I wrote
"What really gets to me are contemporary writers who set
their books in the past and use it as an excuse to revel in
racial, ethnic and homophobic slurs. It too often seems like
an excuse to spew those vile sentiments, whether because they
agree with them or just to shock, while retaining the easy
out of saying, Hey, it's not me, it was the times.
Lee replied:
"I understand where you're coming from here, Mark, but it
brings up an interesting writing problem. If a writer decided
to place their story in less "enlightened" times, how would
they handle this issue without being offensive to our more
tender sensibilities while still being authentic to the way
many people used to speak? Especially - but certainly not
exclusively - bad people? "
I think you and I are talking about this from two different
angles. These things are okay, even necessary, if they are a
part of a character. For instance, I'm not too far into Blood
Meridian, but I've already run across numerous racial slurs.
Although some made me cringe, I would not have taken out a
single one. Same with most of Pelecanos's use of racial
slurs. In both cases, they seem to be the language those
characters would use.
My problem comes when those words seem gratuitous, like the
writer is just looking for an excuse to use them. I was fine
with them in many of Ellroy's books, but by the time I was
done with American Tabloid, I was finding a uniformity of
biases, particularly homophobia, among most, if not all, of
his characters. The biases had gone beyond being traits of
individual characters and become a blanket attitude, one that
was taken for granted, without any reflection, much less a
critical stance. It seemed to me to be the most apparent
evidence that his characters were no longer fully
distinguishable, but were starting to blur into each other,
become interchangeable.
Mark
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 13 Nov 2005 EST