Jack wrote
Damn if I know, unless it's a writer does what he has to with
language to make it work in his books or stories and that
reality can be tempered with a genuine love of the language.
One "fuck," well placed, is worth a dozen sprinkled around
for reality.
I'm with Jack on this. I think the argument for swearing is
to do with authenticity, which is fair enough up to a point.
That's to say that to eschew the use of 'fuck' entirely is
absurd these days (at least in most kinds of crime stories).
But use it as much as some people - especially, say, teenage
boys - actually use it, and you end up with something almost
unreadable. Just as if you included all the sort ofs and you
knows that people actually sort of say when they're kind of,
you know, trying to sort of get the point over, if you know
what I'm saying.
Simply put, authentic tape recorder dialogue is unreadable -
what Higgins and Leonard did was to take the vernacular and
impose rhythm and sense and even a cerain poetry on to it,
and that does indeed involve strategic rather then
authentically profuse use of, er, Anglo-Saxon oaths.
John
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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