Profanity in Novels

[keilj]

I'm wondering what folks think of the use of profanity in novels. My reaction overall is that it lessens the work, and probably doesn't belong in good books.

Let me qualify what I am talking about. Firstly, I am not talking about lighter cussing like "h*ll" or "d*mn", I'm talking about the stronger words. Also, I am not approaching this discussion from the point of some Puritan disapproval of it, I am talking more about whether using the stronger expletives actually lessens the book's literary merit.

For example, Hemingway would sometimes use a strong word, but he would not spell the word out. James Baldwin, on the other hand, included harsh expletives in his writing. And when I read those, it almost lessens the book for me right away.

I'd like to hear what others think. And again, I'm no prude - I love the TV show Deadwood and love all the cussing in it. But it does not seem to fit into finer literature for me.

[johnw1]

I can't think of a single reason why literature (excepting children's) would suffer from the use of expletives. What reasons would you have for this other than personal distaste for certain words? It's like saying you don't want any sex or violence or anything else that might be shocking or unpleasant - why should literature shy away from these things? It should be challenging and sometimes unsettling.

[MarkBastable]

It depends on the extent to which you think that novels set in the real world ought to reflect reality.

Me, I think that if you're writing about the sort of people who swear, then you should write them swearing. It's a question of credibility. It would be very difficult to take the characters in Trainspotting seriously if they were to say, "Just hand over the gosh-darned crack, you saucy minx."

[Modest Proposal]

I think, as with everything, it is a question of why. If the language is to characterize someone, then of course it can be necessary. Just as sadness can be to a purpose either aesthetic or thoughtful or moral or whatever.

What I don't like, is when a work does something gratuitous to be sensational. Expletives, sex, violence and many other things exist in our society, and will thus be inherent in our literature. It is a matter of what the author is doing with them which I find at times obscene. It is a very complicated issue and I don't know that the thread-starter is giving it due consideration. However, I am equally puzzled by people who take any perversity, depravity, violence and vulgarity as a prerogative with no responsibilities attached.

[keilj]

It's not a matter of shying away from profane things, it is a matter of depicting/reacting to it with a certain amount of artfulness. Twain depicted the rape of Joan of Arc in his novel, but he did it in an artful way. It's almost easier to just throw the expletive in there than it is to express the sentiment without doing so

Also, perhaps it goes to the very heart of what great writing should be - appealing the the higher ideals, depicting human emotion, suffering, redemption with a certain amount of grace and care. By employing graphic and profane methods, it seems that some of the sensitivity of the art is undermined

[MarkBastable]

Also, perhaps it goes to the very heart of what great writing should be - appealing the the higher ideals, depicting human emotion, suffering, redemption with a certain amount of grace and care. By employing graphic and profane methods, it seems that some of the sensitivity of the art is undermined

What makes you think that swearing has anything to do with the height of ideals? And what makes you believe that those of us who swear, and those of us who write characters who swear, are less sensitive than those of us who don't?

[dfloyd]

enough for me. The sexual and scatalogical phrases did not ring true, and I found the episode disgusting, especially the scatalogical phrases. The repetitive phrases which refered to human bodily functions made a poorly- made series into an obscene poorly-made series. In contrast, the well-. writtren and well-acted Sopranos used language not fit for a child, but which rang true and wasn't overdone. Whereby, in Deadwood, the over use of expletives probably would have embarresed Wild Bill Hickcock if he had been around to hear them.

In literature it is much the same. If the story call for it, then it is not so much noticed. In Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, while foul language is used, it is not so much noticed because it fits in with Miller's biographical tale. Even Hemingway complains about Scott Fitzgerald's language. But Fitzgerald was drunk most of the time he was in Paris or taking the famous road trip with Hemingway to recue his car from French impounding.

In literature, the story line needs to call for swearing, and it should not be overused to be effective. In conversation, people who swear where they don't have to, are generally taken as those who are not capable of expressing themselves adequately so they resort to the use of improper language.

[billl]

I agree with all of the comments so far. I was turned off the 2 or 3 times I tried watching Deadwood, because the bad language didn't seem to fit. I don't know, maybe the old west had that kind of language in such amounts... But it didn't work for me.

However, I thought "How Late It Was How Late" by James Kellman was a fantastic book (I've trumpeted it in another thread or two here), about a guy who might in day to day life have had "trouble expressing himself adequately" but describes a compelling life nonetheless, and often in language that is quite more than adequate as a narrator to the novel, with the curses taking nothing at all away from it.

You can count the instances of bad language on the LOOK INSIDE preview here at Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/How-Late-Was-Novel/dp/039332799X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1268936185&sr=8-1

Without this sort of voice, and the words that occur within it, this sort of person/character could not accurately emerge in literature.

[keilj]

enough for me. The sexual and scatalogical phrases did not ring true, and I found the episode disgusting, especially the scatalogical phrases. The repetitive phrases which refered to human bodily functions made a poorly- made series into an obscene poorly-made series. In contrast, the well-. writtren and well-acted Sopranos used language not fit for a child, but which rang true and wasn't overdone. Whereby, in Deadwood, the over use of expletives probably would have embarresed Wild Bill Hickcock if he had been around to hear them.

In literature it is much the same. If the story call for it, then it is not so much noticed. In Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, while foul language is used, it is not so much noticed because it fits in with Miller's biographical tale. Even Hemingway complains about Scott Fitzgerald's language. But Fitzgerald was drunk most of the time he was in Paris or taking the famous road trip with Hemingway to recue his car from French impounding.

In literature, the story line needs to call for swearing, and it should not be overused to be effective. In conversation, people who swear where they don't have to, are generally taken as those who are not capable of expressing themselves adequately so they resort to the use of improper language.


You're missing some great, great episodes with incredible explorations of human nature - but that is off-topic

It's odd, becasue I even find that profanity and lewdness have a place in comic books - but when I read it in literature, it always seems a bit lazy or even intentionally sensational

Perhaps it is best to look at a direct quote as an example and analyze if it is necessary/over-the-top/detracting to the book itself. Here is a line from the first page of a James Baldwin novel

"But I only call him Alonzo when I have to break down some real heavy sh*t to him."

(the s word is not edited in the book - I had to edit it here or it would not be printed on my post)

[kelby_lake]

Overuse or unnecessary use of profanities/vulgar slang can turn me off. The odd usage in dialogue, I have no problem with- after all, it's how people actually speak. Even educated people swear.

A line from something I've written: "**** it, I'll just get the landlord to fix it." Out of context, the first part seems unnecessary, but in context it proves the boy's immaturity (he is in a serious relationship but is still a teenager, and not an educated one at that).

I'm pretty sure that in most arguments, someone will swear or be crass at least once. And if you go for the really visceral swear words, you can create a violent nastiness.

In some writers' cases, swearing is an important part of the book.

[keilj]

Overuse or unnecessary use of profanities/vulgar slang can turn me off. The odd usage in dialogue, I have no problem with- after all, it's how people actually speak. Even educated people swear.

A line from something I've written: "**** it, I'll just get the landlord to fix it." Out of context, the first part seems unnecessary, but in context it proves the boy's immaturity (he is in a serious relationship but is still a teenager, and not an educated one at that).

I'm pretty sure that in most arguments, someone will swear or be crass at least once. And if you go for the really visceral swear words, you can create a violent nastiness.

In some writers' cases, swearing is an important part of the book.


good point. You made me think of something else. Perhaps it has as much to do with the character as it does with how the author chooses to use the word(s). For example, Dostoevsky had a character of his swear, but instead of spelling it out, her replaced the word with (he said a word not suitable for print)

[Dark Muse]

Overuse or unnecessary use of profanities/vulgar slang can turn me off. The odd usage in dialogue, I have no problem with- after all, it's how people actually speak. Even educated people swear.

A line from something I've written: "**** it, I'll just get the landlord to fix it." Out of context, the first part seems unnecessary, but in context it proves the boy's immaturity (he is in a serious relationship but is still a teenager, and not an educated one at that).

I'm pretty sure that in most arguments, someone will swear or be crass at least once. And if you go for the really visceral swear words, you can create a violent nastiness.

In some writers' cases, swearing is an important part of the book.

Yes, that is pretty much just what I was going to say. Anything can be overdone, but all in all the use of profanity within literature does not bother me because that is the way peoples actually talk.

It captures the realism of dialogue between people, most especially in situations of high intensity. As mentioned above, it would seem perfectly natural and normal for people to swear during the heat of an argument. Also sense Hemingway was mentioned, in considering particularly A Farewell to Arms, it seems perfectly natural and quite realistic to have characters swearing in the midst of a war of all things.

[johnw1]

In conversation, people who swear where they don't have to, are generally taken as those who are not capable of expressing themselves adequately so they resort to the use of improper language.
Swearing gets a bad press - it can be used in creative, amusing, highly expressive ways and to avoid its use entirely is surely unnecessarily restrictive; why not consider the whole range of language? Didn't Shakespeare, for example, use words that may have fallen into this category and he can hardly be described as inadequate in his use of language. When you say 'improper' do you mean somehow immoral or wrong? If so, why? I must confess I've never understood what makes those words 'wrong' - 'shag' for i.e may be generally acceptable slang but f*** not so.

[/QUOTE]It's not a matter of shying away from profane things, it is a matter of depicting/reacting to it with a certain amount of artfulness. Twain depicted the rape of Joan of Arc in his novel, but he did it in an artful way. It's almost easier to just throw the expletive in there than it is to express the sentiment without doing so[/QUOTE]
Why would this always be preferable? Sometimes it would be better to shock the reader and be absolutely explicit and the same goes for language.

[Dark Muse]

If so, why? I must confess I've never understood what makes those words 'wrong' - 'shag' for i.e may be generally acceptable slang but f*** not so.

I have always had the same problem. Essentially as far as I can see the only thing that makes a word "bad" or "wrong" is the way in which people choose to react to the word. I do not think that a word an inherently, in of itself by bad.

If people stopped reacting to certain words as if they were taboo, or shocking, than the words would loose their power as "bad" words.

[keilj]

Why would this always be preferable? Sometimes it would be better to shock the reader and be absolutely explicit and the same goes for language.

I've given it quite a bit of thought - and I seem to come down on the side that foul language is fine in comics books and in TV and movies, but it seems to not quite fit in novels. Unless it is used very, very sparingly. I remember reading a book by Hemingway where I think he had sh*t in there one time - and it worked. But having the narrator cuss every other page seems trite to me

As far as shocking the reader - this can be done many different ways. Sometimes an artful and particularly accurate description of something can be very shocking without even being explicit

[keilj]

The same seems to apply to music also. Springsteen dropped the F bomb once on his latest album - and it was great. But doing it in every other verse - eh, doesn't seem to work for me

[johnw1]

I've given it quite a bit of thought - and I seem to come down on the side that foul language is fine in comics books and in TV and movies, but it seems to not quite fit in novels. Unless it is used very, very sparingly. I remember reading a book by Hemingway where I think he had sh*t in there one time - and it worked. But having the narrator cuss every other page seems trite to me

As far as shocking the reader - this can be done many different ways. Sometimes an artful and particularly accurate description of something can be very shocking without even being explicit

I don't agree with making these blanket statements - I just think why should writers not consider all the options and determine which is the most appropriate in the specific case. Sometimes politeness and diffidence may be too comfortable and we need to be shaken up by having thrust before us to force us take notice of how shocking something is. I agree, however, that such things can be overused and become trite and that if we want to retain the power to shock an audience in certain circumstances then it's necessary to avoid this or we risk becoming desensitized.


I have always had the same problem. Essentially as far as I can see the only thing that makes a word "bad" or "wrong" is the way in which people choose to react to the word. I do not think that a word an inherently, in of itself by bad.

If people stopped reacting to certain words as if they were taboo, or shocking, than the words would loose their power as "bad" words.

Yes. Although in some ways I'm glad we have to option to use 'shocking' words even if their shock value is somewhat irrational.

Actually there are some words whose use is I think immoral on consideration, where attached to racism for example - even here though, to return to the point of the thread, these may be suitable for use in art; for example Dylan's 'Hurricane' I think benefits from the inclusion of racist language: http://www.lyricsfreak.com/b/bob+dylan/hurricane_20021332.html

[Emil Miller]

Can you find swearwords in Cervantes, Shakespeare or Dante etc.etc. even though swearwords are, and have been, universal for centuries. Does the lack of swearwords indicate the power of religion, or the realisation that it isn't necessary to indulge in foul language, no matter how necessary it may seem in the cause of reality, and to say what has to be said witout profanity.
I have posted on this website before, the saying of an old teacher of mine: "Swearing is the first resort of the inarticulate." It was ever thus.

[johnw1]

Can you find swearwords in Cervantes, Shakespeare or Dante etc.etc. even though swearwords are, and have been, universal for centuries. Does the lack of swearwords indicate the power of religion, or the realisation that it isn't necessary to indulge in foul language, no matter how necessary it may seem in the cause of reality, and to say what has to be said witout profanity.
I have posted on this website before, the saying of an old teacher of mine: "Swearing is the first resort of the inarticulate." It was ever thus.

Plenty in Shakespeare for one although they are now archaic so not immediately recognisable. Not that that would prove anything anyway; art should not stand still and if something is not done in the past doesn't mean it's not worth doing in the future.

[MarkBastable]

I have posted on this website before, the saying of an old teacher of mine: "Swearing is the first resort of the inarticulate." It was ever thus.

That Martin Amis - he's very inarticulate. The man can hardly string a sentence together.

