Can punctuation, as well as poetry, provide a critical plot twist in my fiction?
Well. Yes. Remember, Roger Casement, the Irish nationalist, was 'hanged by a comma'.
In my latest collection of fiction,
Listen Close to Me (Salt 2011), a bibliophile remarks on Wilde's cavalier use of the apostrophe.
'[Wilde ]
had a habit of apostrophising possessive pronouns when everyone knows they're absent.'
The truth of this observation I confirm in my miniature essay,
Addendum to a Forgotten ms (
Ambit, Issue 203, Winter 2011).
Meanwhile, if you doubt my word, take a look at Oscar Wilde's inconsistent apostrophising evidenced by the following writing samples. They are from his manuscript (
'it's marble hue ... it's vein of blue ...') for his poem,
Roses and Rue, of 1885.
Are these errors pathological? A Freudian graphologist might think so!