TWK: Able's Prose Style

Mike Sakasegawa · 06 Nov 2005, 19:43 · from 2005-November.txt.gz

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From: saxon75 at gmail.com (Mike Sakasegawa)
Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2005 11:43:28 -0800
Subject: (urth) TWK: Able's Prose Style
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Contractions are a perfectly legitimate grammatical construction, and
given the first person perspective and the characterization evident in
the narration, it struck me as odd that there were no contractions to
be found.  Since it stood out to me so much in TWK, I feel like I
would have noticed if they had also been absent from the other Wolfe
works that I've read, but I don't recall that being the case.  I'll
investigate further when I get the chance.

-Mike

On 11/5/05, Bob Miller wrote:
>
> That comment about the lack of contractions is probably apropos now, MIke.  All it really means is that GEne Wolfe is not an incompetent writer or does not deliberately use bad grammar.  <chuckle>  I well remember being dropped from an A to a C in an inclass essay because I used a couple contractions.  My ego still smarts from the ruler to it.
>
> Bob

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