I feel compelled to write something. I know I’ve touched on this subject again and again. Of late, I’ve ignored the few complaints I get as the person who receives email through NevadaBarr.com, but I find myself particularly incensed this morning.
My worthless opinion which, I’m sure, is at least as obnoxious as anyone elses:
I feel sure that you are aware of the pitfalls in suggesting or perhaps even requiring that an author include or not include certain words and/or subjects in their prose. If your love of books is paramount, one hopes that you unite with readers throughout the United States in supporting our constitutional right to freedom of speech and abhor the possibility of this becoming a country that bans or burns books due to content.
Profanity and explicit sexual content exist throughout literature and art in every language and has been wielded by authors and artists over the centuries to put forth their ideas, stories, poetry, and now blogs and vlogs. One reader’s insistence that a story could be told better without the use of this word or that word, this visual or that visual, is ludicrously erroneous. Curbing artistic expression cripples the artist and benefits no one. If authors were forced to conform to the constraints of public opinion, literature would become flat to those of us who enjoy a well told tale.
People who “suggest” that a story could be told better without the profanity, or who imply that the use of certain words or visuals are tools of the lazy author make my head explode. If you don’t like it, don’t read it. Write your own damn book.
Thorpunious …
i’m generally so engrossed in an Anna Pigeon mystery, I don’t even notice coarse language. Or maybe I don’t notice because the character is ‘real’ and the writing is ‘true’. In any case, I like real characters, and real people sometimes curse. Real people sometimes have sex. There is a huge difference between ‘graphic’ sex in writing and ‘gratuitious’ sex scenes. A sex scene thrown in there for the sake of a sex scene is more off-putting to me than a well-written sex scene that follows the flow of the story and fits the characters’ relationships. It’s just like life. Is the sex scene, as written, appropriate to the flow of the story and the relationship between the characters? As an author, this is the question I ask myself when writing such a scene. The same with language–is it true to character and does it serve to express the character’s emotion at the time? Authors make those choices every day. The good ones know the difference. In my opinion, Nevada Barr is up there with the best of the good ones. Skilled. And, of course, readers always have a choice. I’m not an artist, and so would never presume to have told Michaelangelo how to paint. If I didn’t like his work, I’d look at something else. Reader feedback is helpful, but only to a point.
As we say ’round these parts, F ‘em they can’t take a joke.
If someone doesn’t like something in a book, they have the option put it down and walk away. Read something else. Personally, I’ve tried very hard to eradicate certain words from my own vocabulary. 99% of the time, they’re not necessary, especially that one starting with an F, but it’s my choice for me. I’ve only ever been unhappy to the point of offended by language in a book once. I didn’t see a need for the author to use the F word in every sentence, and that was how it felt. I was terribly disappointed, because I’d really been looking forward to reading his books and I really needed a laugh (I bought one while traveling to my grandmother’s funeral). I took it back to the store, which is something I’ve never, ever done. I’ve unloaded books at used bookstores, of course, but I’d never returned a book to the store where I’d purchased it. And even though I’ve tried to eradicate a majority of profanity from my own vocabulary, sometimes, all that will suffice to let off frustration or steam or pain or whatever is a loud (or loudly thought) WHAT THE F**K. It happens. No one is perfect. Get over it. There are so many books to read, movies to watch, etc., that if I don’t like one, a thousand more are waiting around the corner of the next bookshelf.
Really interested in this post, especially the vehemence with which some readers insist that Nevada stick with Anna Pigeon and keep her between the ditches on a pretty narrow road. A few years ago, I attended Wyoming Bookfest in Casper, Wyoming. CJ Box, Craig Johnson, Clinton McKinzie and Kathleen O’Neill and Michael Gear (People of the . . . books) comprised the panel for a discussion about mysteries. None of them write typical “whodunnits.” Their characters evolve with each book, they’re complex people and don’t necessarily wear a white hat from one book to the next. I asked the panel if they ever felt pressure from their publishers to stick with a formula–basically, to write the same story over and over again with the same main characters, changing the names of the secondary characters and the setting with each book. Did they feel freedom to write the natural flow of the stories, or did they feel pressure to do assembly-line writing? I encouraged them to speak candidly, because, as I told them, we were their audience. If they were being pressured by their publishers to write formulaic schlock, we were the people who could put pressure on the publishers, and there’s a lot more of us readers than publishers.
I don’t like the idea that the publishers “know what people want to read.” That’s corporate-speak for “what’s most profitable for the company,” and it means we readers only get to read what the publishers think will positively affect their profit margin.
Interestingly, CJ Box and Craig Johnson said they felt they were able to take their characteris and stories wherever they wanted to go. Kathleen and Michael said they write the “In Me” series to keep the publishers happy so that they can continue to write the “People Of” series. Clinton McKinzie was so dissatisfied with his experience that he was shopping for another publisher.
I’m about to finish High Country, and I find I really like Anna Pigeon and the direction her life experience is taking her. I like the serial-ness of these stories. They remind me of radio stories. So, in that aspect, I like what some might consider the “sameness.” I think of it as familiarity.
But I think it would be very bad indeed if proven, published writers were restricted, either by their publishers or by their fans (which, as I learned from the panel discussion, can amount to the same thing) to their serial format, only allowed to “write what sells.” That is a VERY slippery slope.
Writers and other artists are the keepers of the voice, the vision, the ideas, and the expression. They shouldn’t let anyone else dictate their art.
Really great post! Thank you
Fuck ‘em if the can’t take a joke, or a forbidden image.
Dear Thorpunius,
I know the alphabet, does that mean I can write The Great American Novel? My life story is really interesting, or at least that’s what my friends tell me. How do I start?
Your biggest fan,
Bill
I’m not sure what advice my sister would give you, but it would go something like this: “start with chapter one, page one.”
Thorpunious …