Darkmans

[Toby G Levy]

I already returned my copy back to the library, but I don't remember
having problems with the punctuation.  I never notice inconsistencies of
indentation. However I did notice a couple of obvious errors. One was a
letter left out of the word "camera."  And there were probably a ton more
because I don't usually notice that stuff.

That said, I thought her use of "white space" to indicate pauses in
conversations of disconnects in a character's thinking to be very
effective once I got used to it.

If Nicola Barker doesn't remind you of Gaddis, you must not have read JR,
because it seemed to me that some of the dialog could have come straight
out of that book, which has to hold the record for the highest number of
incomplete sentences in any novel ever written.

Toby

On Thu, 31 Jan 2008 16:46:06 -0600 owner-pynchon-l-digest at waste.org
(pynchon-l-digest) writes:

Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 17:04:14 -0500
From: malignd at aol.com
Subject: Re: Darkmans
 
I'm reading this now and there's much to like, but numerous
irritations.? She's too cute by at least a third, for one thing,
those endless, irritating parentheticals.? Also, I don't know
whether to blame her or a shoddy typesetting job, but there are endless
inconsistencies of punctuation, indentation, etc.? If it's her,
she wrote an 800+-page novel with no clue how properly to use a comma,
let alone a semicolon.? Sorry if this sounds pedantic, but at
times it's like reading email.

She reminds me not for a moment of Gaddis and I think Martin Amis sits
heavily on the shoulder of most every young Brit writer.? But
she's smart, inventive, and rarely boring.