[stlukesguild]

Can you find swearwords in Cervantes, Shakespeare or Dante etc.etc. even though swearwords are, and have been, universal for centuries. Does the lack of swearwords indicate the power of religion, or the realisation that it isn't necessary to indulge in foul language, no matter how necessary it may seem in the cause of reality, and to say what has to be said witout profanity.
I have posted on this website before, the saying of an old teacher of mine: "Swearing is the first resort of the inarticulate." It was ever thus.

Plenty in Shakespeare for one although they are now archaic so not immediately recognisable. Not that that would prove anything anyway; art should not stand still and if something is not done in the past doesn't mean it's not worth doing in the future.

Yes... and look into Rabelais, Boccaccio, Chaucer, Swift, Henry Wilmot, 1st Earl of Rochester (a master of the dirty poems), to say nothing of the Romans. Dirty stories, vulgar puns, and like are quite common. We might do well to remember, however, that specific words which one generation or era considered vulgar or "filthy" or "pornographic" are not necessarily thought of in the same manner by others. The words thought of as the most "filthy" even differ from culture to culture.

[kilo]

While it may sound agreeable, I think the actual plot of a novel doesn't need any expletives at all; except in the case of dialogue where people use profanity a lot more often.

[mayneverhave]

Can you find swearwords in Cervantes, Shakespeare or Dante etc.etc. even though swearwords are, and have been, universal for centuries. Does the lack of swearwords indicate the power of religion, or the realisation that it isn't necessary to indulge in foul language, no matter how necessary it may seem in the cause of reality, and to say what has to be said witout profanity.
I have posted on this website before, the saying of an old teacher of mine: "Swearing is the first resort of the inarticulate." It was ever thus.

Hamlet: Lady, shall I lie in your lap?

Ophelia: No, my lord.

Hamlet: I mean, my head upon your lap?

Ophelia: Ay, my lord.

Hamlet: Do you think I meant country matters?

Ophelia: I think nothing, my lord.

Hamlet: That's a fair thought to lie between maid's legs.

Ophelia: What is, my lord?

Hamlet: Nothing.
(Ham. 3-2)

Which is more offensive to you, the use of a naughty word or a subtle, but very dirty punning on a certain part of the female sexual anatomy?

Swear words are simply words that society has branded taboos. There's nothing wrong with the words, you've just been inculcated from a young age that there is something inherently nasty about these words. Get over it.

[Blanket Heist]

I like my books how I like my women.

[Jozanny]

I just recently finished the first novel in a vampire noir series by Charlie Huston, Already Dead, and to my astonishment, I enjoyed the narrative as a light heavy read, and not more than a little appreciated that Huston understood the Northeastern urban corridor from NYC down through Philadelphia in the U.S.

For us, the ef word is just an emphasis word, and I enjoyed that the narrator talked the language of self-depreciation that we use around here. To the urban working class, salty speech is just a coda, more or less, and if a good writer gets the rhythm right, swear language works, but not if it is too self-conscious. I cannot think of anything particularly literary, however, off the top of my head.

[pooteeweet]

I've given it quite a bit of thought - and I seem to come down on the side that foul language is fine in comics books and in TV and movies, but it seems to not quite fit in novels. Unless it is used very, very sparingly. I remember reading a book by Hemingway where I think he had sh*t in there one time - and it worked. But having the narrator cuss every other page seems trite to me

As far as shocking the reader - this can be done many different ways. Sometimes an artful and particularly accurate description of something can be very shocking without even being explicit

:iagree:

[Modest Proposal]

Hamlet: Lady, shall I lie in your lap?

Ophelia: No, my lord.

Hamlet: I mean, my head upon your lap?

Ophelia: Ay, my lord.

Hamlet: Do you think I meant country matters?

Ophelia: I think nothing, my lord.

Hamlet: That's a fair thought to lie between maid's legs.

Ophelia: What is, my lord?

Hamlet: Nothing.
(Ham. 3-2)

Which is more offensive to you, the use of a naughty word or a subtle, but very dirty punning on a certain part of the female sexual anatomy?

Swear words are simply words that society has branded taboos. There's nothing wrong with the words, you've just been inculcated from a young age that there is something inherently nasty about these words. Get over it.

Sorry, this response has so often proved to be completely bunk. It is not some arbitrary group who tries to propetuate the idea that some words are bad while others are "free" of this arbitrary prejudice and are trying to "liberate" the others.

People who use profanity are the ones who want it to have powerful/taboo message. Saying F*** you to someone, is TRYING to conjure a bad feeling (or sarcasm, but that is something else entirely).

It is absurd to act like words are only considered "foul" because terrible prudes are afraid of them. All sides of society agree to this sort of arrangement. Otherwise it would just disappear. We as people WANT to have something we are not supposed to say, to use it in a specific circumstance. Of course the language is arbitrary, nothing in the spelling of the F-word corresponds to the meaning and is thus "bad" it is a social agreement that we engage in to give power to a word. For that matter NO word has innate meaning, it is just a silent agreement.

The problem, as I said, comes in when people decide to give a word power by making it taboo and THEN someone uses it without "earning" it. This concept of "earning" is common in writing circles as a means of requiring a text to not RELY on foul-language or heavy-themes to be affecting, but to use craft to bring about the desired response in the reader. Imagine the carefully crafted humor listed above in Shakespeare versus a poor comedian who just uses vulgarities when his act is going south.

[billl]

The problem, as I said, comes in when people decide to give a word power by making it taboo and THEN someone uses it without "earning" it. This concept of "earning" is common in writing circles as a means of requiring a text to not RELY on foul-language or heavy-themes to be affecting, but to use craft to bring about the desired response in the reader.

I think I can probably agree with this, but I just think there needs to be room for literature where the usage of the word can be 'earned' by faithfully rendering a character who commonly does use such language, with the 'desired response on the reader' being an acceptance that the character really just talks like that all the time (and, perhaps, is probably a person who is generally angry, or anti-social, not especially literate, abusive, a childish clown, or whatever).

I don't mean to suggest that it is great for people to go around using profanity all the time, in front of strangers, children, etc. But I do think that it would be a shame to believe that great literature is incapable of acknowledging the existence of such characters for more than a sentence here or there, or without ruining the rhythm and sounds of their speech with asterisks, etc.

[mortalterror]

John Wilmot, not Henry.

[kevinthediltz]

I just finished "Haunted" by Chuck Palahniuk. If you know Chuck at all you know he is a pretty agressive writer. There is one story in the book called "guts." In his afterword he talks about how many people fainted at his reading of this story. He reaches an intensity and rarely uses curse words. There are plenty of other ways to shock people without swearing. Though when used rarely I think it can be powerful and bring intensity.

[BienvenuJDC]

I agree with some of the comments here concerning a portrayal of realistic life, in order to show the moral character of the persons or the setting. However, if anyone thinks that the general communication requires the use of profane language, then the intellect of this current society has diminished. I'm not offended by a word every now and again, but there are certainly some words used more than once that will cause me to put a book down and throw the author off my book list. Let us develop our vocabularies elegantly.

[JBI]

It's just we are preoccupied with two swearwords, once of which was supposedly made popular by the efforts of D. H. Lawrence and James Joyce.

When you think of it though, some stuff in Shakespeare is beyond dirty - even the Puritanical Malvolio in Twelfth Night is not exempt from perverted puns.

As for worse stuff, just read Nashe's Unfortunate Traveler - but then again, the man made his living as a trash talker, and his bouts with Gabriel Harvey are even worse (there is one bit when he calls him every sort of vulgar "Dick" imaginable for like a page).

As for Cervantes not swearing, well, he certainly is not exempt from dirty language and "mature subject matter." so perhaps it has something to do with the evolution of swear words, but I cannot say as I rely on translations.

Dante is different, in that he is working out of scholasticism, so he isn't really "of the people" in the sense that Boccaccio seems to be more populist literature. But what he did put in his book was bordering on the inappropriate, and perhaps he would have been excomunicated or worse had his work not been so well accepted.


But you must remember, from the beginnings of English in the Vernacular as commonplace - so lets say the reign of Henry VIII onward - the Catholic church, for instance, in iconography was depicted as the "whore of Babylon" (attested by her depiction wearing the papal tiara, something which originates with Lutheranism).

It gets worse though, they may not swear, but somebody like Thomas More and Tyndale had a 1000 page argument (the which has never been translated into modernized English) involving all sorts of foul language and rude remark. Even the most stoic, or puritanical seem indulgent in some form of vulgarity.

[Mariner]

If cussing doesn't seem to "fit" or "work" in novels then you aren't reading enough. There is no standard code for how novel and stories have to be written. **** or **** can be as effectively as any other word when used right, no matter the frequency. We just have to trust the writer to use words correctly.

[Modest Proposal]

If cussing doesn't seem to "fit" or "work" in novels then you aren't reading enough. There is no standard code for how novel and stories have to be written. **** or **** can be as effectively as any other word when used right, no matter the frequency. We just have to trust the writer to use words correctly.

I don't trust all writers. I discern for myself whether ANYTHING is up to my standard.

As with vulgarities, I decided on a instance by instance basis whether or not a work is believable, worthwhile, interesting, edifying, challenging, intelligent, ethical....

I don't know if you really meant what you just said. Do you really think a reader should blindly trust an author's discretion? There are some pretty bad, let alone hateful and evil, written works out there.

[Emil Miller]

I am sitting next to a bookcase that contains novels by the following:
Greene, Maugham, Balzac, Daudet, Maupassant, Zola, Malraux, Gide, Mauriac, James, Goncourt, de Monthelant, Gautier, Goncharov, Bulgakov, Maurois, Durrell, Hemingway, Fontane, Hesse, Zweig, Mann, Musil, Chekhov, Roth, Dreiser, Fitzgerald, Butler and last, but certainly not least, Goethe.
Despite the fact that, even by today's standards ( or lack of them ) some of these writers led lives of debauchery, to the best of my recollection there are no swearwords in any of these books. I recently read a novel by Sebastien Faulkes in which one of the characters is an evil City of London wheeler dealer who constantly swears throughout the story. One of the books mentioned above, The Financier by Theodore Dreiser, has a similar character who is much more convincing and doesn't swear at all. But then Faulkes (described in the endorsements as "one of our greatest living writers") like Amis pere et fils doesn't come up to the ankles of the aforementioned novelists.

[MarkBastable]

Roth

Despite the fact that, even by today's standards ( or lack of them ) some of these writers led lives of debauchery, to the best of my recollection there are no swearwords in any of these books.

Then you don't recall Portnoy's Complaint very well.

[papayahed]

Sometimes you just need a good ****!

[Emil Miller]

Then you don't recall Portnoy's Complaint very well.

I am referring to the German writer Joseph Roth the author of Radetzkymarsch and Die Kapuzinergruft, two major works in modern German literature, and not to Philip Roth the author of Portnoy's Complaint.

[applepie]

I agree with some of the comments here concerning a portrayal of realistic life, in order to show the moral character of the persons or the setting. However, if anyone thinks that the general communication requires the use of profane language, then the intellect of this current society has diminished. I'm not offended by a word every now and again, but there are certainly some words used more than once that will cause me to put a book down and throw the author off my book list. Let us develop our vocabularies elegantly.

I'm in agreement. I have little issue with the use of profanity in a novel. If someone stubs their toe, I would almost find it strange to not let out an curse :) I don't think it is necessary, and too much usage will turn me off a book. I'm the same with movies. Take Pulp Fiction as an example. It's a pretty good film, and it has some witty dialog. You don't ever notice it however until you see a censored version. Then you can really appreciate just how well written some of it is.

[AuntShecky]

As a writer manqué, I am opposed to censorship in any form. I am also a proponent -- if not always a practitioner- of common sense.

There are instances in which I believe a responsible artist ought to apply some self-restraint (with the emphasis on "self.") For instance, there is no reason on God's good earth to go out of one's way to hurt an undeserving person
just to get a laugh or to make a point.

Secondly, authors often resort to the use of so-called four-letter words (though some of the worst are longer than 4 letters) as a way to present verisimilitude, to depict accurately and naturalistically everyday language. To a certain extent, this is true. However, when I hear conversations among people much younger than I am, and the language is not only peppered but overly garnished with salty words, I think that they're doing it to show what they think is "adult" speech. But let's face it, people whose language is heavy on profanity shows me that they are light in vocabulary. (Blame the educational system.) Some but not all of the kids have little creativity and even less intelligence.

There was a study some 15 years ago at Stanford (I believe, don't quote me) which researched the use of profanity as a way of "letting off steam" and as a buffer to prevent the use of physical violence. What the researchers found out was that after a subject let loose with the foul language, he (or she) found the fighting words to be insufficient, and that the swearing actually "led" to actual physical blows. When you turn the air blue with profanity -- and you're still mad -- what are you going to do? You're gonna pop someone. So the gist is of this is to save the swear words and use them only when you really need to. If you use them in every single sentence that you utter, you're not going to have any heavy artillery left to use when you're really, really mad. So ultimately what the study discovered was that rather than an alternative to violence, swearing is a "stepping stone," the way politicians --incorrectly as it turns out -- used to say how marijuana was the "gateway drug." But swearing is often the gateway to violence.

Finally, the OP specified the use of profanity in "novels," but the example given was Deadwood, a television mini-series of a few years ago. I thought that the show was excellent; however, I thought that the language was not only excessive but anachronistic. There is no doubt that the ruffians of the Wild Wild West used scatological language; however, the specific profanities used sounded too contemporary and not accurate to the 19th c. time frame supposedly depicted. Not only that, if you read documents actually written in those days, the language was expressive and eloquent, cf. the letters from Sullivan Ballou read on another HBO mini-series, The Civil War by Ken Burns.

