On Fri, 8 Sep 2000, Mark Sullivan wrote:
> What bothers me is its gratuitous use to appear hip
or street. Anthony
> pointed out a very important distinction between
narrative voice and
> dialog. Nasty words could be well put in characters'
mouth to express
> anything from friendship to anger depending upon
context. They may even
> be very effectively used in portraying a character
as a phony, someone
> not nearly as hip as they would have you think, just
as the misuse of a
> high-falutin' word may expose a social climber. It's
fine, just part of
> the story, if I think a character is a phony. It's
another thing
> entirely if I believe the narrator is.
The literarary critics use the word "focalization" in order
to talk about the values that are being described through the
point-of-view characters. (It doesn't have to be
point-of-view character to be focalized, just check Vladimir
Nabokov, but it's the most normal case.) You can write: "He
watched through the window and saw some filthy animals." Now,
these animals were not necessarily filthy, but because of the
focalization of this character they are filthy.
What I mean with this is that you don't have to use dialogue
to show the values and opinions of the characters. Ellroy
does just this. When he writes "nigger", he's trying to show
in one word what are the values and opinions of his
characters. Same goes with "fuck" and "fucking". An example
from "American Tabloid" (badly remembered and rendered from
the Finnish translation): "He had made up a fucking bomb
shield." This is not dialogue, it's narration, but the word
"fucking" implies the point-of-view of a speaker, who
therefore is focalized. Never is there an implication that
it's the point-of-view Ellroy.
Juri who should get back to work immediately
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