Spunk & Bite Page 16

Outside the marks:

  She told me, “Forget semicolons and get a life”; I didn’t answer.

  She told me to forget semicolons and get a life (in so many words); I wish I’d said something.

  What are some special (optional) uses of the semicolon?

  Here are three:

  1. To set up sarcastic phrases with a loose that or this: “To thine own self be true”; that and three bucks will get you a cup of coffee.

  2. Before introductory words like namely and specifically: For you, we encourage a program of therapy; namely, get a job.

  3. Between echoing statements, especially brief ones: A writer proposes; an editor disposes.

  * * *

  VARIETIES OF CONVENTIONAL USE

  As useful as they can be, semicolons are but one instrument of expression among a multitude. Some writers prefer to fashion expressive pauses and connections with other devices, limiting semicolons to a few conventional uses. Bill Bryson uses mainly commas (and correctly anticipated laughs) to break up his complex sentences. In A Short History of Nearly Everything, semicolons are almost entirely absent—except in such standard constructions as this:

  [H]e observed that there are three stages in scientific discovery: first, people deny that it is true; then they deny that it is important; finally they credit the wrong person.

  This particular use—in a series of statements or items (usually set up by a colon)—is the one we all learned in Composition 101. It is especially handy when several of the items in the series carry their own punctuation, such as commas:

  But man, could we kiss! We kissed for hours in the busted-up front seat of a borrowed Chevy, which, in motion, sounded like a broken dinette set; we kissed inventively, clutching our boyfriends from behind as we straddled motorcycles, whose vibrations turned our hips to jelly; we kissed extravagantly. (—Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses)

  Semicolons are used mainly for clarity in such series, separating extravagant chunks of prose (if not eager teenagers). But in literature they can also act as a sort of mortar, helping to create cumulative effects, as in this chilling passage from Beloved:

  Whole towns wiped clean of Negroes; eighty-seven lynchings in one year in Kentucky; four colored schools burned to the ground; grown men whipped like children; children whipped like adults.

  Other conventional uses include placement of semicolons before “transition” words such as therefore, however, and nevertheless when they come between statements (The dog ate my manuscript; otherwise, I’d be famous.); and the semicolon to set up ellipses, which denote missing verbs or other parts of speech (Hemingway wrote standing; Capote, on a couch; Rostand, in a bathtub. ). Grammarians used to say: Don’t use the semicolon unless the statements are complete (i.e., with a subject and verb) and a period could have been used instead; and use a semicolon only if the period seems too strong and the comma too weak. But few modern authors worry about how complete the statements are, or think in terms of weak and strong. Their concern is: How do I want to orchestrate the sense and cadence of my writing?

  TWENTY-THREE

  DARINGLY QUOTELESS DIALOGUE

  I don’t think of myself as a control freak. But when I read a story, I like to know (a) where dialogue starts and stops, (b) who is speaking, and (c) which words belong to the speaker and which to the narrator. Is that so uptight?

  “Well here’s a thought,” says my inner wiseguy. “Behold the quotation marks.” “Well, duh!” I reply. Of course I know that quotation marks frame dialogue—as they do here, and as they’ve been doing in English prose for at least three centuries. Along with paragraph breaks, they are the reader’s road map—the key to understanding who is speaking when.

  “But tell me, Wiseguy,” I persist, “if quote marks are so informative, why are fiction writers dumping them left and right?”

  Wiseguy and I then continue our dialogue, but without quotes: Dumping? Who says? Look for yourself. Quote marks? Yes—and paragraph breaks, too. Not to mention dialogue tags. Why is that? You tell me. No, you tell me. I—You—Wait—Help! Who’s talking here?

  That’s just what I wondered recently as I neared the end of an acclaimed new novel. I’d found the book sluggish except for its dialogue, which so far had been dutifully flanked by quotation marks. But now, when I most needed to follow the conversation, those marks went on break; the dialogue style got sneaky. Artful. Minimal:

  Those are empty words at times like this. For you perhaps, Captain, perhaps that is the difference. I only want to know facts, After that we can decide what he was. You mean you can decide, It should be clear I have decided already.

  Yeah, whatever, I thought, losing interest. This particular patch of dialogue happened to involve a shadowy figure, so it might have seemed like a good idea to ghost out quote marks and paragraph breaks. But for me this passage, and others like it, grew as murky as the jungle river snaking through the tale.

  Unmarked dialogue is nothing new, especially when the speakers are somehow disembodied. In many a twentieth-century work, characters floating through someone’s thoughts prattle without quote marks or paragraph breaks. The stream-of-consciousness style, for example, has become almost de rigueur since Molly Bloom’s soliloquy in James Joyce’s Ulysses:

  I used to go to Father Corrigan he touched me father and what harm if he did where and I said on the canal bank like a fool. [1922]

  But what about dialogue between tangible, flesh-and-blood characters? Why are so many writers reinventing the style? Browse through a heap of contemporary fiction, mainstream or small-press, and you’ll soon find dialogue that flouts the standard rules of punctuation and form. Among American novelists, the flouters include Cormac McCarthy, Alice Walker, Stephen Ambrose, John Edgar Wideman, Anita Shreve, Charles Frazier, Louis Begley, and Frank McCourt.

