis­takes in Eng­lish

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness


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  • Wager says:

    Punc­tu­a­tion is like the beams in a house: the beams are there to sup­port the struc­ture of the house, to pre­vent it from falling into dis­ar­ray and to give an added lev­el in the house. An excess of beams, if artis­ti­cal­ly fash­ioned, can be passed off as pil­lars, which are essen­tial­ly super­flu­ous but help the onlook­er to rec­og­nize that, yes, this is indeed a house.
    Punc­tu­a­tion was not a whim­si­cal inven­tion con­ceived by our long-wind­ed prog­en­i­tors in order to ham­per lit­er­a­ture. Quite the oppo­site, in fact: punc­tu­a­tion serves as a clar­i­fi­er and a speech-guide.
    Of course, one can argue that the less punc­tu­a­tion one uses, the more skill one has a writer in order to pull this stunt off. How­ev­er, this brings us to the gold­en rule in writ­ing: the more straight-for­ward one writes, the bet­ter the style. A straight line from A to B is quick­er and eas­i­er to fol­low than a con­vo­lut­ed chain of twists and turns.

    Bot­tom line: punc­tu­a­tion should nei­ther be want­i­ng nor in abun­dance, unless one is shoot­ing for a par­tic­u­lar style. I use punc­tu­a­tion where punc­tu­a­tion is gram­mat­i­cal­ly nec­es­sary or styl­is­ti­cal­ly or con­tex­tu­al­ly use­ful, and, as a writer, I will not go out of my way to dash out a com­ma, a pair of quo­ta­tion marks or even a semi­colon.

    • Chris Fortney says:

      “How­ev­er, this brings us to the gold­en rule in writ­ing: the more straight-for­ward one writes, the bet­ter the style.“nnnnYou should take your own advice.

  • lhjasie says:

    If you’re a gram­mar geek and enjoyed this arti­cle, you’ll enjoy read­ing this Cul­tureMap I found at Median­der titled “Prop­er Punc­tu­a­tion and its Ene­mies” http://goo.gl/JdzQJZ

  • Nigel Grant says:

    A well-punc­tu­at­ed piece.

  • E says:

    McCarthy’s first book is titled ‘The Orchard Keep­er’ not ‘The Orchard Tree’

  • Hugh_C says:

    I thought I’d just chuck in an addi­tion­al oblique Irish ref­er­ence which is that the famous gay Irish Nation­al­ist Roger Case­ment was hanged in 1916 osten­si­bly on a com­ma. Poor Roger was con­vict­ed of trea­son car­ried out in Ger­many but on the detec­tion of a vir­ule, a pro­to­type com­ma, in the medieval act cov­er­ing trea­son writ­ten in Nor­man French, the inter­pre­ta­tion was such that he was found guilty.

    I was attempt­ing not to use punc­tu­a­tion in the above ;)

    • Ulysses says:

      Why would you feel a need to bleat out that Case­ment, a true patri­ot, was gay? What pos­si­ble rel­e­vance has it, true or oth­er­wise ??nnNote the excess use of punc­tu­a­tion. Your mind­less post has dri­ven me to it.

  • Mike Mellor says:

    Writ­ten lan­guage has grown clos­er and clos­er to spo­ken lan­guage. Many read­ers includ­ing myself, like to see a com­ma where a speak­er would pause briefly in deliv­ery. Con­fus­ing­ly, the “com­ma pause” of most speak­ers is iden­ti­cal to their “peri­od pause” and their speech is deliv­ered as one long sen­tence. I think that Cor­mac McCarthy wants to emu­late spo­ken lan­guage as close­ly as he can. That, I believe, is the moti­va­tion for the long sen­tences that typ­i­fy the McCarthy style.

    I would have pre­ferred McCarthy to use com­mas more. To me, a long sen­tence with­out com­mas sug­gests a dron­ing monot­o­ne.

  • Marcia Turnquist says:

    This arti­cle has giv­en me much to think about. I adored McCarthy’s The Road, found it haunt­ing­ly beau­ti­ful and about as close to poet­ry as prose gets. How­ev­er, on the sub­ject of quo­ta­tion marks in par­tic­u­lar, I’m not sold.

