{"id":949,"date":"2007-04-26T12:02:56","date_gmt":"2007-04-26T12:02:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=949"},"modified":"2007-04-26T12:02:56","modified_gmt":"2007-04-26T12:02:56","slug":"a_literary_peeve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2007\/04\/26\/a_literary_peeve\/","title":{"rendered":"A Literary Peeve"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As long as I&#8217;m in a complaining mood today anyway, I may as well mention that one of the reasons I&#8217;m not a big fan of so-called &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Literary_fiction\">literary fiction<\/a>&#8221; is the way authors of this stuff so often play with the standard rules and techniques of fiction writing. Presumably they&#8217;re trying for some kind of effect, and also presumably fans of LitFic appreciate and enjoy this; me, I just think it comes across as pretentious and gimmicky.<\/p>\n<p>Case in point: I&#8217;m currently reading a novel called <a href=\"http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/2fr8cc\"><i>This is the Place<\/i><\/a> by Peter Rock, which, in general, I am enjoying. (Rock has created some wonderful evocations of Wendover, Nevada, and the Bonneville Salt Flats, two places I just visited last month.) However, the guy is apparently unaware of the existence of the quotation mark. None of the book&#8217;s dialogue uses it. Instead, you&#8217;re just supposed to pick up from context that someone is speaking, as in this passage:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>How you doing, Jamie? The bartender knew what she wanted before she said a word. He brought two cocktails and she drank the first one fast.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m doing, she said. Hard at work here.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It&#8217;s not a huge thing, but it&#8217;s driving me crazy. It&#8217;s sometimes confusing, but the biggest issue is that I just don&#8217;t see any reason, artistic or otherwise, for doing it, and it&#8217;s coming off as more of a distraction, an affectation, than anything that adds value to the work&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As long as I&#8217;m in a complaining mood today anyway, I may as well mention that one of the reasons I&#8217;m not a big fan of so-called &#8220;literary fiction&#8221; is the way authors of this stuff so often play with the standard rules and techniques of fiction writing. Presumably they&#8217;re trying for some kind of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-bookshelf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}