I like HBO, although I don't watch Big Love or the vampire thing. I have noticed that the swearing on that particular network is rampant. I think the HBO producers do this to distinguish themselves from other cable networks. Also, they do it because they can.

[Niamh]

I dont think a Roddy Doyle novel whould have quite the same effect or be quite as memorable if it were not for the "language" used.

[billl]

I think that there is a lot of opposition to the excessive use of profanity in everyday life, and this opposition then is sometimes being carried over to profanity in literature. I can understand that there might be unhealthy consequences to excessive use of profanity, by any particular individual in society. And I understand that it might usually be used to shock or intimidate, or serve as a substitute for eloquence or respectful even-handedness.

I also understand that a person who strongly dislikes profanity might not want to see it on the pages of a book or magazine that they've begun to read. However, I don't think that the presence of even a great deal of profanity is enough to automatically disqualify a novel from being literature of high quality. People have different tastes, of course. But if we want to pat children on the head, and give a little extra esteem towards adults who avoid curses, well, that's one thing. But not all of the great stories and dialogue in life take place among such characters. It doesn't make sense to me to pretend that quality literature can't contain healthy or unhealthy doses of swear words.

[MarkBastable]

But let's face it, people whose language is heavy on profanity shows me that they are light in vocabulary.

I don't think this is true. I happen to know a winner of the TSEliot Prize for Poetry, and he swears all the time. I know several successful writers, in fact, who have very broad and deep vocabularies, and all of whom swear in practically every sentence. I'd invite you to read any of my work - which, whatever you might think of it, does demonstrate that my vocabulary is pretty well-developed. And I swear whenever I feel like it, which is often. Why? To shock? No - if you do it as much as I do, it soon stops being shocking. To express anger? No - I do it when I'm happy, sad, bored, excited, sleepy, wakeful, cross, calm, drunk and sober. I swear because the words are available, as all words are, and they should be used.




There was a study some 15 years ago at Stanford (I believe, don't quote me) which researched the use of profanity as a way of "letting off steam" and as a buffer to prevent the use of physical violence. What the researchers found out was that after a subject let loose with the foul language, he (or she) found the fighting words to be insufficient, and that the swearing actually "led" to actual physical blows. When you turn the air blue with profanity -- and you're still mad -- what are you going to do? You're gonna pop someone. So the gist is of this is to save the swear words and use them only when you really need to. If you use them in every single sentence that you utter, you're not going to have any heavy artillery left to use when you're really, really mad. So ultimately what the study discovered was that rather than an alternative to violence, swearing is a "stepping stone," the way politicians --incorrectly as it turns out -- used to say how marijuana was the "gateway drug." But swearing is often thegateway to violence.

I've seen this argument before, and I think it's spurious. To my knowledge, none of the people I cite above has ever been in a fight. Me, I haven't punched anyone, ever. I have, however, talked my way out of some seriously aggressive situations, with or without swearing. I think that if you perceive swear words as aggressive, then it's likely that they will be a step on the way to violence. But if you don't, why should they be? To say that swearing causes violence is like saying that cars cause bank robberies. Most bank robberies do involve cars, but there's no cause and effect there.

[blp]

No Chaucer on your shelf, Brian Bean?

There are people who are offended less by swearing than by 'big words' that they don't understand. I like to use the odd big word and I like to swear. I do both in daily life and in my writing, the latter in dialogue and first person narrative prose. The idea that there's anything wrong with it is largely mysterious to me.

Then you mention Martin Amis, Brian, and I'm given pause. Something about his swearing offends me too. But the bad thing about Amis' swearing is the same thing that's bad about lots of his writing. It's show-offy and phoney. He's only doing it to try to sound tough and contemporary.

[Emil Miller]

No Chaucer on your shelf, Brian Bean?

There are people who are offended less by swearing than by 'big words' that they don't understand. I like to use the odd big word and I like to swear. I do both in daily life and in my writing, the latter in dialogue and first person narrative prose. The idea that there's anything wrong with it is largely mysterious to me.

Then you mention Martin Amis, Brian, and I'm given pause. Something about his swearing offends me too. But the bad thing about Amis' swearing is the same thing that's bad about lots of his writing. It's show-offy and phoney. He's only doing it to try to sound tough and contemporary.


I am not saying that there is anything wrong with it, I am trying to point out that it isn't necessary. Only today I have written a chapter that tells of a furious argument between a contract killer and his paymaster that ends with a fight in which the killer stabs his antagonist to death. I could, in the interests of verisimilitude, have spattered the argument with expletives but it simply wasn't necessary. By using descriptions of their faces and the insulting nature of the argument, the hatred they felt for each other is plainly indicated. Using swearing is to take the easy way out and is a sign of lazy writing in my view.
I agree about Amis, it's not only the swearing but also the fact that he isn't a very good writer. I sometimes wonder if he would have been published were it not for his father's novels which, while better than his son's, are no great shakes either.

[MarkBastable]

I agree about Amis, it's not only the swearing but also the fact that he isn't a very good writer. I sometimes wonder if he would have been published were it not for his father's novels which, while better than his son's, are no great shakes either.

He might have got the first and second novels published because of his father, but the publishing industry is not so indulgent that thirty-five years later it would be publishing him on that premise. He's still published because he's still lucrative and respected - by the industry and his peers, if not by Brian Bean.

[billl]

What about a character who uses bad language pretty much every other minute of the time they speak? Should that person's voice be avoided in a novel containing such a character, perhaps on account of societal concerns, or to protect the reader? Or maybe because it is "too easy" to do that sort of character's voice? Should dialogue be avoided in general, since it is quite often rather plain?

I have to say, I don't do much fiction writing these days (none, really), but I never ventured to do too much cursing in dialogue or narration, because I thought it was pretty difficult to do well.

[MarkBastable]

Incidentally, a lot of these arguments would die on their feet if we didn't start from the premise that the use of some words has to be justified. It doesn't. Those words are part of the language, and part of reality. And that's all that matters.

[Niamh]

Incidentally, a lot of these arguments would die on their feet if we didn't start from the premise that the use of some words have to be justified. They don't. They are part of the language, and part of reality. And that's all that matters.

I couldnt agree with you more.

[Mariner]

I don't trust all writers. I discern for myself whether ANYTHING is up to my standard.

As with vulgarities, I decided on a instance by instance basis whether or not a work is believable, worthwhile, interesting, edifying, challenging, intelligent, ethical....

I don't know if you really meant what you just said. Do you really think a reader should blindly trust an author's discretion? There are some pretty bad, let alone hateful and evil, written works out there.

I really meant what I said. I didn't say "blindly trust" an author did I? I said that "we" (maybe I did mean "you") have to trust that the writer knows what they're doing. I don't know if you "blindly" choose a book to read, but I hardly ever start reading a book without know some background of the author, their style or work. If you're looking for a hateful or "evil" work, you have to know what you're getting into. I trust a published author like I do my plumber or doctor; to use their experience and tools to make smart decisions.

[myrna22]

I'm wondering what folks think of the use of profanity in novels. My reaction overall is that it lessens the work, and probably doesn't belong in good books.

If the 'profanity' is gratuitous, then it lessons the work. If it is part of the tone and voice, then it is necessary. Depends on the purpose of the author.

[blp]

I am not saying that there is anything wrong with it, I am trying to point out that it isn't necessary.

But you wouldn't care about whether it was 'necessary' if you didn't think there was something wrong with it. As MarkBastable says: '...a lot of these arguments would die on their feet if we didn't start from the premise that the use of some words has to be justified. It doesn't. Those words are part of the language, and part of reality. And that's all that matters.'


Only today I have written a chapter that tells of a furious argument between a contract killer and his paymaster that ends with a fight in which the killer stabs his antagonist to death. I could, in the interests of verisimilitude, have spattered the argument with expletives but it simply wasn't necessary. By using descriptions of their faces and the insulting nature of the argument, the hatred they felt for each other is plainly indicated. Using swearing is to take the easy way out and is a sign of lazy writing in my view.

I'm at a loss as to why you wouldn't have wanted the verisimilitude of swearing here. Two people like this almost certainly would swear at each other in a situation like this. Leaving it out looks like nothing more than self-censorship.

I've just watched the 90s TV series Freaks and Geeks, set in a US highschool in 1980. It's brilliantly and unusually realistic in many ways, but, of course, being TV, the kids never swear at each other. There's a definite space where that swearing ought to be because kids like this would have sworn at each other, liberally and, at times, creatively.

One of my favourite ever movie lines is the famous one in Withnail that uses the C-word.

[kelby_lake]

Read a lot of David Mamet's stuff and you'll get used to it. Actually, he was quite restrained in Oleanna- there is only one casual swear word before the teacher goes loony.

Yes, a writer has to show a certain amount of self-restraint but shying away from the fact that people say bad things is almost as bad as glorifying said bad things.

[janesmith]

I can't say that it really offends me to the extent that it would prevent me from reading the novel, play etc. It depends on the context and whether or not you feel it is being used purely for the shock effect.

[blp]

Only today I have written a chapter that tells of a furious argument between a contract killer and his paymaster that ends with a fight in which the killer stabs his antagonist to death. I could, in the interests of verisimilitude, have spattered the argument with expletives but it simply wasn't necessary. By using descriptions of their faces and the insulting nature of the argument, the hatred they felt for each other is plainly indicated. Using swearing is to take the easy way out and is a sign of lazy writing in my view.

On reflection, I find there's more I want to take issue with in this. The idea that the use of swearing here would constitute lazy writing suggests writerly diligence is all about word choice. I don't think it is. I think it's about knowing your characters and situations intimately. The language they use should come from that.

[myrna22]

One of my favourite ever movie lines is the famous one in Withnail that uses the C-word.

Lawrence uses the c-word in Lady Chatterley's Lover. It is used, in fact, in a way that makes it a good word. Word choice, diction, is an absolutely essential aspect of style. Lawrence didn't use the term to be provocative or negative but to depict how the characters who used that term expressed their sexual passion.

[blp]

Lawrence uses the c-word in Lady Chatterley's Lover. It is used, in fact, in a way that makes it a good word. Word choice, diction, is an absolutely essential aspect of style. Lawrence didn't use the term to be provocative or negative but to depict how the characters who used that term expressed their sexual passion.

If you're also responding to my last point to BB, then, yes, I agree, but, as you indicated, the 'style' here is something that emerges out of character. What I'm objecting to is Brian's idea that he can make choices about how his characters express themselves independently of their own 'reality' – and worse, that to not make those, essentially cosmetic, choices would constitute laziness.

[Modest Proposal]

I really meant what I said. I didn't say "blindly trust" an author did I? I said that "we" (maybe I did mean "you") have to trust that the writer knows what they're doing. I don't know if you "blindly" choose a book to read, but I hardly ever start reading a book without know some background of the author, their style or work. If you're looking for a hateful or "evil" work, you have to know what you're getting into. I trust a published author like I do my plumber or doctor; to use their experience and tools to make smart decisions.

I'm sorry that I added the word blindly to my addressing to your arguments. It did seem that that was what you meant. And even though I respect your position, this post seems to confirm some of what I'm resisting. I guess I'm a very selective reader, but even august works by lauded authors can be highly problematic to the point of unethical. Tarantino's new film was up for an academy award, praised by many critics and a huge success with the public. All of this, despite huge swathes of lazy writing, poor acting (several non-actors and "buddies" of Tarantino got significant parts), but most importantly, very problematic moral assertions. I can go to a film like this and find the language off-putting, the violence gratuitous and the moral deplorable even though I researched the film and found it "respectable". What I'm saying, is that we shouldn't rely on reviews or the fact that an author is published to decide whether we agree with their choices. These need to be made on an individual level.

[Emil Miller]

Let's not be disingenuous here. Why not describe a character as a foul-mouthed individual who would utter a stream of expletives in this or that fictitious situation.
Why is it necessary to spell them out? Unless, under the guise of verisimilitude or because of lazyness, you are aiming to entice the ingenuous into buying the book?
If swearing is neccesary to writing, why have more great novelists than not, found it unecessary to use swearing in their work?

[billl]

It isn't always important to the work (that's why).

Brian,


In the guise of verisimilitude
This obviously a loaded way of putting things. Is writing in the vernacular always a worthless enterprise? And is it automatically off the table, if a character's true voice resorts to profanity with some frequency?


Why not describe a character as a foul-mouthed individual who would utter a stream of expletives in this or that fictitious situation.

It almost sounds like you might want to silence such people in real life, even if they were to rescue your car on the motorway, or put out a fire in the elementary school, or if they went to war, and came back damaged. Such people shouldn't necessarily be summed up like that, or censored of their (albeit profane) voice. I really do think there are many cases where a person's story and voice can be quite compelling, despite it being offensive to some subset of the reading public.


or because of laziness
This would also be a big assumption. I have read MANY books with no profanity (of course), as well as some very good ones with profanity. I have also seen profanity resorted to in an immature way, and I have seen authors who failed use it in a convincing or authentic manner.


Why is it necessary to spell them out?
Why do you think it is necessary (or always better) to NOT use the actual words as they would actually be used?

I can sort of understand if a writer doesn't want to use profanity, and feels that those who do are "cheating," and that such a person might be so offended by it that they couldn't conceive of it's skillful deployment. But I have to disagree.

Using profanity isn't like playing tic-tac-toe. It might, in certain situations, be "easy" to get attention with a curse word--but there's plenty of room for artistry and impressive, character-revealing fluency beyond that. And there are plenty of pitfalls for the less talented and amateurish. In any case, count me among the readers that isn't particularly impressed, one way or the other, by the mere appearance of a swear word on the page.

