Comment on Pfft
blackbelt352@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
You need to know the rules to know how to break them with intention.
Kolanaki@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
Kowowow@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
If anime taught me anything It’s that character development is just padding
Ariselas@piefed.ca 3 weeks ago
tetris11@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
All I do, is sit down at the typewriter, and start hittin’ the keys. Getting them in the right order, that’s the trick. That’s the trick.
paranoia@feddit.dk 3 weeks ago
This is the standard line, but a lot of the time I find it to be bullshit. Sure, Cormac McCarthy gets to look cool and modernist by not using quotation marks, but my view is you would spend less time trying to decipher narrator vs. character if he did use them, and you would have a better reading experience at the same time.
supernight52@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
This is not an inflammatory response, I am just curious- How do you feel about “House of Leaves?”
Generally considered to be a phenomenal work of art, but it DEFINITELY doesn’t follow the vast majority of standard grammar rules.
paranoia@feddit.dk 3 weeks ago
I hadn’t even heard of it until your comment.
I respect going all in on breaking convention a lot more than leaving out punctuation as a style.
supernight52@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I agree- which is the way I believe most Cormac McCarthy fans view his writing style. I have never read his books, they aren’t for me- but I feel that bucking trends is the way art is meant to evolve. Some trends getting bucked are more annoying than others, though.
Do you have any authors that you suggest to others?
Dozzi92@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I thought House of Leaves dragged on, but I think the confusion was kind of the story too, you know? You have this scenario going on in the book, and the book itself has you looking left right up down here and there for the context.
DagwoodIII@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
Jumping in.
I tried ‘House’ and noped out about fifty pages in.
Too much work and not much payout.
imho it was a gimmick book.
Eq0@literature.cafe 3 weeks ago
“House of Leaves” challenges what is a book! Forget grammar, this is an identify crisis of narrative. Or is it even narrative at this point? Work of art, absolutely.
gastroglizzy@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
Yeah, you can break the law as long as you know what it says, right?
blackbelt352@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Fuck off, you bad faith shitstain.
Feathercrown@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yes tbh, with the same reasoning too. The difference is if I do the right thing and break the law, the fun police (aka the actual police) will arrest me.
gastroglizzy@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
Cormac McCarthy doesn’t use punctuation because he “doesn’t believe in it”. His books are terrible to read. They’re clunky, unclear, difficult to parse, and read like a middle-schoolers first try at story time. James Joyce, his inspiration, same story; I can’t even get through one chapter of anything he’s ever written.
I realize I’m in the minority when I say this, but grammar has rules for a reason. When you don’t follow the same rules as everyone else, when you don’t adhere to the reader’s expectations, that makes it more difficult for the reader, not less.
NathanRanch@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
The Road is one of my favorite pieces of writing. It’s art like anything else. The lack of punctuation really made it feel raw and close to home.
Dozzi92@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I think that’s the point too, you know? His writing style acts as a literary device in and of itself. It’s not always like that, but when it’s like that I feel it helps drive home the scene.
And I say that while I agree 100% that it’s hard to read.
BarrelAgedBoredom@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
The road felt like a stream of consciousness to me. It flowed so well that I tore through it in 2 days because I just couldn’t stop reading lol. I’ve learned to be that immersed in a book again but nothing else I’ve read has come close
mkwarman@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I agree. I read The Road recently since it’s my wife’s favorite book and holy shit it was exhausting at times. I enjoyed the story to a degree, but the stream-of-thought writing style and unspecific grammar took me out of it. If it had been written in a more understandable prose I think I would have enjoyed it more; but would it have been as famous then I wonder
exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
If you were to take the list of all professional basketball players, and sort them by the number of free throws missed per game, you’d see the top of the list is dominated by Hall of famers.
That’s not because missing free throws makes for a good basketball player. Or even that it isn’t important in basketball to be able to make free throws. It still remains important at every level of the game! But some of the people who miss a lot of free throws were just so utterly dominant at other parts of the game that they had long successful basketball careers despite being bad at an important skill for basketball players.
Cormac McCarthy and James Joyce have a signature style, yes, but I’d argue that they’re successful despite that, rather than because of that.
neidu4@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
I think you’re in the vast majority.
When it comes to the readers expectation, things become a lot more complex. I don’t remember the exact words, but Brandon Sanderson talked about promises to the reader, where it’s OK to do surprising things, but expectations must be carefully managed in that surprises must not feel like betrayal. Poor execution of this is why everyone hates the “…but it was all a dream” trope.
blackbelt352@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Ok theres 2 replies about Cormac McCarthy, there’s clearly something I’m missing contextwise about understanding rules and how to break them.