Some Examples of Novelists Breaking Punctuation Rules

Lately it seems a few modern novelists are getting looser with the rules of punctuation in their books. One author is even going so far as to openly break many traditional rules of writing. And I am not referring here to underground, experimental writers, but rather successful authors with books released by large, respectable New York publishing houses.

James Frey - a novelist many people are familiar with because of the scolding he received from Oprah Winfrey - frequently runs sentences together without using conjunctions or periods, and he also stacks up words with no commas separating them, in a sort of a stream-of-consciousness style. Here is a passage from his book, My Friend Leonard, in which he crams two and three sentences together to make one:

"Allison's parents come to Los Angeles they want to see where she's living how she's doing. We pick them up at the airport show them Allison's apartment take them out for a fancy dinner. Next day we go to the beach show them Beverly Hills have them to my house I cook a chicken for them it's not very good."

Also, here is a section titled "Dylan and Maddie" from an early draft of Frey's soon to be published novel, Bright Shiny Morning, which he posted on his web site last summer:

"He picked her up and carried her to his truck, a reliable old American pick-up with a mattress in the back and a canopy over the bed. He set her in the passenger's seat carefully set her and covered her with jacket. She was sobbing bleeding it wasn't the first time it would be the last."

I have read that some critics find Frey's practice of ignoring common punctuation rules to be rather annoying. One critic was of the opinion that the practice gave Frey's books a loose, "tossed-together" quality. But I don't agree with that assessment. I like the style. And in some instances I believe the breaching of writing rules actually portrays current modes of American speech more accurately than prose littered with commas, periods, or semicolons every four words.

Cormac McCarthy also defies convention in his novels by being rather loose with punctuation. Although I don't think I have ever seen him jam two or three sentences together without conjunctions a la Frey, he does frequently write long compound sentences that some would say need a few commas or a couple of periods. Here is a passage from his book, All the Pretty Horses:

"Sunday afternoon they rode into the town of La Vega on horses they'd been working out of the new string. They'd had their hair cut with sheepshears by an esquilador at the ranch and the backs of their necks above their collars were white as scars and they wore their hats cocked forward on their heads and they looked from side to side as they jogged along as if to challenge the countryside or anything it might hold."

After becoming aware of this rule-breaking by McCarthy and Frey, I did a little investigating and discovered that the practice goes back even further than I had expected.

William S. Burroughs broke punctuation rules, but not just with his infamous "cut-up" novels. His book The Wild Boys contains mostly a straightforward narrative (although there is some cut-up material as well), yet in his novel Burroughs also joins sentences together without conjunctions, except that the The Wild Boys was published in 1971 when James Frey was only four years old. Here is an excerpt from it:

"Her evil eyes rotate in a complex calendar, and these calculations occupy her for many hours each night settled in her nest she puffs and chirps and twitters and writes in notebooks that are stacked around her bed with magazines on astrology..."

Also:

"Enter the American tourist his face bandaged his arm in a sling."

Dianne Di Prima, known more for her poetry than her prose, also broke many rules. Here is an excerpt from her book, Dinners and Nightmares (lowercase is retained as in the original):

"so i got up and left the gold coin it was raining and the men at the door said what was wrong with the service and should they call a cab and i said no, nothing and no, i had of course no money for a cab."

My personal opinion is that breaking rules in the writing of novels and short stories is fascinating, although I see how many of the more traditional readers might find the practice annoying. One reason I like it is that it helps "make things new," to paraphrase one of Ezra Pound's dictums concerning poetry; I feel it helps the text become more fresh and alive, and this quality fits well with what a novel is supposed to be. Remember the definition for 'novel' when the word is used as an adjective? Dictionary.com gives

novel - of a new kind; different from anything seen or known before: a novel idea.

Gertrude Stein and James Joyce, two writers who fall more into the experimental category than the other authors mentioned above, also broke many punctuation rules in their books. Check out a few of their novels for examples.

I am going to start breaking punctuation rules myself you may see the results very soon. I'm currently working on a novel, perhaps it will be considered a Great American Novel one day by a highly reputable critic (by the way, I should mention that Robert Siegle, author of the book Suburban Ambush and professor of literature at Virginia Tech University is currently teaching my novel, Red Zen, in his contemporary fiction class) but no matter since I want my new book to defy common convention in numerous ways. My intention won't be to upset too many punctilious grammarians and punctuation aficionados I respect them I do I envy their knowledge. I even possess a little of it myself but I want to shatter every writing rule and invent my own prose style, one more immediate more direct more salacious and packed with raw emotion for readers sitting in forlorn living rooms with silverfish slinking in corners and hermit crabs winking or porcupines grinning under sad gables. I will strive to make my new novel inordinately fresh and ebullient, unconventional and recalcitrant even spasmodic and explosive in a billion different ways. It will be coming out soon keep your eyes open. Glued to windows and doors yes, yes sir, indeed be on the lookout and read more rule-breaking novelists whenever you get the chance you will love them.