  The quoteless style got a boost in 1955, when McKinley Kantor used it throughout his Civil War novel Andersonville:

  Judah set his wide thin jaw. I feel rested like.

  I’ll go down myself.

  What in tunket! You just finished your chore.

  Having written screenplays and a verse novel, Kantor might have felt that quote marks cramped the spoken word, much as Pablo Picasso once viewed punctuation as “the fig leaves that hide the private parts of literature.” And after Andersonville won the 1956 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, who could say Kantor was wrong?

  * * *

  LITERARY EDITORS ON QUOTATION STYLE

  What do literary-review editors have to say about quotation style? Editors of three far-flung reviews, each of which had published fiction with quoteless dialogue, were asked for a few words on the topic. They offered these comments:

  Christina Thompson (editor, Harvard Review; writing instructor):

  We are definitely seeing more stories that do not use quotation marks when indicating speech. And, speaking for myself, I have no inclination to try to restore the marks, so long as it is clear who is speaking. Here at Harvard Review, we probably wouldn’t tolerate dialogue that doesn’t break to a new paragraph with the introduction of a new speaker; that seems to me a convention worth holding onto. But we’re fine with pieces that don’t use the inverted commas.

  Ronald Spatz (editor, Alaska Quarterly Review; author; writing instructor):

  Although the use of dialogue that is not framed by quotation marks or dashes is not new, I have not observed any trend in that direction. The success of such a stylistic device, of course, depends on whether or not it is organic to (and in service of) the overall work. If it works against the intent of the piece, then it’s going to strike the reader as gimmicky or worse. If it works in an integral way, then it becomes a part of the fabric of effective storytelling.

  John Tait (fiction editor, American Literary Review; author, writing instructor):

  I think enough of a precedent has been set by now (Joyce, Gertrude Stein and Faulkner come to mind) that irregular dialogue formatting is not only acceptable these days, but may even feel a li
ttle hackneyed or derivative rather than edgy or avant garde.

  I usually tell writing students that, if they choose to break standard conventions, they just need to be sure there are more pros than cons. The most obvious con is clarity, of course. Since most of the dialogue conventions are purely functional rather than anything else, they just need to find some alternate way of ensuring speech is clearly rendered and attributed (i.e., that there’s little confusion over who said what and what is speech and what is narrative).

  I have read some fiction, more in a postmodern or experimental vein, where confusion and lack of clarity are deliberate (or where I’ve been told they’re deliberate), but I’m often a little suspicious in such cases unless I can see some immediate powerful or provocative effect that makes me forget my confusion.

  * * *

  LEAVING THE COMFORT ZONE

  Who can say anyone is wrong for trying alternative styles? In writing, wrong means only the failure to connect with one’s audience. Ordinarily, devices such as quote marks help standardize communications and avoid confusion. But if breaking with convention jolts an audience without bewildering and losing it, then perhaps something right is in the air. How should one proceed? Writers have to gamble that the hoped-for effects will neither confuse nor alienate readers—not to mention editors. A rebellious style that misses its mark simply looks affected.

  Convention is there to be upended; but it is never to be taken lightly—especially in dialogue, one of the great reader-comfort zones. At the sign of the quote mark, gray slabs of narration give way to broken lines and shorter paragraphs—to refreshing pools of white space. The format signals the reader to sit back, take a break from the narrative voice, and listen to characters given life by those twin upside-down commas—or, in England, by single quotes; in France, by guillemets (>>); and elsewhere, by dashes and other marks.

  Yet, some writers find good reasons to disturb the peace. They may discomfort audiences, but they deliver art worth the grief. Among those who do so consistently is Nobel Prize winner José Saramago. The Portuguese novelist weaves his unmarked, often unattributed dialogue—as in the small excerpt following—into passages of Olympic length and majesty:

  How are you, reversing the situation, for surely it was up to him to express interest in her state of health, I’m fine, thank you, and quickly added, I wanted to know if you’re feeling better. (The History of the Siege of Lisbon)

  Saramago works the style so ably that, after fifty pages, a more standard format would seem distracting.

  Less accomplished writers might hit or miss when they buck conventional dialogue style and drop its paraphernalia. When they hit, they score effects like these:

  • intensity: stripped-down dramatic tension;

  • tautness: exchanges so tight the punctuation seems squeezed out;

  • speeded-up pace: as if the speakers’ pauses had been deleted;

  • dreamlike mood: pure word flow untainted by marks and tags;

  • integration with narrative voice: creation of a you-are-there effect;

  • imagined or contemplated speech: absent the signifiers of “sound”;

  • poetic quality: the feel of free verse; and

  • “modern” look: a streamlining that some editors (not most!)seem to like.

