I'm reading a book about two kids trying to get revenge on an undertaker who secretly does unthinkable things to the bodies he buries. It's discovered by digging up graves. The findings are described in detail.
Is that what horrifies me? No. It's interesting but not horrifying.
The thing that horrifies me, that makes me put the book aside because I can't take it any more is... the deliberate removal of punctuation that identifies direct speech.
Why would anyone do that?
Is it meant to add something?
Does it liberate me from the tyranny of textual clarity?
Is it a fashion? Please tell me it's not a fashion. Gay was sixty-five when this was published. Isn't that old enough to be fashion-free?
Here's an extract to show you what I mean. The ebook is published with a one-character indent to mark a new paragraph and with no lines between paragraphs. The result is a conversation between two people that looks like this:
Because it all balanced out. Because I knew something that he didn’t know.
What?
I knew he was going to die and I’d still be alive.
She was silent for a time studying him. She shook her head. You’ve got a hell of a way of looking at things, she finally said. But let’s get back to Fenton Breece. I’ve been thinking about this, and I know how to make him pay where it’ll hurt him the worst. In the pocketbook. How long have you been thinking about this?
This looks like vandalism of the text to me. Not to mention being a lot more difficult to figure out what is going on.
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