Finally, in order to again stress the less-than-simple perspective that I've tried to have about this: I am not simply referring to the use of profanity here--I am referring to cases in which a writer decides to write in a voice that would (perhaps often) resort to profanity.

[mortalterror]

Profanity is a literary device like metaphor or alliteration. If you can't use them in imaginative and interesting ways, then you shouldn't use them at all.

[blp]

Let's not be disingenuous here.

Disingenuous? Moi?



Why not describe a character as a foul-mouthed individual who would utter a stream of expletives in this or that fictitious situation.
Why is it necessary to spell them out?

Why is it so bad to do so? I'm not offended by them per se. Any more than I'm offended by other unpleasant things my characters do. Because I'd feel like a finicketty prudish twit describing other things my character said and did in detail, then rushing over the swearing with a vague allusion to it: 'He hit his thumb with the hammer, uttered a vile oath, then immediately exclaimed, "My thumb!"'

Anyway, if you want to make the laziness accusation, as you go on to do, I think it's always a lot more lazy for a writer to use indirect allusions to speech than work out what their characters would actually say.



Unless, under the guise of verisimilitude or because of lazyness, you are aiming to entice the ingenuous into buying the book?

Oh fer– Now, for all your high-minded avoidance of profanity you're being offensive. I use it because it's there, Brian. Same way my characters have sex, get drunk and throw up, say and do hurtful things to each other, lie, cheat and a load of other things that might easily be deemed offensive, but that people do every day. It's not a guise of verisimilitude. It's just an attempt at it. For pity's sake, if it was just about selling books, I'd try to write like Dan Brown or Dick Francis, which I don't at all.


If swearing is neccesary to writing, why have more great novelists than not, found it unecessary to use swearing in their work?

Probably because, until the 1960s, it was very difficult to get published if you did, vis the problems of Ulysses, Lady Chatterley and various others.

Sorry, but all you seem to be doing is repeating arguments I've already attempted to address: the ones about laziness, lack of necessity and verisimilitude. Could you possibly try to respond to what I've written, rather than casting curmudgeonly aspersions?

[myrna22]

War and Peace is set 60 years before it was written. Tolstóy's research into the Napoleonic Wars was so good, he was able to correct mistakes in the standard histories.

Come on, there are loads. Tons of Shakespeare plays are set in times and places other than the author's.

Anyway, my point wasn't that first-hand knowledge was unimportant, but that, very often, with a bit of effort, it could be acquired.

Tolstoy wrote about Russion culture and used archetypal characters and situations. He wrote about the culture, political and social, with which he was familiar. I am not, in my question, referring to someone doing historical research about a period of time before they lived, but about dealing with situations, characters, motivations outside their personal experience.

Though Shakespeare's plays were set in times and places other than his, the characters, the themes, the motivations, all reflected English people during Elizabethan times and/or were archetypal and universal in nature.

Perhaps the person who posted about writing a scene between a contract killer and one of his cohorts is writing a small scene in a novel that focuses on something else, but if this is a story that focuses on contract killers and/or organized crime, I am doubtful the writer has any first hand knowledge of this type of situation and imagine it is based on what the writer has seen in movies or read about in other books.

The aphorism 'write about what you know' doesn't mean you have to write about your own little corner of the world and only about specific people you've met or situations you have been in, it means writing about ideas you know and understand, motivations you know and understand. The characters in Shakespeare's plays are acting on archetypal, universal motivations for the most part, but in any other way, they reflect an Elizabethan perspective on the world. He did write about what he knew. So did Tolstoy and so do all accomplished writers.

That's where the effective use of diction comes in. How would professional killers talk to each other? How would they think? Unless you've been part of that world in one way or another, you wouldn't know.


It isn't always important to the work (that's why).

Brian,


This obviously a loaded way of putting things. Is writing in the vernacular always a worthless enterprise? And is it automatically off the table, if a character's true voice resorts to profanity with some frequency?


It almost sounds like you might want to silence such people in real life, even if they were to rescue your car on the motorway, or put out a fire in the elementary school, or if they went to war, and came back damaged. Such people shouldn't necessarily be summed up like that, or censored of their (albeit profane) voice. I really do think there are many cases where a person's story and voice can be quite compelling, despite it being offensive to some subset of the reading public.


This would also be a big assumption. I have read MANY books with no profanity (of course), as well as some very good ones with profanity. I have also seen profanity resorted to in an immature way, and I have seen authors who failed use it in a convincing or authentic manner.


Why do you think it is necessary (or always better) to NOT use the actual words as they would actually be used?

I can sort of understand if a writer doesn't want to use profanity, and feels that those who do are "cheating," and that such a person might be so offended by it that they couldn't conceive of it's skillful deployment. But I have to disagree.

Using profanity isn't like playing tic-tac-toe. It might, in certain situations, be "easy" to get attention with a curse word--but there's plenty of room for artistry and impressive, character-revealing fluency beyond that. And there are plenty of pitfalls for the less talented and amateurish. In any case, count me among the readers that isn't particularly impressed, one way or the other, by the mere appearance of a swear word on the page.

Finally, in order to again stress the less-than-simple perspective that I've tried to have about this: I am not simply referring to the use of profanity here--I am referring to cases in which a writer decides to write in a voice that would (perhaps often) resort to profanity.

This discussion makes me think immediately of Catcher in the Rye. Holden Caulfield would not be Holden Caulfield and the novel would be a completely different (and probably ineffective) novel if Holden were not constantly saying fu*k. The same is true for Of Mice and Men. I teach this to 9th graders and it is full of swearing. Words they probably hear regularly in real life, but not ones I would ever normally use with kids or in the classroom. Yet we read and discuss portions together in class and do not censor any profanity, although I do have a strong personal aversion to the n-word and have them say black instead, but that's not about profanity, it's about racism. However, I don't think the n-word should be taken out of the novel, because I am sure that's the word they would have used. I just can't say it out loud myself and can't have my kids saying it either. In Of Mice and Men, the characters are migrant ranch workers, all men. The way the story is written, the diction used, is the way those men would have spoken. To change that would be to write a completely false book.


[DICTION] is a literary device like metaphor or alliteration. Yes.

[Jozanny]

This discussion makes me think immediately of Catcher in the Rye. Holden Caulfield would not be Holden Caulfield and the novel would be a completely different (and probably ineffective) novel if Holden were not constantly saying fu*k. The same is true for Of Mice and Men. I teach this to 9th graders and it is full of swearing. Words they probably hear regularly in real life, but not ones I would ever normally use with kids or in the classroom. Yet we read and discuss portions together in class and do not censor any profanity, although I do have a strong personal aversion to the n-word and have them say black instead, but that's not about profanity, it's about racism. However, I don't think the n-word should be taken out of the novel, because I am sure that's the word they would have used. I just can't say it out loud myself and can't have my kids saying it either. In Of Mice and Men, the characters are migrant ranch workers, all men. The way the story is written, the diction used, is the way those men would have spoken. To change that would be to write a completely false book.

myrna,

you bring up an interesting contextual problem that I do not know how to solve, myself; white southerners of a certain age always protest that *n-* was just a word; yet it is clearly derogatory to the point that contemporary minorities own it as a signal of defiance. Are Caucasians allowed to use it in that context?

Huston does, but gets off doing so because he taught himself how to write inner city black, and does so convincingly, but I can imagine he got the language past the publisher because a supporting black character uses it, instead of the white vampire detective.

I am writing about a black on white crime, and I use it, but as a symptom of my white protagonist's pain, and that is probably another cup of tea, and probably part of the reason I am taking so long to finish it.

Some black entertainers say they use it to take away its power, but I don't think hearing it in that context diminishes anything, truthfully.

[homonym]

I believe the N word is appropriate for Of Mice and Men and other works such as Adventures of Huckleberry finn. The time and place of these novels, to make them accurate, requires the use of these words. Whites of that time period seldom used the term "black" as pertains to a black person.

That's not to say it wasn't racist, but to them it was probably the same as when we call someone black specifically to make a descrimination. It was a different time and place and, as mentioned, words and their connotated meanings have changed over time.

[Jozanny]

Historical usage isn't so much the issue as how we negotiate the word in contemporary society; the canceled educational drama Boston Public once had what I thought was a really good episode on it, with the tension transferred from the student extras to the top billed cast. I did not like McBride as a foil to Laurie in House, but he fit the role as a principal in that show, and Danny, as your typical harried instructor, did a really good job standing up for teachers being able to instruct about it; he cited its legal history and mentioned a book for class room use, and for modern writers it remains an issue.

Slurs are dehumanizing and empowering. I call myself a jock crip, but I doubt any of you would address me using the phrase, so I understand the *ownership currency*, as well as contemporary sensitivity.

[kelby_lake]

I doubt that there's a set way to how professional killers speak unless you're writing about them as part of a real organisation. Even then...it would be worse to try and exactly replicate their lingo because it would come off as cliche. Historical books or books with large amounts of research are in danger of falling into a 'Here's a lesson about 18th century Spanish roofing.'

At least if you're researching/learning about something, you know that you have to work harder to convince the reader. Just because you know something doesn't mean that the reader knows you know.

[Emil Miller]

Finally, in order to again stress the less-than-simple perspective that I've tried to have about this: I am not simply referring to the use of profanity here--I am referring to cases in which a writer decides to write in a voice that would (perhaps often) resort to profanity.

Writers today write more or less what they want as long as it isn't libellous but if they need to resort to profanity, on a personal level I feel they do not come within the spectrum of the writing that would interest me.

Perhaps the person who posted about writing a scene between a contract killer and one of his cohorts is writing a small scene in a novel that focuses on something else,

Yes, that is exactly what it is.

Quote:
, I think it's always a lot more lazy for a writer to use indirect allusions to speech than work out what their characters would actually say.

I would have to disagree here. After all, when one hears foul-mouthed individuals spouting off in public it is usually because they find it easier express themselves in crude vernacular rather than use a more articulate mode of speech.

For pity's sake, if it was just about selling books, I'd try to write like Dan Brown or Dick Francis, which I don't at all.

I haven't read either writer but I understand that Dick Francis writes about horse racing because he is a former jockey. His novels, therefore, are probably believable in their background detail. Given that they are detective stories, he might have included swearwords but would that make them more believable? I doubt it. I read somewhere that his novels are much favoured by the Queen who, being married to to Duke of Edinburgh, probably hears a good deal of foul language. I don't suppose she wants to see it in novels and neither do many others, regardless of the quality of the writing.

Quote: Probably because, until the 1960s, it was very difficult to get published if you did, vis the problems of Ulysses, Lady Chatterley and various others.

This is certainly true but, as with Dick Francis, were pre 1960s writers' works diminished by a lack of swearwords?

[blp]

when one hears foul-mouthed individuals spouting off in public it is usually because they find it easier express themselves in crude vernacular rather than use a more articulate mode of speech.

Leaving aside the question of whether it's possible to swear creatively (I think it is) those individuals are not you or me, Brian, any more than most of our other characters are, so reporting how they would speak does require some imaginative work/attentive listening. And it's going to vary hugely from character to character. The way your contract killer would swear is going to be very different from the way a Wall Street trader would swear and the way a Scouse betting shop owner would swear and the way a trendy east London DJ would swear and so on, ad infinitum. If I wanted to have all those characters in a novel and was writing according to your method, it wouldn't be enough to say that each individual was given to using profanity. I'd have to say each time that they were profane in the particular mode of their given character – and hope that the reader could imagine what I meant. This breaks an absolutely cardinal rule: don't tell, show.

Not sure you've understood my allusion to Dan Brown and Dick Francis. I was saying that if my only concern was selling books, including swearwords wouldn't be my primary strategy; writing like trashy, successful writers would.

Were pre-60s writers works diminished by absence of swearing? If they were depicting milieus in which people would have used it, then yes. Not much, perhaps – in the end, it takes a lot more than that to make a book. But if Melville or Conrad's sailors or Dickens' guttersnipes would really have used modern profanities, I'd kind of like to know about it rather than reading sanitised versions of their speech.

[Jozanny]

Well, one doesn't have to know the mafia, though I do, to know your character. I sent my mafia guy out to Montana, and the editors told me it made it past the first cut, and since he is alive and intimate in my head, he'll make another.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Were pre-60s writers works diminished by absence of swearing? If they were depicting milieus in which people would have used it, then yes. Not much, perhaps – in the end, it takes a lot more than that to make a book. But if Melville or Conrad's sailors or Dickens' guttersnipes would really have used modern profanities, I'd kind of like to know about it rather than reading sanitised versions of their speech.

But who cares what Conrad's sailors or Dickens's gutter trash have to say? That's the real point. Who's really bothered about realism in literature in this sense? Literature should aim to reach the higher heights and it can't do so by uttering vulgarity at every corner.

[Emil Miller]

[QUOTE=blp;866718]Leaving aside the question of whether it's possible to swear creatively (I think it is) those individuals are not you or me, Brian, any more than most of our other characters are, so reporting how they would speak does require some imaginative work/attentive listening. And it's going to vary hugely from character to character. The way your contract killer would swear is going to be very different from the way a Wall Street trader would swear and the way a Scouse betting shop owner would swear and the way a trendy east London DJ would swear and so on, ad infinitum. If I wanted to have all those characters in a novel and was writing according to your method, it wouldn't be enough to say that each individual was given to using profanity. I'd have to say each time that they were profane in the particular mode of their given character – and hope that the reader could imagine what I meant.