    How do you, for instance, dis­tin­guish the dif­fer­ence between an author’s para­phrase and word-for-word dia­logue? In some cas­es, it makes a dif­fer­ence. I’m think­ing mys­tery writ­ing in par­tic­u­lar, but also per­haps in draw­ing dif­fer­ences between nar­ra­tors and char­ac­ters.

    And here’s where the ques­tion applies direct­ly to my own writ­ing: My first nov­el (still being shopped around) is part­ly told through let­ters that orig­i­nal­ly did NOT include quo­ta­tions around dia­logue. There are many let­ters, btw, that cov­er a span of sev­er­al years.

    My sense in writ­ing it that way to begin with was that let­ter writ­ers don’t tend to com­pose like authors, but to tell a sto­ry through their own voic­es, typ­i­cal­ly para­phras­ing oth­ers com­ments. With­out the quo­ta­tion marks, though, it became dif­fi­cult sometimes–and unnat­ur­al, actually–to show where dia­logue end­ed and the let­ter writer’s thoughts resumed. It also felt lim­it­ing in how detailed I could be with events, etc. in the sto­ry told through the let­ters. I actu­al­ly got com­ments to this effect from read­ers.

    I end­ed up test­ing both styles on mul­ti­ple read­ers and got a con­sen­sus that the quotes added clar­i­ty. And so far no new read­ers have men­tioned them as feel­ing unnat­ur­al with­in the let­ters. On the oth­er hand, it could be the skill of the writer, mean­ing me!

    If any of you have thoughts on this, I would love to hear them.

  • Kjell says:

    Does any­one else find it ter­ri­fy­ing to write and arti­cle like this or even com­ment on it? One slip of a gram­mat­i­cal nature and any­thing you write goes up in smoke.

  • As a writer, I find those punc­tu­a­tion rules rather restric­tive and would inevitably con­fuse his poor read­ers. Rules are good where appro­pri­ate, not in extreme.

  • Petar says:

    And this is pre­cise­ly the rea­son I some­times lose enjoy­ment of McCarthy’s work: a lack of punc­tu­a­tion.

    Let’s see what punc­tu­a­tion can do!

    where james had had had john had had had had had had had had the teach­ers approval

    Now with punc­tu­a­tion.

    Where James had had ‘had’, John had had ‘had had’. ‘Had had’ had had the teacher’s approval.

  • MIchael says:

    McCarthy is an amaz­ing writer. The Road is, as some­one wrote above, damn near poet­ry. And the style of the book’s writ­ing is eeri­ly suit­ed to the sub­ject mat­ter.

    I can­not agree that all writ­ing should be this way. Not all sto­ries have the same tone or feel. Not all char­ac­ters would/should speak in short, clipped sen­tences. And I think vary­ing sen­tence length can often strength­en a piece of writ­ing, more­so than aim­ing for tyran­ni­cal con­sis­ten­cy.

  • Syn-Fi says:

    I just picked up ‘on the road’ and noticed the absence of com­mas straight­way and thought I would turn this issue up, on the web to see if this was inten­tion­al. For exam­ple ‘…the word of God God nev­er spoke ’ p5 needs punc­tu­a­tion so as to yield any mean­ing.

    • Joe says:

      On the Road is by Jack Ker­ouac and ‘the word of God God nev­er spoke’ does­n’t need any sort of punc­tu­a­tion. It’s under­stand­able as it is and only a fool would think oth­er­wise.

  • Trogdor The Burninator says:

    you seem upset

  • IWearShoes says:

    If only you knew that the com­ma went before the quo­ta­tion mark.

  • Jane Haze says:

    McCarthy wrote Blood Merid­i­an which is one of the great­est books of the mod­ern age. He can do what he’d like with punc­tu­a­tion. It’s like Dick Dale play­ing a gui­tar upside down, with­out revers­ing the strings — sure, it’s wrong, but he makes it work. McCarthy makes it work. If you want to live with­out quo­ta­tion marks and com­mas, go ahead. I bet he does­n’t take cream or sug­ar in his cof­fee either.

