Re: RE: Re: RARA-AVIS: Re: Those were the days

From: jjnevins@ix.netcom.com
Date: 07 Sep 2000


rara-avis@icomm.ca wrote:
> Kevin, then Jess replies:
>
> > Doesn't Marlowe at one point say something like "He snarled and
> > called me something nasty." Would that sentence really have been
> > better if Chandler had written: "He called me a motherfucking
> > asshole."
>
> Perhaps not, but I think Marlowe would have liked to have used
> stronger language than he was allowed to by his editors and the mores
> of the time.

> Maybe. But in terms of impact, Marlowe's summary implies that what
> the character said wasn't worth quoting. It wasn't dramatically
> important or the character wasn't significant enough to be quoted.
> Kevin is setting up good aesthetic grounds for evaluating language,
> seems to me.

I'm afraid I don't see how that follows. I don't think, either, that Chandler felt that the character's words weren't worth quoting, so much as feeling constrained by The Rules. And even if the character wasn't significant enough to be quoted, I don't see how that establishes aesthetic grounds for evaluating language.

Of course, the problem is that overuse of obscenities and vulgarities of all stripes have defanged them, so that where once a "Damn" was shocking and carried a punch, now authors have to use combinations of thirteenletterwords to even approach the same level of shock--and it still doesn't work.

jess

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