Modern Influences

I just finished reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I am currently reading Bright Shiny Morning by James Frey. I recently read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. These books were all bestsellers. The Road and Oscar Wao both won Pulitzers. Bright Shiny Morning may have partially rebuilt James Frey's reputation as a writer (the jury's still out on that). I'm not saying this to show how well read I am. There is a pattern in all these books aside from their bestseller status or their prizes. They all throw good grammar out the window.

I never used to read contemporary short fiction, but lately I've started reading literary journals to see what is getting published right now. Overwhelmingly, there is a lot of fiction with bad grammar.

Obviously, the authors of the three novels and all the fiction I've read KNOW how to write properly. They're all great writers (except for Frey - still waiting on that jury). This means that they're intentionally neglecting to use quotation marks. Purposely writing run-on sentences spliced with fragments. Mixing verb tenses for a purpose. What's the purpose?

I never learned English grammar in school, but every book or article I've read has said that when you're going to break the rules of grammar or style, there should be a really strong reason that compensates for it. McCarthy is writing about a post-apocalyptic world. Rules of grammar, constructs of society, they don't apply in his world. I get it. Diaz's novel is narrated in the first person. The grammar slips make it seem more authentic? Maybe. Frey's writing a series of interconnecting stories with a loose common thread. He's just trying to be edgy.

What about all the other short stories I've read recently? Do they all have excuses too? I'm not convinced that The Road would have been lessened by the use of quotation marks and punctuation. I'm not convinced that their absence makes the book better. So what is with this trend of throwing basic rules out the window?

I'm concerned that young writers, like me, are going to read this and begin to think that the rules of grammar and style are optional. Or worse, that to get published today you need to do something different to stand out, and that means writing convoluted prose or chucking the basic rules out a window.

Sitting, staring at my fiftieth anniversary edition of The Elements of Style, I wonder if this gem of a book is becoming obsolete. If that's the case, I'm scared, because these rules exist for a purpose. They show the path to clear writing, not just in literature, but in all its forms. Without clear writing, you're losing the ability to communicate. Without that, they're just words on a page.

So, when someone asks me who my writing influences are, I have no problem saying, "Hemmingway." I don't need anything more modern because clear writing is timeless.