  • Jane Haze says:

    McCarthy wrote Blood Merid­i­an which is one of the great­est books of the mod­ern age. He can do what he’d like with punc­tu­a­tion. It’s like Dick Dale play­ing a gui­tar upside down, with­out revers­ing the strings — sure, it’s wrong, but he makes it work. McCarthy makes it work. If you want to live with­out quo­ta­tion marks and com­mas, go ahead. I bet he does­n’t take cream or sug­ar in his cof­fee either.

  • Yes but we can hard­ly for­give his Yahoo bowd­leris­ing of Swift.

  • Crunchy says:

    Pro­vid­ing very min­i­mal punc­tu­a­tion but instead rely­ing on the nat­ur­al rhythms of sen­tences is fre­quent­ly a crap shoot. Writ­ing with fair­ly gen­er­ous punc­tu­a­tion, although maybe not easy on the eyes, is more than like­ly to assist with com­pre­hen­sion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

  • Guest says:

    What a blow hard. The rules of punc­tu­a­tion are not sub­ject to inter­pre­ta­tion. I nev­er read a book which inspired me to keep ask­ing, “Dang, these quo­ta­tion marks are sure con­fus­ing me as to who is sup­posed to be speak­ing.” The semi-colon is a per­fect­ly friend­ly punc­tu­a­tion mark; it lets two depen­dent claus­es with warm feel­ing towards each oth­er snug­gle up a bit.

  • Guest says:

    What a blow hard. The rules of punc­tu­a­tion are not sub­ject to inter­pre­ta­tion. I nev­er read a book which inspired me to keep say­ing, “Dang, these quo­ta­tion marks are sure con­fus­ing me as to who is sup­posed to be speak­ing.” The semi-colon is a per­fect­ly friend­ly punc­tu­a­tion mark; it lets two depen­dent claus­es with warm feel­ing towards each oth­er snug­gle up a bit.

  • David says:

    What a blow hard. The rules of punc­tu­a­tion are not sub­ject to inter­pre­ta­tion. I nev­er read a book which inspired me to keep ask­ing, “Dang, these quo­ta­tion marks are sure con­fus­ing me as to who is sup­posed to be speak­ing.” The semi-colon is a per­fect­ly friend­ly punc­tu­a­tion mark; it lets two depen­dent claus­es with warm feel­ings towards each oth­er snug­gle up a bit.

  • David says:

    What a blow hard. The rules of punc­tu­a­tion are not sub­ject to inter­pre­ta­tion. I nev­er read a book which inspired me to keep say­ing, “Dang, these quo­ta­tion marks are sure con­fus­ing me as to who is sup­posed to be speak­ing.” The semi-colon is a per­fect­ly friend­ly punc­tu­a­tion mark; it lets two depen­dent claus­es with warm feel­ings towards each oth­er snug­gle up a bit.

  • Seth says:

    You pre­scrip­tive gram­mar­i­an types, always eat­ing the shell and spit­ting out the ker­nel. McCarthy is one of the great­est and most orig­i­nal writ­ers of the last cen­tu­ry. He makes his style work and work bril­liant­ly. Mean­while, you’re pedan­ti­cal­ly con­cerned with a lack of quo­ta­tion marks?

  • Jason Parker says:

    Toss­ing The Ele­ments of Style into the trash right now.

  • Dave says:

    “Then they set out along the black­top in the gun­metal light, shuf­fling through the ash, each the oth­er’s world entire.”
    “By day the ban­ished sun cir­cles the earth like a griev­ing moth­er with a lamp.”
    “And on the far shore a crea­ture that raised its drip­ping mouth from the rim­stone pool and stared into the light with eyes dead white and sight­less as the eggs of spi­ders”

    About every 2–3 pages Cor­mac pens a bomb­shell of a sen­tence, and I stop in won­der of it. In read­ing The Road I became the third per­son with them in the sto­ry. I would try to fig­ure out how did he write like this. I look for books that do this but noth­ing. Like one review­er I saw, wrote: I. Love. This. Book. Show­ing the short sentenes Cor­mac uses. Can’t find any fic­tion that comes near this.