I don't see this, whatever the nationality or profession of a character, the recognition that a certain type of language is not generally acceptable is surely a universal concept. It doesn't take much imagination for a reader to realise what is meant by reference to the words "foul language" and to suggest otherwise is an insult to the reader's intelligence. This is comparable to the post-censorship laws regarding the cinema. Previously, film makers had to show that sexual contact took place behind closed doors. When two people who were obviously attracted to each other and, according to the storyline, went to bed, there was a fadeout at the bedroom door and only an imbecile would wonder why. Now we get prolonged scenes of simulated sex which, although of interest to priapic youth, are totally unecessary to the screenplay.The connection with swearing in novels is obvious, its the same vicarious response to what is imagined to be the constant speech of people, even if they are not drug addicts, down-and-outs or pot-bellied bar room habitues. Do I swear? Of course I do, especially at my computer screen which, like everybody else's is subjected to constant pop-ups from Microsoft, Google and associated websites offering enhancements I have no time for. If I had to describe my attitude to these unwarrented intrusions, I would say that... "he was driven to distraction by unsolicited pop ups on his computer and swore violently at the screen before the adrenalin subsided and he was able to recall his original intention."

[blp]

I don't see this, whatever the nationality or profession of a character, the recognition that a certain type of language is not generally acceptable is surely a universal concept.

You wish it was. Some of us really don't find it unacceptable. Many of us. Ergo it is not a universal concept.



It doesn't take much imagination for a reader to realise what is meant by reference to the words "foul language" and to suggest otherwise is an insult to the reader's intelligence. This is comparable to the post-censorship laws regarding the cinema. Previously, film makers had to show that sexual contact took place behind closed doors. When two people who were obviously attracted to each other and, according to the storyline, went to bed, there was a fadeout at the bedroom door and only an imbecile would wonder why. Now we get prolonged scenes of simulated sex which, although of interest to priapic youth, are totally unecessary to the screenplay.

This strikes me as an incredibly poor analogy because most movie sex is so ridiculously implausible. Rather than return to the ambiguous fadeouts as a strict rule (though I do agree they can be very effective) it would be nice occasionally to see sex portrayed believably, e.g. not necessarily earth-shattering, requiring some foreplay etc. This kind of thing, like good dialogue, including dialogue that uses swearing, can be a useful plank of a strong characterisation, as well as being just another aspect of human experience with which the reader/film viewer can empathise.

A better analogy with your attitude would seem to me to be the absurd way married couples used to be shown in separate beds in Hollywood movies. We all knew most couples shared beds in real life, but it wasn't considered nice to admit it.


The connection with swearing in novels is obvious, its the same vicarious response to what is imagined to be the constant speech of people, even if they are not drug addicts, down-and-outs or pot-bellied bar room habitues. Do I swear? Of course I do, especially at my computer screen which, like everybody else's is subjected to constant pop-ups from Microsoft, Google and associated websites offering enhancements I have no time for. If I had to describe my attitude to these unwarrented intrusions, I would say that... "he was driven to distraction by unsolicited pop ups on his computer and swore violently at the screen before the adrenalin subsided and he was able to recall his original intention."

But you wouldn't use the swearwords even though you do yourself in real life and so do many of your readers? Wow, Brian, it's not like you're being asked to expose your rear-end in public. Why should we all be swearing in private and referring to it so squeamishly in print?



But who cares what Conrad's sailors or Dickens's gutter trash have to say? That's the real point. Who's really bothered about realism in literature in this sense? Literature should aim to reach the higher heights and it can't do so by uttering vulgarity at every corner.

Me. I'm bothered by it. Apparently so were a lot of the writers who started to put swearing into their books in the 20th Century. Not that Conrad and Dickens aren't great already, but it would be nice to feel that they'd felt able to deliver their visions of their own eras warts 'n' all. And if I read something set in the present, I'd like to feel that that's happening too. It's not that I want books full of exciting, saucy swearwords, it's that, in any depiction of my own era, they're going to be part of the fabric. If they're there, I won't notice them, but if they're left out in Brian's over-cautious way, I will.

This higher heights argument has been used not just against swearing, but against all sorts of material that certain critics and authorities have deemed offensive or demeaning, even quite recently. Christopher Booker, absurdly, dismisses great tracts of the western cannon, including Stendhal, off the top of my head, on largely these grounds.

[Jozanny]

Neely, literature and art are created out of the gutter all the time, whether or not graphic language is employed. Dickens himself highlighted the poor and disabled in the hope of making things better for them. Zola created great novels out of slovenly miners and prostitutes. Midnight Cowboy upgrades Steinbeck in the guise of a vulnerable hustler who may have homosexual proclivities. Shakespeare himself couldn't get enough of cross dressing. Trollope made a protagonist out of an Anglo-Irish domestic abuser. The list goes on. I read a novel by a profiled writer in P&W about a prostitute on public assistance who gets gang raped while she's dead drunk, and it was a moving narrative. The author worked at a gas station while completing it. You might want to look at what your own authors have been up to of late, as well.

[blp]

Thanks, Jozanny.

[Jozanny]

Thanks, Jozanny.

You're welcome, since the last time I looked, none of us live off of ether. ;)

[blp]

You're welcome, since the last time I looked, none of us live off of ether. ;)

Try as I may. :rolleyes5:

[Dogbrick]

The plot of Ian McEwan's brilliant novel Atonement hinges upon the use of the c-word. I am currently teaching this novel in my Year 12 Literature class and have been impressed with how adult they are being about the use of the word (for those not familiar, Australian Year 12's are aged between 17-18). As a class we have discussed the use of profanity in novels and the consensus is that the profanity, if used within context, enhances the novel and gives it the reality that the author obviously intended.

Another wonderful novel we study is The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-time, also full of realistic and natural profanity.

[kelby_lake]

I would have to disagree here. After all, when one hears foul-mouthed individuals spouting off in public it is usually because they find it easier express themselves in crude vernacular rather than use a more articulate mode of speech.


We can't be articulate all the time. Truth is that when people get frustrated, sometimes the 'crude vernacular' is all they can articulate.

It's more of a problem in films I think.

[PeterL]

I believe the N word is appropriate for Of Mice and Men and other works such as Adventures of Huckleberry finn. The time and place of these novels, to make them accurate, requires the use of these words. Whites of that time period seldom used the term "black" as pertains to a black person.

That's not to say it wasn't racist, but to them it was probably the same as when we call someone black specifically to make a descrimination. It was a different time and place and, as mentioned, words and their connotated meanings have changed over time.

Actually, the N word wasn't defined as a racist term until the 1970's. Before that it was just another colloquial term for Black people. It generally showed that people were low class when they used the word, but it didn't suggest that they had any ill-feelings toward Black people. Polite people would have used the term Negro or a regional variant like Nigra, but in other periods the euphemisms Colored or Dark might have ben used.

[Brad Coelho]

Roth's not shy about using the f-bomb; at least it sneaks its way into American Pastoral on multiple pages.

[myrna22]

Actually, the N word wasn't defined as a racist term until the 1970's. Before that it was just another colloquial term for Black people. It generally showed that people were low class when they used the word, but it didn't suggest that they had any ill-feelings toward Black people. Polite people would have used the term Negro or a regional variant like Nigra, but in other periods the euphemisms Colored or Dark might have ben used.

Wow, not true at all. The n-word was indeed a derogatory term for black people, as long as I can remember, which is from the 50's on. "It generally showed that people were low class when they used the word, but it didn't suggest that they had any ill-feelings toward Black people." Totally wrong. I knew people who used it and it was definitely a derogatory term, not just ignorance.

[Emil Miller]

Wow, not true at all. The n-word was indeed a derogatory term for black people, as long as I can remember, which is from the 50's on. "It generally showed that people were low class when they used the word, but it didn't suggest that they had any ill-feelings toward Black people." Totally wrong. I knew people who used it and it was definitely a derogatory term, not just ignorance.

I don't think it was always used in a derogatory way. A friend's parents had a cat called Nigger and at about the same time, a certain shade of brown in clothing was referred to as nigger brown with no racial reference intended.

[PeterL]

Wow, not true at all. The n-word was indeed a derogatory term for black people, as long as I can remember, which is from the 50's on. "It generally showed that people were low class when they used the word, but it didn't suggest that they had any ill-feelings toward Black people." Totally wrong. I knew people who used it and it was definitely a derogatory term, not just ignorance.

Wow! I am not wrong. It is more likely that you were acquainted with more racists than I was. That word by itself did not indicate racist feelings.

Perhaps this is a parallel world situation where you are from a different world in which use of the n word showed racism, but that's not how it was here in the U.S.A. here on Earth.

[blp]

I know we shouldn't take wikipedia as conclusive proof of anything, but this page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigger) does say that Twain, in 1883, only used the word in inverted commas, in reported speech, and, himself, only used 'negro'. It also says that as early as 1904, 'Clifton Johnson documented the "opprobrious" character of the word, emphasizing that it was chosen in the South precisely because it was more offensive than "colored."'

[PeterL]

I know we shouldn't take wikipedia as proof of anything, but this page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigger) does say that Twain, in 1883, only used the word in inverted commas, in reported speech, and, himself, only used 'negro'. It also says that as early as 1904, 'Clifton Johnson documented the "opprobrious" character of the word, emphasizing that it was chosen in the South precisely because it was more offensive than "colored."'

This is a discussion that can't possibly go anywhere, because it is completely subjective; but my reality is better than yours :)

[myrna22]

I don't think it was always used in a derogatory way. A friend's parents had a cat called Nigger and at about the same time, a certain shade of brown in clothing was referred to as nigger brown with no racial reference intended.

uh....maybe in England?

Very different in the States.


Wow! I am not wrong. It is more likely that you were acquainted with more racists than I was. That word by itself did not indicate racist feelings.

Perhaps this is a parallel world situation where you are from a different world in which use of the n word showed racism, but that's not how it was here in the U.S.A. here on Earth.

I think you are very wrong. Perhaps you were unaware that the people around you using this word were being racist and vile. Because they were. I was not surrounded by people who used the n-word, far from it. Which is perhaps why I realize it was indeed a very bad word to use, very derogatory. If you lived in an environment, prior to the 70's, in which people regularly used the n-word, then you lived in a very racist environment indeed. Where I l lived, we didn't use it and knew it was a very ugly insult.

And I did grow up in the US.


I know we shouldn't take wikipedia as conclusive proof of anything, but this page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigger) does say that Twain, in 1883, only used the word in inverted commas, in reported speech, and, himself, only used 'negro'. It also says that as early as 1904, 'Clifton Johnson documented the "opprobrious" character of the word, emphasizing that it was chosen in the South precisely because it was more offensive than "colored."'

You are absolutely right. When Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn, he was writing about a world set in the past and a world where the n-word was used. In his own contemporary world, negro or colored would have been the appropriate term, he would not use the n-word himself as it was rude and insulting, at the very least.

[Emil Miller]

[QUOTE=blp;866774]You wish it was. Some of us really don't find it unacceptable. Many of us. Ergo it is not a universal concept.

Which is why I said "not generally acceptable" in order to allow for those who disagree. I do think that the common decency to realise that most people find it offensive is a universal concept. If it were not so, there would be no reason for most website owners, such as this one, to blank out profanity.
There is actually a political website that has a special section for those who are unable to comment without resorting to swearing. Interestingly enough, there is only one contributor who swears, all other comments come from members who still do not find it necessary and are mostly there to wind up the swearer.

This strikes me as an incredibly poor analogy because most movie sex is so ridiculously implausible. Rather than return to the ambiguous fadeouts as a strict rule (though I do agree they can be very effective) it would be nice occasionally to see sex portrayed believably, e.g. not necessarily earth-shattering, requiring some foreplay etc. This kind of thing, like good dialogue, including dialogue that uses swearing, can be a useful plank of a strong characterisation, as well as being just another aspect of human experience with which the reader/film viewer can empathise.

A better analogy with your attitude would seem to me to be the absurd way married couples used to be shown in separate beds in Hollywood movies. We all knew most couples shared beds in real life, but it wasn't considered nice to admit it.

Of course we knew it, but I very much doubt that anyone left the cinema bemoaning the fact that the Hays office had ordained separate beds to be obligatory.

But you wouldn't use the swearwords even though you do yourself in real life and so do many of your readers? Wow, Brian, it's not like you're being asked to expose your rear-end in public. Why should we all be swearing in private and referring to it so squeamishly in print?

Although there are instances when I use swear words, I don't use them in conversation with other people. As I have said, common decency requires a certain amount of consideration for other people's sensitivities. That doesn't mean walking on eggshells, as the PC brigade would have everyone do, and there is always room for a joke, but I see no reason to deliberately upset others who may be averse to bad language either in speech or in print.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Neely, literature and art are created out of the gutter all the time, whether or not graphic language is employed. Dickens himself highlighted the poor and disabled in the hope of making things better for them. Zola created great novels out of slovenly miners and prostitutes. Midnight Cowboy upgrades Steinbeck in the guise of a vulnerable hustler who may have homosexual proclivities. Shakespeare himself couldn't get enough of cross dressing. Trollope made a protagonist out of an Anglo-Irish domestic abuser. The list goes on. I read a novel by a profiled writer in P&W about a prostitute on public assistance who gets gang raped while she's dead drunk, and it was a moving narrative. The author worked at a gas station while completing it. You might want to look at what your own authors have been up to of late, as well.

