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Date
Wed, 02/06/2008

In Defense of Sloppy Punctuation by Matt Haig:

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I just wanted to put something up here about punctuation. You see, people who have read The Dead Fathers Club occasionally email me about the novel and tell me what they think. On balance, I would say eight out of ten of the emails are favourable which I suppose is good (although I can't help thinking you're more likely to tell an author that you like their work than dislike it). And the interesting thing is that those who like it do so for varying reasons, while those who knock it always knock it for the same thing. Punctuation.

Now, in case you don't know (and unless you've read the book, why would you) the novel is narrated from the inside of a traumatised eleven-year-old boy's head. His father has died, suffers from panic attacks and witnesses what other people tell him are hallucinations of his Dad's spirit. I wanted to mirror the surreal, hyperactive goings on of his thoughts in the novel, and one of the ways of doing this was to strip out all the commas and apostrophes and make the stream-of-consciousness have a faster flow.


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Wed, 02/06/2008

Listen to Our Author's Podcasts Running the Week of 2/4:

 

 

» UFC Champion Chuck Liddell discusses his new book.

» Listen to other Penguin Podcasts.

Other author podcasts:

» Peter Earley and Sergei Tretyakov, author and subject of Comrade J on the Washington Post Book World Podcast and the NPR Books Podcast.

» Sudhir Venkatesh, author of Gang Leader for a Day on NPR's Book Tour Podcast.

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