  • Ted Fontenot says:

    I don’t know about los­ing quo­ta­tion marks. I can’t help but wor­ry about what eschew­ing quo­ta­tion marks would do to some real­ly great writ­ers of dialogue–like Mark Twain or P. G. Wode­house, for instance.

  • disqus_XTHANTE8GH says:

    I’m cur­rent­ly read­ing The Road, and at first I was tak­en aback by McCarthy’s lack of punc­tu­a­tion. I’ve nev­er read any of his nov­els, so the style is a lit­tle jar­ring. It’s unlike any­thing I’ve read before.

  • Chad Butler says:

    there’s a semi-colon in the orchard keep­er

  • Michael Hughes says:

    Let us all heed the Very Impor­tant Man and his not-at-all arbi­trary points on punc­tu­a­tion.

  • Daniel Vian says:

    Some of McCarthy is good, some of it bad. The bad stuff reads like an affec­ta­tion to achieve “lit­er­ary val­ue”. When­ev­er he sac­ri­fices clar­i­ty for the sake of lit­er­ary val­ue, it’s a screw-up. When­ev­er you’re stopped because you don’t know if some­one said the words or thought them, it’s a screw-up. He strives too much to be lit­er­ary when he ought to strive for clar­i­ty.

  • Alexander says:

    Petar’s exam­ple above is not an issue with punc­tu­a­tion, but instead with lex­i­cal vari­ety.

    Where James had had ‘had’, John had had ‘had had’. ‘Had had’ had had the teacher’s approval.

    What if we used more mean­ing­ful vari­ety and main­tained Cor­mac McCarthy’s punc­tu­a­tion styl­is­tics?

    Where James wrote had, John wrote had had. Had had won the teacher’s approval.

  • Matt says:

    “McCarthy doesn’t use ‘em.”

    “‘em” should use this style apos­tro­phe, ’em.

    Not the one you used, ‘em.

    I hope I’m in the cor­rect venue for such mat­ters. :)

  • AW says:

    Punc­tu­a­tion is an inter­est­ing top­ic for some read­ers. How­ev­er, before the writer of the arti­cle dives into that…he should prob­a­bly dou­ble check the title of McCarthy’s first nov­el.

  • marsh outlaw says:

    This arti­cle is high­ly punc­tu­at­ed…

  • mike says:

    Orchard Keep­er

  • Avery says:

    It’s said that you have to know the rules before you can break them.

    The punc­tu­a­tion thing is some­thing that gets me. I do think it’s sup­posed to relate how the dia­logue is the sto­ry by merg­ing it with the rest of the text. I recall an Eng­lish teacher of mine tell me that you should describe char­ac­ter inter­ac­tions more through dia­logue, show­ing the emo­tion through the con­ver­sa­tion than telling it through prose, but McCarthy’s lack of quo­ta­tions revers­es this con­cept, by mak­ing it car­ry the same weight.

    Also, while read­ing Blood Merid­i­an, I was tak­en back by his use of mul­ti­ple “ands” in a sen­tence. I had thought it was bad gram­mar, but real­ized dur­ing the Kid and the two cor­po­rals jour­ney through San Anto­nio that it’s the equiv­a­lent of a long shot in film. Instead of break­ing it up into eas­i­ly-digestible per-sen­tence pieces, McCarthy uses the mul­ti­ple con­junc­tions to over­whelm the read­er in one go. The best exam­ple is the Com­manche ambush, which has almost one-page sen­tences, which hits the audi­ence all at once. So much is hap­pen­ing that the read­er not being able to process all of it, resem­bling the shock the Kid and Cap­tain White’s fil­i­busters are expe­ri­enc­ing.

  • Charles Fleeman says:

    Two inde­pen­dent claus­es sep­a­rat­ed by a com­ma can be a beau­ti­ful thing. Long unpunc­tu­at­ed sen­tences may offer a styl­is­tic effect, breath­less speech or inten­si­ty, for exam­ple, but too much of any­thing can be monot­o­nous, fatigu­ing, art­less.

