>And isn't that what Chandler was saying, that a man
should go down
>those mean streets, neither tarnished nor afraid, a
man who is not
>himself mean?
Oh yes, of course. But we have to draw a line between
characters and authors, or the third-person/omniscient
narrative voice. Some characters are tarnished, some are
afraid, some are prejudiced, some are stupid, some are evil.
We only have words to put this across, and the words we
assign to these characters have to tell more about them than
they know about themselves, or want us to know. Where it goes
wrong is when we are poncing and posing and trying to
persuade the readers that WE, not our characters, are big bad
and ugly.
Marianne Macdonald (whose characters are always polite)
PS And Chris is very right about English villages. I could
tell a story.... Actually, I have (next year's book).
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