Donna Tartt, Queen of Punctuation

My friend Carly, who knows how my brain works and can wind my literary obsessions up like a toy, told me over dinner one night that she had decided that Donna Tartt was the queen of punctuation. She was reading The Secret History for the first time, though it was Carly herself who had insisted that I read The Goldfinch years before. She was right; I loved it, and then I loved The Secret History. Carly said while we were eating dinner that there was a passage she’d come across fairly early in the book where the sentence was very long but perfectly punctuated (in addition to being masterfully written) so that the reader never got lost.

Dinner conversation moved on, but as I said, she knows how to wind up my literary obsessions. So I asked her to send me the passage. She took a screen shot and texted it to me. I had threatened half-jokingly to break down the passage punctuation mark by punctuation mark and explain how it worked, and she had nodded, curls bouncing, with genuine encouragement. And so we can all blame Carly for the next two thousand or so words.

The passage, from page 85 of the hardcover first printing of The Secret History. The narrator, Richard, is describing his strange insularity of his new friends:

I was surprised by how easily they managed to incorporate me into their cyclical, Byzantine existence. They were all so used to one another that I think they found me refreshing, and they were intrigued by even the most mundane of my habits: by my fondness for mystery novels and my chronic movie-going; by the fact that I used disposable razors from the supermarket and cut my own hair instead of going to the barber; even by the fact that I read papers and watched news on television from time to time (a habit which seemed to them an outrageous eccentricity, peculiar to me alone; none of them were the least bit interested in anything that went on in the world, and their ignorance of current events and even recent history was rather astounding. Once, over dinner, Henry was quite startled to learn from me that men had walked on the moon. “No,” he said, putting down his fork.

“It's true,” chorused the rest, who had somehow managed to pick this up along the way.

“I don’t believe it.”

“I saw it,” said Bunny. “It was on television.”

“How did they get there? When did this happen?”).

The key to this passage working so well is indeed the punctuation. The whole point of using commas, periods, semicolons, and the rest of it is to make reading easy (or difficult, if that’s your aim) for the writer. Punctuation signals to the reader when an idea is complete or when it’s going to continue, when it’s the narrator speaking in indirect discourse to tell us about a scene or a character is using direct discourse to speak in their own words, when an anecdote might be an aside rather than part of the main idea. Most points of punctuation are style choices, like the American commas inside double quotation marks or the British commas outside single quotation marks. Conventional use of punctuation fades into the background as the reader remains suspended within the narrative. Unconventional punctuation calls attention to itself, which is usually not what the author is going for, but sometimes it is. Tartt in this case uses the full force of punctuation to guide the reader through a syntactically complex sentence or two with an unobtrusive and assured style.

Tartt begins simply with a straightforward sentence, and the punctuation isn’t too hard to figure out:

I was surprised by how easily they managed to incorporate me into their cyclical, Byzantine existence.

The comma between cyclical and Byzantine separates coordinate adjectives, two words that both separately describe a noun. The existence of the narrator’s friends is both cyclical and Byzantine. The period at the end of the sentence signals that this thought is complete. Voila.

The rest of the quoted passage, as Carly told me over dinner, is one single sentence. It flows smoothly, and the reader indeed never gets lost, never has to double back to remember what they were supposed to be reading about. The construction of this sentence is a marvel, but I’m going to look specifically at the work the punctuation is doing in keeping this train of thought on its tracks for 181 words.

It opens with two independent clauses joined by a conjunction.

They were all so used to one another that I think they found me refreshing, and they were intrigued by even the most mundane of my habits:

Both clauses happen to have the same subject and verb—they were—but they don’t share them. Each clause gets its very own subject and verb; they just happen to be identical. So the bare bones of this sentence reads: They were, and they were. It’s easier to see, when these independent clauses are reduced to their most basic components, the comma that belongs before and. When two independent clauses (each having a subject and verb) are joined by a conjunction (usually and, but, nor), a comma goes before the conjunction. All the rest of the words in this sentence elaborate on exactly how they were.

When we reach what we think might be the end of the sentence at the end of these two clauses, we encounter not a period but a colon. So this thought is not complete; the author has more to say. A colon is often put in place to mean “as follows.” So they were used to one another and intrigued by the narrator’s habits as follows.

The reader expects to see examples after that colon, and Tartt provides examples, each introduced by the word by, which isn’t punctuation, but it does help the reader move through the list.

by my fondness for mystery novels and my chronic movie-going; by the fact that I used disposable razors from the supermarket and cut my own hair instead of going to the barber; even by the fact that I read papers and watched news on television from time to time

Let’s spend just a moment on the hyphen in movie-going. Knowing when to hyphenate a word is not an innate skill. Editors look these things up every day, and words often move from hyphenated to closed over time (e-mail to email). This is a good case in point, since the most current edition of Merriam-Webster Unabridged now closes this word: moviegoing. When The Secret History was published, movie-going was likely the suggested style. Or maybe the hyphen was Tartt’s stylistic choice no matter what any dictionary said.

