>Last week I read "Red Harvest" - for the first time,
believe it or not - and
>although I enjoyed and admired it enormously, there
were times when the
>"piled-up slang" (good expression, that) became just
too much and
>stopped me in my
>tracks, like roller skating along a smooth pavement
and then coming to a loose
>gravel drive. When every other word was a (frankly)
phoney-sounding slang
>term, I didn't know whether to laugh or snarl;
especially since, all
>these years
>after the writing, the meanings and contexts are no
longer always obvious -
>shit, sometimes the *object* the term applied to no
longer exists!
But Hammett didn't write RED HARVEST for you -- he wrote it
for your grandfather, who probably got a real kick out of it.
I think we should write for the times we live in, and let
posterity hang. If it happens it happens, but most writers
want to be read in their own lifetimes, not some hazy spot in
the future. I know I do.
Of course, like anything a writer uses in forging his own
style
(violence, sex, pop culture references, political opinions,
brand names, technical data, whatever), slang can be
over-used, but in the right hands any of these can add
considerable weight and texture to a book.
And anyway, what's "slang," and what's just common usage?
Will some guy in 2095 wonder why you used such archaic slang
in your post? Can you imagine?
"Dear Moderator,
Last week I accessed the famous RED HARVEST post by the
legendary Mat Coward, and although I enjoyed and admired much
of it enormously, there were times when the slang became just
too much and stopped me in my URL. What in Microsoft's name
is "roller skating"? And other times I was rather troubled by
the inherent sexism of the time -- "a loose gravel drive" is
a particularly offensive and nasty phrase, no matter how
well-regarded the writer is. Were they always so sexist back
then? I don't see the benefit in keeping these old archives
around if nobody can understand them, or worse, use such
occasionally nasty language. What's the point? Someone should
definitely Bush these old files, so modern audiences can
access their data fully."
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