Just to be clear. I think that the writer or artist should be free to do or express whatever they want, which would include swearing or much worse or whatever was deemed necessary by the artist. However, I’m not interested in the vulgarity for the sake of vulgarity in the mode of cheap shock value. Great artists can make great art out of nearly anything true, but to delight in what is vulgar for the sake of it, as TV soap operas do, is totally demeaning. Literature and art can be made out of the gutter but it is how they are made out of the gutter that counts.

[stlukesguild]

John Wilmot, not Henry

Right you are... I just cut and pasted his name from Wikipedia... but unfortunately I got the wrong Wilmot: Henry, the First Earl of Rochester rather than John the Second Earl of Rochester... the poet.

[PeterL]

I think you are very wrong. Perhaps you were unaware that the people around you using this word were being racist and vile. Because they were. I was not surrounded by people who used the n-word, far from it. Which is perhaps why I realize it was indeed a very bad word to use, very derogatory. If you lived in an environment, prior to the 70's, in which people regularly used the n-word, then you lived in a very racist environment indeed. Where I l lived, we didn't use it and knew it was a very ugly insult.

And I did grow up in the US.


I was questioning whether you were on the same planet. Perhaps you lived in Alabama, and most people wanted to put the Blacks into slavery again. In New England there was little such thought.

[blp]

Which is why I said "not generally acceptable" in order to allow for those who disagree. I do think that the common decency to realise that most people find it offensive is a universal concept.

As I said before, I do swear myself in daily life, but yes, I'm ginger about it, to say the least, with people I didn't know well. I really doubt that it's so easy now to say that 'most' people find it offensive, however. I mean, you've admitted that you swear yourself and it seems likely that a great many of the people around whom you restrain your language do too. The greater courtesy here might be to risk disapproval by uttering an oath or two just so everyone can relax.

But you seem here strangely unable to distinguish between social mores and literature. And in literature, I'd also aver that the greater courtesy is to try to tell the truth.


If it were not so, there would be no reason for most website owners, such as this one, to blank out profanity.

Most of the ones I go to don't. I thought they only did it here because they knew that minors used the site in large numbers.



A better analogy with your attitude would seem to me to be the absurd way married couples used to be shown in separate beds in Hollywood movies. We all knew most couples shared beds in real life, but it wasn't considered nice to admit it.

Of course we knew it, but I very much doubt that anyone left the cinema bemoaning the fact that the Hays office had ordained separate beds to be obligatory.

Well, I used to have a reprint of a Mad Magazine from the fifties that satirised this, so presumably the authors were bothered by it. I would have been too. You talked about insulting the readers' intelligence earlier. Don't you think this convention rather tended to do that?

[MarkBastable]

There are all sorts of reasons to consider good manners in company.

But there's absolutely no obligation to be polite when you're writing a novel.

[blp]

There are all sorts of reasons to consider good manners in company.

But there's absolutely no obligation to be polite when you're writing a novel.

I basically agree, personally, but, with respect, it's a pretty bald restatement of one side of the opposition that's being played out here.

The question is, why the difference? Why, if one would refrain from swearing in conversation with strangers, would we feel it's OK to use swearing in novels that will be read by strangers? Conversely, why does there seem to be consensus that the swearing is best used by writers in reported speech and not in the author's own statements?

My answer to the latter question is that, unless I'm writing in as specific first person voice, I want a certain invisibility of authorial persona and wouldn't use any slang or marks of character. Nothing to do with worrying about the readers' sensibilities.

My answer to the former is that I don't feel, when I'm writing, that I'm writing for strangers, but for myself and for friends – intelligent friends who know that sticks and stones may break my bones (which would be really offensive), but words are just words and, while it might not be true that they can never hurt me, anxiety around swearing in particular is a largely superstitious investment of certain basically harmless words with a lot more power than they deserve. They're just no big deal. It's the dancing around them that turns them into a big deal. Like if you put an empty box on top of a cabinet that was really difficult to climb up to and told a child never ever ever to look in the box, they'd risk any amount of injury to find out what was inside. Whereas if you left the box on the floor and they were free to look inside whenever they liked, they'd ignore it knowing there was nothing to it.

[PeterL]

There are all sorts of reasons to consider good manners in company.

But there's absolutely no obligation to be polite when you're writing a novel.

If you want to get published, there is. As one who has finished writing a novel and s trying to get it published, I know that there is an audience out there, and I have to make the audience happy. If you write novels for your own pleasure, then you can put anything in them, but I write for the readers, and I want them to read.

[Emil Miller]

As I said before, I do swear myself in daily life, but yes, I'm ginger about it, to say the least, with people I didn't know well. I really doubt that it's so easy now to say that 'most' people find it offensive, however. I mean, you've admitted that you swear yourself and it seems likely that a great many of the people around whom you restrain your language do too. The greater courtesy here might be to risk disapproval by uttering an oath or two just so everyone can relax.

I disagree, I think the majority of people given the choice of hearing swearing in conversation and not hearing it would prefer the latter.

But you seem here strangely unable to distinguish between social mores and literature. And in literature, I'd also aver that the greater courtesy is to try to tell the truth.

Since literature deals largely with social mores wherein lies the distinction?

On that assumption, books that contain confrontational situations without swearing are unrepresentative of the truth.

Most of the ones I go to don't. I thought they only did it here because they knew that minors used the site in large numbers.

I doubt it, there are few minors, in the sense of being children , and even those sites that don't blank out profanity appear to have a majority of contributors who make their points without swearing. Those who do swear are usually the least interesting or articulate

Well, I used to have a reprint of a Mad Magazine from the fifties that satirised this, so presumably the authors were bothered by it. I would have been too. You talked about insulting the readers' intelligence earlier. Don't you think this convention rather tended to do that?

I think the authors of Mad magazine were more concerned to build a reputation as anarchic iconoclasts rather than satirists. It probably did insult the intelligence but I don't think it stopped anyone from enjoying the film.

[myrna22]

I was questioning whether you were on the same planet. Perhaps you lived in Alabama, and most people wanted to put the Blacks into slavery again. In New England there was little such thought.

I grew up on the West Coast and the n-word was not something decent people used. Using it was not a matter of innocent ignorance, it was a matter of being vile and racist.

As far as the thread topic: the use or non-use of profanity by an author is a diction choice, should have nothing to do with offending or not offending anyone. A good writer uses the diction appropriate to convey meaning, appropriate to the setting and characters.

[blp]

As I said before, I do swear myself in daily life, but yes, I'm ginger about it, to say the least, with people I didn't know well. I really doubt that it's so easy now to say that 'most' people find it offensive, however. I mean, you've admitted that you swear yourself and it seems likely that a great many of the people around whom you restrain your language do too. The greater courtesy here might be to risk disapproval by uttering an oath or two just so everyone can relax.

I disagree, I think the majority of people given the choice of hearing swearing in conversation and not hearing it would prefer the latter.

I don't really know how to answer this. You disagree. And. Any evidence or argument?

It's probably just down to who you know and who I know. Most people I know swear.



But you seem here strangely unable to distinguish between social mores and literature. And in literature, I'd also aver that the greater courtesy is to try to tell the truth.

Since literature deals largely with social mores wherein lies the distinction?

In the creation of a world in which not everyone behaves exactly as you do. In detached examination of social mores rather than just observance of a certain set of them.

In opposition (I think) to Neely's 'heigher heights' objective for literature, I think that, for me, a great deal of the value of literature is as a way of looking beyond my own subjective limits to points of view, behaviour, social conventions, actions, utterances and desires etc. other than my own, some of which I may find unpleasant. In social situations, we generally try not to displease our companions. In literature, while I don't feel we should go out of our way to displease the reader, I do feel that we shouldn't avoid doing so if it's appropriate to our subject matter. Otherwise, all we're doing is producing escapism.

You could say that plenty of 19th Century literature confronts us with unpleasant material without including profanity, but, you'd still only be making the point to say that something unpleasant (to you) should be left out. I'd rather face facts and have a character who would swear in real life swear in the book, just as if they'd rape in real life, they'll commit rape in the book. Anyway, on the scale of unpleasantness, I think swearing comes very low indeed compared to keeping a woman imprisoned in your attic, having a ring of human heads around your house, reanimating a corpse, committing rape, gouging out your own eyes, being castrated and a lot of other things that happened in books before swearing became acceptable.


On that assumption, books that contain confrontational situations without swearing are unrepresentative of the truth.

They're unrepresentative of the part of the truth that would have included the swearing, yes.



I doubt it, there are few minors, in the sense of being children , and even those sites that don't blank out profanity appear to have a majority of contributors who make their points without swearing. Those who do swear are usually the least interesting or articulate

My only real concern here is with depiction of characters, since I've said I wouldn't use swearing in any other (literary) context. I don't know why some sites allow swearing and some don't, (though I can assure you, there are plenty of minors here. The site is used by students.) You could, equally, say that virtually all Hollywood films that are not for minors include swearing.


It probably did insult the intelligence but I don't think it stopped anyone from enjoying the film.

Being insulted doesn't inhibit enjoyment for you?

Anyway, it comes back to what I was saying before. All your concern for the reader's enjoyment or sense of offense is appropriate if you're writing escapist literature, but not if you're concerned with a serious literary endeavour. And I'll reiterate, not because such endeavours should offend the reader, but because, if something likely to give offense is appropriate to the work, it shouldn't be left out just to avoid the offense.

[PeterL]

I grew up on the West Coast and the n-word was not something decent people used. Using it was not a matter of innocent ignorance, it was a matter of being vile and racist.

As far as the thread topic: the use or non-use of profanity by an author is a diction choice, should have nothing to do with offending or not offending anyone. A good writer uses the diction appropriate to convey meaning, appropriate to the setting and characters.

Put both paragraphs together. What was "vile and racist" on the West Caost was simply loutish on the East Coast.

[MarkBastable]

If you want to get published, there is.


I do, and I have been. And the sales figures would suggest they were read too. The people in both novels speak as people speak in London - just ordinary vernacular swearing. At no point in the process of editing, subbing, proofing or marketing did anyone at Hodder suggest modifying the language.

[LitNetIsGreat]

The ancient historians gave us delightful fiction in the form of fact; the modem novelist presents us with dull facts under the guise of fiction. Wilde "Decay of Lying"


In opposition (I think) to Neely's 'heigher heights' objective for literature, I think that, for me, a great deal of the value of literature is as a way of looking beyond my own subjective limits to points of view, behaviour, social conventions, actions, utterances and desires etc. other than my own, some of which I may find unpleasant. In social situations, we generally try not to displease our companions. In literature, while I don't feel we should go out of our way to displease the reader, I do feel that we shouldn't avoid doing so if it's appropriate to our subject matter. Otherwise, all we're doing is producing escapism.

It is not about escapism, but it is about creating something more that merely copying the everyday in absolute detail. One of the purposes of literature is to let us see beyond the everyday, I absolutely agree, but it is not going to do that by copying real life in all its minuteness, otherwise we end up with something like this:


In the sweet shire of Cardigan,
Not far from pleasant Ivor-hall,
An old man dwells, a little man,
I've heard he once was tall.
Of years he has upon his back,
No doubt, a burthen weighty;
He says he is three score and ten,
But others say he's eighty.
Wordsworth from "Simon Lee"

Here Wordsworth, who I like in other works, speaks from the absolute point of view of accuracy of the poor individual, here effectively, you have your realism akin to copying the exact nature of Conrad's sailors - and the result is bad art. On the other hand take some of Hardy's poor characters and he turns them into something much more real than real, he fills them with a huge degree imaginative realism and embodies them with great pathos. He gives them something much more than realism, he turns them into great art as Wilde says "the only real people are the people who never existed" - brilliant! Absolutely! Who cares if Tess or Jude were uttering this or that syllable here or there to the exact nature of the period? It doesn't matter, Jude is more real to me than many people I know.

Wilde says it well here:


A steady course of Balzac reduces our living friends to shadows, and our acquaintances to the shadows of shades. His characters have a kind of fervent fiery-coloured existence. They dominate us, and defy scepticism. One of the greatest tragedies of my life is the death
of Lucien de Rubempre. It is a grief from which I have never been able completely to rid myself. It haunts me in my moments of pleasure. I remember it when I laugh. But Balzac is no more a realist than Holbein was. He created life, he did not copy it.Wilde "The Decay of Lying"

Accuracy of detail does not necessarily equal good art. The true artist does not copy life but creates it.

I don't object to swearing, I object, like Wilde to the burden of absolute accuracy which threatens in its way to reduce the art and the experience we get through art. This is a shortened version of where I am coming from with my "higher heights" approach, I am in a rush, but I hope you get my meaning. TV soaps try so hard to capture the day-to-day experience of the everyday accurately, the result is excruciatingly awful, sickening, I only have to be in the same room as a soap for five seconds and I want to puke. I do not want the same from my literature. :nonod: :)
.

[MarkBastable]

The question is, why the difference?

Actually, I don't think there is a difference.

I would be unlikely to tell my aged aunt that her husband was a pain in the f***king arse. The word's not part of her vocabulary and it would upset her.

I may well tell my mother that my aged aunt's husband was a pain in the f***king arse. The word's not part of her vocabulary, but she knows it's part of mine and so its occasional use is within the terms of our relationship.

I would certainly tell my wife that my aged aunt's husband was a pain in the f***king arse, and she would extemporise on that theme for several minutes in her inventive and profane New Jersey vernacular.

If I were writing a novel involving a character who was like me, and who had an aged aunt and a mother and a wife, he'd probably act much the way I do. That seems to make sense to me, not least because it tells us something about each of those relationships.

