More fodder on Dialogue Markers

I just finished the wonderfully delightful (despite odd [but totally welcomed] intrusions from the narrator) novel, An Abundance of Katherines. As anyone that actually reads this blog may note from two posts ago, I find John Green's inclusion of excessive footnotes to be a joy. Yet, it was his lack of metadata (if you could view the dialogue markers that are technically part of the narrative proper to be metadata) that really got me going.

What am I talking about here people? I'm talking about dialogue markers and how the simple decision to exclude them takes the reader deeper into the prose. How, in the case of this book, the exclusion can mirror the confusing situation the characters are facing and make them that much more identifiable. And, luckily for the author, this decision leads to pages and pages of straight up dialogue and nothing else. Not gonna lie, I occasionally had to count back some lines to figure out exactly who was speaking, but it worked for this story. Perhaps, it works for this story only.

One thing that I'm still not sure if I am in complete agreement over (but could possibly get behind for This. Story. Only.) is using ellipses to indicate that no characters are talking. Literally--this story only. Why is that? Because using only ellipses is horribly tacky and an insult to narration. But An Abundance of Katherines is different because of the aforementioned lack of dialogue markers, and consequently, a lack of narration. I'm still not in love with it. I'm hoping it grows on me, but I have an immense allergy to the dreaded dot dot dot.

All in all, John Green gets away with loads more stuff than everyone else could dream about in this book. Loads.