  One can take small risks or large. At the small end would be, say, substituting an initial dash for pairs of quotation marks, as Charles Frazier did in Cold Mountain. He still employed dialogue tags and paragraph breaks to guide the reader:

  —How old are you? Inman said.

  —Eighteen, she said.

  A riskier technique, as pioneered by McKinley Kantor, is to use tags and paragraph breaks, but no marks to signal speech. Lately this style has been so linked to Cormac McCarthy that one critic dubbed it “literary McCarthyism”—an unintentional knock on a style that investigates art and not Communists. And then there’s the big risk: dropping not only quotes, but also attribution tags and paragraphing. Writers considering this approach should be their own toughest interrogators, grilling themselves through the reader’s eye, asking,

  “What’s the point?” or

  —What’s the point? or

  What’s the point? I don’t know, you tell me. No, you’re the author.

  Clarity

  “A HOUSE OF GREAT SPICKNESS AND SPANNESS”*

  TWENTY-FOUR

  THE FENG SHUI OF WRITING

  Skeptics and scoffers, lend me your ears. For when it comes to exotic fads, I’m out there scoffing with the loudest of you. Mystical cures for writing woes? Fuhgetaboutit. Ancient eastern astrology? I’m rolling on the floor. Even when my writing turns to slag, you are not likely to find me mining the I Ching (Book of Changes) for advice.

  And so I scoffed when an artist friend suggested that I plunge into feng shui (pronounced “fung shway”), the ancient Chinese system of arranging one’s environment for maximum flow of ch’i, the so-called universal life-force. But I decided to dip a toe into the subject when this good friend insisted that an “unblocked” working space might energize my writing, as it did her art. She claimed to have bettered her fortunes by placing certain feng shui devices—wind chimes, mirrors, plants, and red objects—in strategic nooks of her studio. I did more or less the same in my study.

  Ideally I would have gone for the classical feng shui setup: a country dwelling aligned with the forces of nature. Its north end would have been tucked into a protective hill, with its southern frontage descending to a river (ch’i likes flowing water). But for expedience, I built a funky little fountain next to my city sidewalk.

  Encouraged by a run of five or six good sentences, I continued dipping into home-oriented feng shui sources; and as I did so, I achieved my enlightenment (actually more of a duh): I realized that feng shui’s principles—of harmony, balance, uncluttered paths, and unseeable natural forces—might apply directly to writing. By pointing out blockages, feng shui might suggest channels of powerful, liberated energy. Writers might track the flow of force in their sentences or stanzas and overall compositions.

  YIN MEETS YANG

  Feng shui (literally “wind” and “water”) is a cherished principle of Asian architectural and interior design; it calls upon practitioners to consider the interaction of all things and the creative tension between their “feminine” yin and “masculine” yang qualities. Yin is said to be the cool, dark, solid force; quiescent, passive, and contracting—in contrast with the hot, bright, diffusive yang, an active and expansive energy.

  The Western world treats feng shui faddishly—as a commercialized New Age trend—but also as a discipline to be studied, akin to acupuncture in its complexity. That complexity should not discourage writers—who, after all, are not about to design the next Imperial Palace. Rather, feng shui can be seen as a guiding metaphor; writers can employ its basic concepts in examining their work and in composing passages that flow with energy. Even as novices, they can identify the shar-ch’i, or “killing-breath” forces, that subvert positive ch’i.

  I stick to the simplest principles here—because, frankly, I am not the genius to superimpose feng shui profundities on the architecture of language. We await some master to do it. Meanwhile, if in the spirit of feng shui I can help a few writers direct more ch’i through their paragraphs, it will bring me five happinesses. Maybe seven.

  A RIVER OF CH’I FLOWS THROUGH IT—OR TRIES

  Once they are viewed as furnishings, the elements of any sentence invite appraisal using feng shui (henceforth fs) principles. From books on my shelves I’ve plucked a few sentences whose elements suggest good and bad fs. Though not perfect examples, the selections might serve as points of departure for exploring the ch’i of expression. Each sentence is taken from a superior work by a stellar writer; and while the ch’i flows freely in some sentences, in others it feels blocked:

  After stopping for a maximum cholesterol breakfast—buttered hotcakes and sunny-side ups—at a place called Hobo Joe’s, in the blink-a
nd-you-miss-it town of Madill, I travelled ten more miles, until I came upon a gymnasium-size building, with a cream-colored metal exterior, set back about a hundred yards from the highway. (—Mark Singer, “The Chicken Warriors,”The New Yorker)

  Think of that sentence as a little house. Among other things, good fs demands:

  • an easy entrance into a clutter-free first room;

  • good vibes (or “cured” vibes) from past inhabitants or previously owned furnishings;

  • yin and yang elements in harmony;

  • ch’i-attracting objects or patterns placed where they are most purposeful;

  • ch’i-draining objects (like flushing toilets) situated where they will do the least harm; and

  • a winding, smooth-cornered path (known as a channel or meridian) through which ch’i can flow freely and leisurely.