  • Nate says:

    Can every­one please just accept that his style works for some peo­ple and not for oth­ers?

    That’s real­ly what every­thing boils down to, just say­ing.

  • Bud says:

    Oh, is that right? Judg­ing from your exper­tise you must be a real­ly bril­liant writer.

  • Colon says:

    Actu­al­ly what you are doing there is wrong, and should instead be punc­tu­at­ed with a colon as you are devel­op­ing what came before it: using a semi colon is only rec­om­mend­ed for when two sen­tences, of which the lat­ter sen­tence has noth­ing to do with the for­mer, are put togeth­er in a sin­gle sen­tence, joined by the semi colon. Exam­ple: The feroc­i­ty with which the dog bit her was ter­ror­is­ing: it tore through her skin, she felt her­self going faint; the soft­ness with which the cat she had been play­ing with ear­li­er in the day had bit­ten her – which she had mis­tak­en­ly inter­pret­ed as fero­cious – oh how she wished for that now.

  • Colon says:

    Also yes, I under­stand before that my exam­ple was not that good: in this case I was mere­ly exem­pli­fy­ing what I was say­ing, rather than try­ing to cre­ate a lit­er­ary mas­ter­piece in a com­ments forum.

  • J says:

    It’s even more than those three rules. McCarthy leaves out the apos­tro­phes in neg­a­tive con­trac­tions:

    ‘The old man did­nt answer.’

    ‘It got ever oppor­tu­ni­ty. Like­ly it wont.’

    ‘I could­nt tell ye.’

    But he will add the apos­tro­phe in pos­ses­sives, past per­fect and con­di­tion­als:

    ‘These peo­ple cant be far. See if you can find them. And see if there’s any for­age here for the ani­mals.’

    ‘He’d tak­en up a pal­let between Toad­vine and anoth­er Ken­tuck­ian, a vet­er­an of the war.’

    ‘Sproule turned and looked at the kid as if he’d know his thoughts but the kid just shook his head.’

    (exam­ples from Blood Merid­i­an)

  • hey says:

    Seems like a lot of you respond­ing in dis­may to this arti­cle have nev­er both­ered to read a full McCarthy nov­el. I high­ly rec­om­mend Blood Merid­i­an, most like­ly my favorite book of all time. You will then under­stand the pow­er of min­i­miz­ing punc­tu­a­tion, as you can link imagery much more tight­ly togeth­er and forge a land­scape and an active mov­ing scene in your mind. It’s incred­i­ble.

  • Neil Ruddy says:

    Punk Shoe A Shun (haiku) “Write well; all you’ll need — are peri­ods, cap­i­tals — and a few com­mas”

  • uncomfy says:

    why are you so angry

  • Michael says:

    Read Annie Dil­lard’s The Maytrees. Not only is her prose absolute­ly love­ly, and on the lev­el of McCarthy’s IMHO, but she also eschews quo­ta­tion marks. Instead she sim­ply places a dash before dia­logue. Maybe it’s just for visu­al affect, being eas­i­er on the eye than see­ing a slew of marks. I think it works pret­ty nice­ly.

  • Rich says:

    I think the first nov­el was The Orchard Keep­er, not The Orchard Tree.

  • Jon Greene says:

    There’s no such thing as, “I did it because it looked less clut­tered on the page.” In fact, any writer who uses that jus­ti­fi­ca­tion is being face­tious, disin­gen­u­ous, and intends his com­ments only for non-writ­ers because it would be too much of a has­sle to go into the why’s of such a deci­sion, and a writer does not real­ly want to do that. The absence of quo­ta­tions has a very spe­cif­ic mean­ing, and if a writer tells you sim­ply that he/she is doing so because it looks nice (if they real­ly mean so, which I don’t think McCarthy does), then they are wrong. Dead wrong.

    I would go on a dis­qui­si­tion on McCarthy’s deci­sion to do with­out quo­ta­tions for dia­logue, but that knowl­edge is hard won, and I am a stingy son, so I won’t. But do believe that McCarthy has a very good rea­son for his deci­sion. I can’t say so for less­er writ­ers.