Moving on to maybe the most divisive punctuation mark, the semicolon. Usually items in a list are separated by commas: the dog, the cat, and the blanket. That’s true even when the items are more than a word or two: the clouds moved across the sky, the rain slowly advanced along the street, and the squirrels scampered to escape the oncoming storm. Commas are still appropriate in that example. If the items in the list have commas, then semicolons are used to separate them. You’ll see this most often in lists of place names: Philadelphia, PA; Rochester, NY; and Columbus, OH. But the items in this list don’t have internal commas. Each of the items is long and does have a compound within it, so the extra heft of the semicolon is a style choice by the author to help the reader move through this long, but not overly complicated, sentence.

But there are only two semicolons, after movie-going and barber. The third clause does not yet end with a period, though it will in a hundred or so more words. Before Tartt is ready to complete the narrator’s thought, she has yet another example of how they were to share, a more specific instance than the generalized wonder Richard’s friends have for his love of novels, movies, and DIY grooming. And so we get parentheses. Richard has just told the reader of his habit of watching the news on television from time to time, which is followed by an anecdote about one of the most famous things to ever occur on television news. The opening parenthesis tells the reader this is an aside.

(a habit which seemed to them an outrageous eccentricity, peculiar to me alone; none of them were the least bit interested in anything that went on in the world, and their ignorance of current events and even recent history was rather astounding.

The next punctuation we encounter is the comma between eccentricity and peculiar, which is a style choice on the part of the author or editor. The most likely reason for this comma is that peculiar to me alone is a nonrestrictive adverbial phrase. It’s giving more information about how odd Richard’s friends find his eccentric habit of watching TV, but it’s not absolutely necessary to include this little extra bit.

Then we have yet another semicolon in its other main role as a separator between two independent clauses that do not have a conjunction. There is nothing to stop Tartt from using a period here, but she wants to emphasize the closeness of the ideas in these two phrases. It’s important that the friends believe Richard’s habit of watching TV to be odd and that they were entirely uninterested in anything they might learn about the world from watching it themselves. Notice that the next punctuation is another comma, this time between the two independent clauses joined by and. None of them were interested, and their ignorance was astounding to Richard.

Here is one of the most interesting bits of punctuation in this entire passage: a humble period inside the parenthetical. It is not often you see a period so confidently placed when the aside is hanging by the hook of that opening parenthesis on the unfinished thought of the main sentence. Tartt is saying that yes, this thought is complete. There’s nothing more to say in this aside about their willful ignorance nor their fascination with Richard’s seeming normalcy. And yet there is something more to say, something new and additional that sheds even more light on this little story Richard is telling.

Once, over dinner, Henry was quite startled to learn from me that men had walked on the moon.

Here we have Once, over dinner, with its two commas. These are entirely optional, but they serve to slow the reader down and maybe even hear it in a more conversational, conspiratorial tone, as if Richard has just remembered a great example of the very thing he’s been trying to tell you, and he can’t not tell you about these weirdos. This sentence ends with a less shocking period at the end to tell us the idea is complete. But the anecdote is not.

“No,” he said, putting down his fork.

When you begin using dialog, a lot of punctuation comes into play. The quotation marks are there to show the reader exactly what was said, and a comma goes inside the quotation marks to indicate that there will be a dialog tag (he said) and, in this case, a participial phrase after another comma to show what the speaker did with his fork as he said it.

“It's true,” chorused the rest, who had somehow managed to pick this up along the way.

“I don’t believe it.”

“I saw it,” said Bunny. “It was on television.”

I think we’ve got a handle on how quotation marks and the comma before the dialog tag are used, so we’ll address the apostrophe in It’s, which is there to show the contraction of it is. It seems small, but it shows us that these people, who consider Richard eccentric but who are themselves unusual, don’t speak in an overly formal tone. They use contractions in conversation like most people do.

Another comma comes after rest and before who because who begins another dependent clause. It’s giving the reader more information about the people present, since otherwise we could safely assume that the rest of them, like Henry, had somehow not heard of any of the moonwalks.

More quotation marks and another apostrophe in don’t—for do not­—and then a period inside the quotation marks. This shows that there is not a dialog tag coming. Usual stuff for punctuation. The reader knows who is speaking thanks to the convention of alternating lines when two people are talking. If Henry spoke first, and then the others, it is now Henry speaking again.

The next line has a new speaker, so there’s again a comma inside the quotation marks that leads us to Bunny said. That’s where the period occurs, completing his sentence after his dialog tag. There’s another period at the end of his second sentence, again inside the quotation marks.

“How did they get there? When did this happen?”).

Now we’ve reached the end of the 181 words, about which I have written more than a thousand on punctuation alone, and Tartt has chosen to show Henry’s astonished agitation through italics. It’s not punctuation, but it is a style choice that conveys meaning to the reader. And at the end of the 181 words are four punctuation marks in a row, a true feat and worthy of Carly’s original assessment of Tart as queen of punctuation:

?”).

The question mark closes Henry’s disbelieving thought. The quotation marks close his bit of dialog. The parenthesis closes the long aside about the group of friends’ general disdain for events outside their small world. And that blessed period closes the sentence that began They were and they were. And the passage closes the case on Carly’s assertion: Donna Tart is the queen of punctuation.