However, I'd still give that novel, complete with swearing, to my aunt and my mother - and they would both be completely happy with the content, even if they would prefer me not to use that language in face-to-face conversation with them. Readers will accept - even enjoy, demand, seek out - on the page what they wouldn't want to be around in real life. Not everyone who read Trainspotting swears every other word. But I doubt many people bought that book not knowing that that was what they were going to get.

Aged aunt: Are you going to give me a copy of your book?

Me: Well, you might not like some of the language.

Aged aunt: I very much doubt, dear, that you've come up with anything I haven't heard before.

Essentially, blp, I agree with you. My point is only that there's a lot of stuff going on between an author and a reader that isn't going on in conversation, and that means that the dynamics of convention that govern swearing are not the same in each case. So I don't think the argument Bean is making - which essentially comes down to 'people don't like it in church so they wouldn't like it in a novel' - makes any sense.

[blp]

The idea that realism is about copying reality exactly is naïve because it's pretty well impossible, Neely. You only have to compare two so-called realists to see that realism, as much as any other literature, is composed of imaginative and stylistic choices.

I know I referred to 'verisimilitude', or Brian Bean did and I picked it up. Maybe that was lazy of me, given that my intention isn't too deliver a set of prescriptions for realism. But I don't think you have to be an arch realist to feel that you'd want the verisimilitude of swearing in your books. Look at Burroughs, Pynchon, Vonnegut, David Foster Wallace, or numerous other far-from-realist writers. Swearing is so much a part of the contemporary landscape that you couldn't leave it out without it, at least, being noticeable. Not that you might not have plenty of good reasons to leave it out. It's just that 'not offending the reader' seems to me a poor reason, in that it's not to do with the internal, literary needs of the work.

This thread feels as if it's getting a bit hairsplitty and maybe I'm partly to blame, but that still sounds like a difference to me, Mark. You'd let her read it, but you wouldn't say it to her face. That's all I was talking about.

[MarkBastable]

This thread feels as if it's getting a bit hairsplitty and maybe I'm partly to blame, but that still sounds like a difference to me, Mark. You'd let her read it, but you wouldn't say it to her face. That's all I was talking about.

I wouldn't let her do anything. She'd decide to.

[blp]

I wouldn't let her do anything. She'd decide to.

Did I say 'hairsplitty'? QED. :wink5:

I read your post pre the addendum of your edit before:


Essentially, blp, I agree with you. My point is only that there's a lot of stuff going on between an author and a reader that isn't going on in conversation, and that means that the dynamics of convention that govern swearing are not the same in each case. So I don't think the argument Bean is making - which essentially comes down to 'people don't like it in church so they wouldn't like it in a novel' - makes any sense.

No. Quite. Perhaps there's something, dare I say it, more intimate going on between an author and reader than there is in a lot of conversation. Something like that.

[myrna22]

Put both paragraphs together. What was "vile and racist" on the West Caost was simply loutish on the East Coast.

Using the n-word is and was racist, a racist insult and slur. Where your fram of reference comes from I don't know. It doesn't matter where you live or lived. To defend the use of the n-word before the civil rights movement is pure ignornace and probably racism as well. Why you would want to defend it is incomprehensible.

[Scheherazade]

Perhaps there's something, dare I say it, more intimate going on between an author and reader than there is in a lot of conversation. Something like that.I agree with this. I remember reading in an article (by Barton?) that people tend to remember only one half a 20 minutes talk accurately and even this is during a lecture/speech... So, in daily life, it is quite likely that this is less, owing to other distractions available simultaneously.

The reader chooses (mostly) to give their undivided attention to the text and can always re-read, which is something to do with the permanency of the text as well.

I think a lot of this discussion depends on the role author assumes or our expectations as readers. If we expect an author to create realistic characters/accounts, how can we get offended if/when an author uses the N-word or swearing to be able to tell us "lsay it as it is"?

[MarkBastable]

Using the n-word is and was racist, a racist insult and slur. Where your fram of reference comes from I don't know. It doesn't matter where you live or lived. To defend the use of the n-word before the civil rights movement is pure ignornace and probably racism as well.

Does it matter if you live in Compton? Is it still racist when used by black kids? In that frame of reference, is it acceptable - or would we say that the use of the word by youths to describe themselves and their peer group was 'a racist insult and a slur'?

All usage of all words is contextually determined. Words have no independent and immutable meaning - they can only do their job in the frame of time, place, intention, association and situation.

And our understanding of words - the very ability to communicate - relies on a shared experience of all that - which, incidentally, is never a hundred percent. It's a workable compromise.

When a skinhead beats up a guy because he's 'queer', he is not using the word to mean the same thing as a miltant gay who's proud to be 'here and queer, get used to it'. There's enough overlap in their usage of the word that we understand what both of those people mean - but we also know that they each mean something different and probably incompatible.

The question to answer, I think, would be whether you believe the poster is racist. If you don't, then you're bringing into play other knowledge - context - to make that assessment. And if you do, then you're saying that the word is an infallible indicator of the belief. You're sayng that the very utterance of the word betrays unacceptable attitudes in the user.

And that interpretation of usage, I'd say, is what made Salem famous.

[PeterL]

I do, and I have been. And the sales figures would suggest they were read too. The people in both novels speak as people speak in London - just ordinary vernacular swearing. At no point in the process of editing, subbing, proofing or marketing did anyone at Hodder suggest modifying the language.

Then you remained polite. Politeness does not require daintyness in language, but it requires that one not be rude.


Using the n-word is and was racist, a racist insult and slur. Where your fram of reference comes from I don't know. It doesn't matter where you live or lived. To defend the use of the n-word before the civil rights movement is pure ignornace and probably racism as well. Why you would want to defend it is incomprehensible.

As I wrote earlier, it appears that you and I are familiar with different versions of Earth.

There are damned few enough words in the language as it ia, and I don't want to limit myself any further. (paraphrase of a line in "Inherit the Wind"

[MarkBastable]

Then you remained polite. Politeness does not require daintyness in language, but it requires that one not be rude.

Obviously I was using the word in the context of this thread. Mr Bean and others are making the argument that it is not polite to swear. My contention is that that kind of politeness is not the concern of a novelist, when writing.

[PeterL]

Obviously I was using the word in the context of this thread. Mr Bean and others are making the argument that it is not polite to swear. My contention is that that kind of politeness is not the concern of a novelist, when writing.

I strongly agree with you. There are authors who toss in crude language to fill space, and that is not good, but characters should engage in dialogue in real language.

[LitNetIsGreat]

I strongly agree with you. There are authors who toss in crude language to fill space, and that is not good, but characters should engage in dialogue in real language.

But what if that real language reduces the art? I'm sure that Richard III or Henry V didn't speak as Shakespeare penned but we are all the better for Shakespeare's improvements.

[MarkBastable]

But what if that real language reduces the art?

What if it doesn't?

[LitNetIsGreat]

What if it doesn't?

What if it does? :driving:

I'm just happy that Shakespeare for one didn't go in such pointless ploys as utter realism in language...heaven forbid! imagine Wilde's character's as straight-faced Victorian gentlemen, how dull...

[MarkBastable]

What if it does? :driving:

I'm just happy that Shakespeare for one didn't go in such pointless ploys as utter realism in language...

If I were writing in rhyming couplets, or blank verse, or having my characters muse out loud for minutes at time, or having teenagers converse in beautifully-wrought poetry encompassing extended metaphor, classical reference and the coining of new words off-the-cuff, then I would probably consider whether swearing would be one of the aspects of realism I'd ditch along with every other pretence that this was a representation of how people speak.

But those are the choices Shakespeare made - and I'm very glad he made them. They are not, however, the only choices there are.

All art is artifice. All representation of reality is a trick. Each writer decides which artificial means to use in order to pull the trick off. Me, I sometimes decide to include real places, but sometimes I invent places. I sometimes take the conventional view of time as a given, and sometimes I f**k about with how time works. Sometimes I swear, or my narrator does, or my characters do, and sometimes they don't. It depends what I'm trying to achieve - what artificial reality I'm creating.

What I object to is the notion that it's by default better to exclude swearing because you're more likely to end up with good writing. That's just crap.

[PeterL]

But what if that real language reduces the art? I'm sure that Richard III or Henry V didn't speak as Shakespeare penned but we are all the better for Shakespeare's improvements.

Apples and onions. Shakespeare was writing poetry, poetical drama. If he had been writing prose fiction, then it would be a different matter.

Since Shakespeare wrote what he did and did not write prose versions of the same things, complete with foul language, we can't tell which version would be better. For all we know those versions might be better.

[blp]

Is everyone really so certain Shakespeare was profanity-free?
http://www.essaydepot.com/essayme/1159/index.php

[LitNetIsGreat]

I don’t object to swearing in particular as I said here:


I don't object to swearing, I object, like Wilde to the burden of absolute accuracy which threatens in its way to reduce the art and the experience we get through art.

If people are so enamoured of facts then I don’t know why people bother to read literature at all. Surely, turning to science or to the history books would be more useful? Of course many people enjoy realism in literature, that is fine, but I personally do not, I do not want to read soap operas.

In terms of swearing in Shakespeare, of course many of his low characters uttered such things, including sexual innuendo, extreme insult (some great insults) and whatever else, but not for one second did Shakespeare ground a work in absolute fact to rob it of its overall endurable beauty for to do so would surely be one of the worst crimes possible.

[blp]

I don’t object to swearing in particular as I said here:



If people are so enamoured of facts then I don’t know why people bother to read literature at all. Surely, turning to science or to the history books would be more useful? Of course many people enjoy realism in literature, that is fine, but I personally do not, I do not want to read soap operas.

In terms of swearing in Shakespeare, of course many of his low characters uttered such things, including sexual innuendo, extreme insult (some great insults) and whatever else, but not for one second did Shakespeare ground a work in absolute fact to rob it of its overall endurable beauty for to do so would surely be one of the worst crimes possible.

You're tilting at windmills now. I've already said my defense of profanity wasn't a case for realism and I don't see anyone else here insisting on realism either. That isn't the point.

[MarkBastable]

If people are so enamoured of facts then I don’t know why people bother to read literature at all. Surely, turning to science or to the history books would be more useful? Of course many people enjoy realism in literature, that is fine, but I personally do not, I do not want to read soap operas.



Almost by definition, soap opera is not realistic, in either the literary or vernacular sense of that word. It's a kind of cartoon - and I think most people who watch soap opera know that.

But we probably are closer to agreeing than it would appear. I don't think anyone has suggested that the a realist approach should be pursued to the point of burdensomenessosity. They're just saying that swearing happens and it's somehow perverse to try and avoid it when writing fiction. It's like trying to write without ever mentioning rain. Rain happens. You don't have to be an ultra-realist meteorologist to accept that that's so. You can acknowledge the universality of rain, even when you're writing your weather-based allegorical sword-and-barometer faery murder mystery. Same with swearing.

Though, having said that, if there's one thing I can't bear it's a dwarf who growls, 'By the bloody axe of Tharg the Mighty, 'tis a wondrous sight..."

I'd rather he just said, "Well, I'll be buggered..."

[blp]

I went to see the philosopher Slavoj Zizek talk recently and he related how he'd met untouchables in India and been asked, during a car journey with them, what he thought of Ghandi. He said of the untouchables 'They hate Ghandi. And they are right,' explaining that Ghandi's version of spirituality tried to find a dignity and beauty in their role as society's excrement clearers, whereas for the untouchables themselves, in their struggle for liberation, the most important thing of all was not to fall in love with themselves or dignify their condition in any way at all.

The conversation in the car was about a famous photo of Ghandi, bent over, supported by a staff. The untouchable driving the car asked Zizek, 'Do you know what we say about this photo?' Zizek has an occasional trope, derived from his time in the Slovenian army as a young man, about how, in certain situations, a descent into the lowest possible obscenity is the most direct means of connecting with people. He said he replied to the driver with the most disgusting thing he could think of, something to the effect that it was Ghandi soliciting for sex from the young men of the village and that the staff was a giant phallus. At this point the driver stopped the car and hugged Zizek exclaiming 'You are one of us!'

Most of the audience laughed, but a young Indian woman raised an impassioned objection at the end, saying that Ghandi was a truly good and spiritual man and Zizek had no right to besmirch him in this revolting way. 'But', Zizek replied, 'This is my point. Why are you not disgusted by the plight of people forced for centuries to do nothing but clear up excrement from houses and live off garbage? This is the real obscenity, and Ghandi refused to condemn it.'

Sometimes we need 'low' language to make our point and many things are far more obscene than the language we use to identify them as such.

'Tis too much prov'd, — that with devotion's visage,/And pious action, we do sugar o'er/
The devil himself.' - Polonius, Hamlet.

[PeterL]

but not for one second did Shakespeare ground a work in absolute fact to rob it of its overall endurable beauty for to do so would surely be one of the worst crimes possible.

There are several assertions embedded in that that cannot be proven. I won't bother to enumerate them, because they should be clear.

[blp]

I agree with this. I remember reading in an article (by Barton?) that people tend to remember only one half a 20 minutes talk accurately and even this is during a lecture/speech... So, in daily life, it is quite likely that this is less, owing to other distractions available simultaneously.

The reader chooses (mostly) to give their undivided attention to the text and can always re-read, which is something to do with the permanency of the text as well.



But also, a novel, even a 'low' novel dealing with only the cheapest, most melodramatic effects, touches on profound emotions. It's not ordinary functional speech or polite conversation.

Anyway, only right that intimate speech should include a bit of 'dirty talk', no? :wink5:

[LitNetIsGreat]

You're tilting at windmills now. I've already said my defense of profanity wasn't a case for realism and I don't see anyone else here insisting on realism either. That isn't the point.