  • Granite Sentry says:

    “There’s no rea­son to blot the page up with weird lit­tle marks. I mean, if you write prop­er­ly you shouldn’t have to punc­tu­ate.”

    Yeah. I tried that with my gram­mar teacher in high school. She did­n’t buy it.

  • Faye says:

    Peo­ple are very divi­sive over whether this should or could be a prop­er usage of punc­tu­a­tion, and I think we’re miss­ing the larg­er issue. Gram­mar is not by neces­si­ty pre­scrip­tive. The vari­ety of writ­ers who have cho­sen to use it dif­fer­ent­ly and have become pop­u­lar makes this clear. The issue is whether or not a sto­ry is both read­able and effec­tive in the style in which it’s writ­ten. Cor­mac McCarthy’s sto­ries are both, whether or not you actu­al­ly per­son­al­ly like them. They’re spare vast land­scapes of tales and they use gram­mar just as spar­ing­ly.

    In a clut­tered, city-set sto­ry where a clam­or of peo­ple are all talk­ing at the same time, the main char­ac­ters are all very well edu­cat­ed and there are lots of quick events, it might not work. Or it would­n’t be appro­pri­ate. But I think Cor­mac McCarthy’s more than proven his abil­i­ty with lan­guage.

  • Bunlid says:

    He must nev­er have read Emi­ly Dick­in­son.

  • PriscillaLouise says:

    I’m a aspir­ing writer and have read The Road and Out­er Dark and sev­er­al oth­er McCor­mac nov­els. I nev­er noticed the lack of punc­tu­a­tion in The Road but I did in Out­er Dark. I am in awe of his imag­i­na­tion and writ­ing style. I attend­ed Catholic schools as a kid and lack of punc­tu­a­tion gave you a slap on the knuck­les with a ruler or if you were a boy some­one wear­ing an ankle length black habit and a stiff white col­lar around her neck aka a nun would take hold of the short­hairs on your neck and Pull it. Pull it hard. Whack your knuck­les with a ruler. A ruler with sharp met­al set in the wood. I guess to draw a very straight line or to teach a child a les­son. Bloody knuck­les can scare you straight snd give up your best bud­dy
    The three Bad Boys in Out­er Dark made my skin crawl. Why did they want to destroy inno­cents? I noticed the word ‘revenant’ in the sto­ry and I had just watched ‘The Revenant’
    on demand. I thought of Cor­mac McCarthy and his ter­ri­fy­ing ‘Three Bad Men’.

    Mean­while I’m writ­ing about abuse of ele­phants. Now I am think­ing I’m glad there were no ele­phants around in the
    ‘Out­er Dark’.

  • sianna says:

    my friend once said “I broke up with my girl­friend but she said we can still be cousins”.

  • Poopypants says:

    This arti­cle made me lol out loud

  • Danny Devito says:

    A very intracite arti­cle. I love writ­ing and Jesus!!1!!!!1!111!1111

  • Morning Breath says:

    We are read­ing The Road in class and I love this book. #the­m­anan­dlit­tle­boiFTW

  • Galea says:

    Punc­tu­a­tion makes writ­ing eas­i­er to read. Why make it hard­er for the read­er by elim­i­nat­ing the punc­tu­a­tion? He sounds arro­gant.

  • Maxens says:

    I end­ed up here because my friend had giv­en up on read­ing a McCarthy book because of the lack of punc­tu­a­tion. He found it illeg­i­ble. Said it was like read­ing a book by a 5 year old with a rich vocab­u­lary. He also did­n’t like that the dia­log was right there mixed up in the text with every­thing else. So I googled to try to find excerpts, and here I am. It’s a fun­ny sit­u­a­tion IMO. Regard­ing the com­ment men­tion­ing Annie Dillard’s The Maytrees, in French we can use “-” to denote a dia­log line. Such as:

    - Hey!

    - Hel­lo? How are you?

    - Good, replied the oth­er char­ac­ter.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.