Chase? If you make it back here, could you tell me how exactly one can read to check out an editor's style?
Exactly? As in no BS with examples? Okay, but two premises need aired: The first is the iffy presumption that SK knuckled under to CA's edits. That may be a stretch, considering personalities. The other is my firm belief after a quarter century of grading frosh to grad papers that writing styles emerge and that I can see red flags when that style has been altered, as in the case of a helper (such as an editor). Don't bother to read on if the latter sound too much like BS.
Since I've read every SK novel since
Carrie at least twice, I know SK has loosened from his original high school English teacher style. Subsequent books that began with tight mechanics often don't end that way.
A few years back, I found SK returned to a crisper, more concise style in
The Colorado Kid (also published by Hard Case Crime). Since the principal characters were newspaper people, I figured that may be a reason but couldn't discount Charles Adair's influence.
In Joyland, I noticed some breakdown in consistency of punctuation from one section to another (no chapters, just segments separated by a
) but still thought I recognized CA's firmer hand.
There are some puzzles, like why this departure in the use of dashes to interrupt dialog. It's one of the methods mentioned in
CMoS, but it isn't as common in fiction:
Her eyes were sparkling. "You don't know any of this story, do you? Ordinarily I don't believe in gossip, but . . ." She dropped her voice to a confidential tone pitched just above a whisper. ". . . but since you've met them, I could tell you."
I never saw SK do it that way before, so I was interested.