No I'm not tilting at windmills. My entire posts have been about arguing against exacting realism in literature. If you or anyone else didn't intend to argue for realism then my apologies, but it was you who was worried about the exact utterings of Conrad's sailors and Dickens's guttertrash. I said "who cares?" and you said "me".


Almost by definition, soap opera is not realistic, in either the literary or vernacular sense of that word. It's a kind of cartoon - and I think most people who watch soap opera know that.

Yes true. I know that soaps are supposed to be "larger than life" and so are not exactly realist in that sense, but they are situated in the everyday to be close enough to realism to make my point - actually they are far worse than pedantic realism could ever be as the take low life and make it worse?!? Agghh, Sally is having an affair with Fred, what will the neighbours say!!!:yikes:

[MarkBastable]

Well, those of us who advocate swearing in novels have to be careful of finding ourselves in questionable company. There are some really bad writers out there who use profanity all the time - though we'd argue that it's not the profanity that makes the stuff bad.

Then again, those who are against swearing also have to consider who their friends are.

This is my favourite Amazon Reader's Review.

I never heard of this book before our daughter said she had to read it for high school English. As soon as the teacher started reading it in class our daughter said it was dumb, she wanted out of English class ,I want to quit school, and why do I have to listen to my teacher read all this foul language including the F word repeatedly. We said you don't and pulled her from the class. Christian or not if you have any moral compass at all Catcher in the Rye is a book to avoid. The book inspired the murderer of John Lennon. It talks about and seems to condone all sorts of sin,including prostitution. drunkeness, lying,blasphemy, and fornication.It is a very depressing book and is filled with foul language on every page. It doesn't edify or build up the reader to become a better citizen or self governing individual.It makes every attempt to drag you down to its level, the gutter. The Bible says whatsoever things are honest, true, just , pure, lovely, and of good report, if there be any virtue, think on these things . You can't think on these things reading "goddamn "245 times in a 200+ page book. Beware Parents. Don't fall for the line that its on the schools approved reading list or that it is a literary 'classic'. This book is filth ,pure and simple. Its a sad commentary on our times that it is taught in our public schools. I had to give it a one star rating but it really doesn't rate to be opened let alone read.

....do we think she has a point?

[Emil Miller]

It's probably just down to who you know and who I know. Most people I know swear.

You are right. Most people I know dont, at least not in public.

In the creation of a world in which not everyone behaves exactly as you do. In detached examination of social mores rather than just observance of a certain set of them.

Writers are not detached from their subject matter, their characters and situations usually carry something of themselves or their personal experience.

In opposition (I think) to Neely's 'heigher heights' objective for literature, I think that, for me, a great deal of the value of literature is as a way of looking beyond my own subjective limits to points of view, behaviour, social conventions, actions, utterances and desires etc. other than my own, some of which I may find unpleasant. In social situations, we generally try not to displease our companions. In literature, while I don't feel we should go out of our way to displease the reader, I do feel that we shouldn't avoid doing so if it's appropriate to our subject matter. Otherwise, all we're doing is producing escapism.

That depends on how one defines escapism. To a certain extent all novels are escapism as the reader cannot actually experience what he is reading about. In displeasing the reader there are obviously occasions when it will happen. He/she will be made to feel sad or dejected according to the vagaries of the story. He/she may even feel frightened or horrified as in M.R.James or Poe but neither of these sought to use swearing. As horrifying as some of their stories are, none of them would have been improved by its use.

You could say that plenty of 19th Century literature confronts us with
unpleasant material without including profanity, but, you'd still only be making the point to say that something unpleasant (to you) should be left out. I'd rather face facts and have a character who would swear in real life swear in the book, just as if they'd rape in real life, they'll commit rape in the book. Anyway, on the scale of unpleasantness, I think swearing comes very low indeed compared to keeping a woman imprisoned in your attic, having a ring of human heads around your house, reanimating a corpse, committing rape, gouging out your own eyes, being castrated and a lot of other things that happened in books before swearing became acceptable.

I agree, but when did swearing become universally acceptable ?


They're unrepresentative of the part of the truth that would have included the swearing, yes.

Substitute 'might' for "would" and I agree.

My only real concern here is with depiction of characters, since I've said I wouldn't use swearing in any other (literary) context. I don't know why some sites allow swearing and some don't, (though I can assure you, there are plenty of minors here. The site is used by students.) You could, equally, say that virtually all Hollywood films that are not for minors include swearing.

I would contend that it doesn't make them better films.

Being insulted doesn't inhibit enjoyment for you?

Not when he insult is meaningless or impersonal.

Anyway, it comes back to what I was saying before. All your concern for the reader's enjoyment or sense of offense is appropriate if you're writing escapist literature, but not if you're concerned with a serious literary endeavour. And I'll reiterate, not because such endeavours should offend the reader, but because, if something likely to give offense is appropriate to the work, it shouldn't be left out just to avoid the offense.

A writer might deem it appropriate but not necessarily a reader.

[myrna22]

Does it matter if you live in Compton? Is it still racist when used by black kids? In that frame of reference, is it acceptable - or would we say that the use of the word by youths to describe themselves and their peer group was 'a racist insult and a slur'?

All usage of all words is contextually determined. Words have no independent and immutable meaning - they can only do their job in the frame of time, place, intention, association and situation.

And our understanding of words - the very ability to communicate - relies on a shared experience of all that - which, incidentally, is never a hundred percent. It's a workable compromise.

When a skinhead beats up a guy because he's 'queer', he is not using the word to mean the same thing as a miltant gay who's proud to be 'here and queer, get used to it'. There's enough overlap in their usage of the word that we understand what both of those people mean - but we also know that they each mean something different and probably incompatible.

The question to answer, I think, would be whether you believe the poster is racist. If you don't, then you're bringing into play other knowledge - context - to make that assessment. And if you do, then you're saying that the word is an infallible indicator of the belief. You're sayng that the very utterance of the word betrays unacceptable attitudes in the user.

And that interpretation of usage, I'd say, is what made Salem famous.

I and the other poster have been discussing a specific idea. Has nothing to do with profanity or the use of the n-word in literature. Your remarks have nothing to do with what I previously posted and are imposing a lot of ideas into a response I am making to one person, ideas that I am not expressing. I have no intention to get into a debate with yet another person about this issue.

If it is complicated for you that racial slurs are racial slurs, I am not going to waste my time trying to clarify it for you. And it has absolutely nothing to do with witch hunts. I am extremely familiar with the events of the Salem witch trials and the McCarthy Hearings. What I am saying has absolutely no connection.

[blp]

No I'm not tilting at windmills. My entire posts have been about arguing against exacting realism in literature. If you or anyone else didn't intend to argue for realism then my apologies, but it was you who was worried about the exact utterings of Conrad's sailors and Dickens's guttertrash. I said "who cares?" and you said "me".


Yes, because, in those instances, the authors are dealing with real contemporary situations realistically. I realise that there's a lot more to those books than documentarism, but, at another level, they're probably the most vivid impressions we're ever likely to have of those situations. It seems a shame to me to sanitise the depictions in any way.

The issue for me is nevertheless not realism per se, but the internal demands of the work. Leaving the swearwords out here seems clearly to be the result of an external demand: the social conventions of the authors' days.

In your argument against realism, you went on to give the examples of non-realist authors such as Wilde and Shakespeare. If you prefer those works to Conrad, Dickens, Zola, Flaubert, etc., fine, but the internal demands of their work are very different. Anyway, as I'm sure you know, Wilde came under fire in his day over the alleged moral decrepitude of Dorian Grey, which rather, I think, indicates what a slippery slope it is to insist on literature's goal as being 'the higher heights'. You might say, well, Wilde managed to achieve this offense to his readers without the use of swearwords, an argument for economy I suppose, but not, clearly, one against offense in itself. As I said to BB before, you can argue if you like that it's possible to give the reader an unpleasant experience without swearing, but you'd only be doing so as a sneaky way of trying to get something left out on the grounds that it's unpleasant.



In the creation of a world in which not everyone behaves exactly as you do. In detached examination of social mores rather than just observance of a certain set of them.

Writers are not detached from their subject matter, their characters and situations usually carry something of themselves or their personal experience.

As my remarks to myrna on the subject of 'write about what you know' suggest, 'personal experience' is as wide as you want to make it.


In displeasing the reader there are obviously occasions when it will happen. He/she will be made to feel sad or dejected according to the vagaries of the story. He/she may even feel frightened or horrified as in M.R.James or Poe but neither of these sought to use swearing. As horrifying as some of their stories are, none of them would have been improved by its use.

You've handily left me with a previous remark of mine that answers this quite well, so I'll just leave it in again:



You could say that plenty of 19th Century literature confronts us with
unpleasant material without including profanity, but, you'd still only be making the point to say that something unpleasant (to you) should be left out. I'd rather face facts and have a character who would swear in real life swear in the book, just as if they'd rape in real life, they'll commit rape in the book. Anyway, on the scale of unpleasantness, I think swearing comes very low indeed compared to keeping a woman imprisoned in your attic, having a ring of human heads around your house, reanimating a corpse, committing rape, gouging out your own eyes, being castrated and a lot of other things that happened in books before swearing became acceptable.

I agree, but when did swearing become universally acceptable ?

I don't know why you keep coming back to the idea that things that are basically social conventions, therefore with definite parameters, are 'universal'. I think that's sort of your entire problem here, as if you imagine there's a convention on this that you, as a writer, can follow that will be universally acceptable. There isn't. Some readers are going to be offended by the inclusion of swearing and some, if the work seems to require swearing and to have left it out, are going to be offended by its exclusion.




They're unrepresentative of the part of the truth that would have included the swearing, yes.

Substitute 'might' for "would" and I agree.

Great. Happy to do that.



You could, equally, say that virtually all Hollywood films that are not for minors include swearing.

I would contend that it doesn't make them better films.

I would contend that it doesn't make them worse.



Being insulted doesn't inhibit enjoyment for you?

Not when he insult is meaningless or impersonal.

Swearing can be like that.



Anyway, it comes back to what I was saying before. All your concern for the reader's enjoyment or sense of offense is appropriate if you're writing escapist literature, but not if you're concerned with a serious literary endeavour. And I'll reiterate, not because such endeavours should offend the reader, but because, if something likely to give offense is appropriate to the work, it shouldn't be left out just to avoid the offense.

A writer might deem it appropriate but not necessarily a reader.

But unless you're writing for a very specific market, you really don't know what proportion of your readers will mind either. If you try to use that as criteria, you're lost in paranoid speculation. But if it seems right to you to do it, you can be fairly sure that some readers will feel the same.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Yes, because, in those instances, the authors are dealing with real contemporary situations realistically. I realise that there's a lot more to those books than documentarism, but, at another level, they're probably the most vivid impressions we're ever likely to have of those situations. It seems a shame to me to sanitise the depictions in any way.

The issue for me is nevertheless not realism per se, but the internal demands of the work. Leaving the swearwords out here seems clearly to be the result of an external demand: the social conventions of the authors' days.

In your argument against realism, you went on to give the examples of non-realist authors such as Wilde and Shakespeare. If you prefer those works to Conrad, Dickens, Zola, Flaubert, etc., fine, but the internal demands of their work are very different. Anyway, as I'm sure you know, Wilde came under fire in his day over the alleged moral decrepitude of Dorian Grey, which rather, I think, indicates what a slippery slope it is to insist on literature's goal as being 'the higher heights'. You might say, well, Wilde managed to achieve this offense to his readers without the use of swearwords, an argument for economy I suppose, but not, clearly, one against offense in itself. As I said to BB before, you can argue if you like that it's possible to give the reader an unpleasant experience without swearing, but you'd only be doing so as a sneaky way of trying to get something left out on the grounds that it's unpleasant.

Oh, no my friend, we are getting very mixed up and cross purposed here to a very large degree. Actually, I am glad about that because it makes more sense in the overall scheme of things.

You mention Flaubert which was one of Wilde's most favourite prose authors of all time. You also talk about Wilde coming under fire which has nothing to do with realism to any degree. I am not talking, nor was Wilde, about morality in literature. You will not find a stronger advocate of freedom of the artist than me and Wilde, what we are saying concerns the burden of absolute fact in literature, which is not necessary at all. We are totally empowering the author, but insisting that the author doesn't have to debase himself to fact only. That is all. :)

[Emil Miller]

As my remarks to myrna on the subject of 'write about what you know' suggest, 'personal experience' is as wide as you want to make it.

I couldn't find the relevance in your remark.

You've handily left me with a previous remark of mine that answers this quite well, so I'll just leave it in again:

As you wish.

I don't know why you keep coming back to the idea that things that are basically social conventions, therefore with definite parameters, are 'universal'. I think that's sort of your entire problem here, as if you imagine there's a convention on this that you, as a writer, can follow that will be universally acceptable. There isn't. Some readers are going to be offended by the inclusion of swearing and some, if the work seems to require swearing and to have left it out, are going to be offended by its exclusion.

That wasn't my intention, I used the word 'universal' to indicate that not everyone swears and many people still find it unacceptable either in conversation or writing.

Swearing can be like that.

Which merely proves my point. If swearing is impersonal and meaningless it's not necessary to good writing.

But unless you're writing for a very specific market, you really don't know what proportion of your readers will mind either. If you try to use that as criteria, you're lost in paranoid speculation. But if it seems right to you to do it, you can be fairly sure that some readers will feel the same.

People who expect to see profanity in novels may not identify with my books but, as you have pointed out, I can be fairly sure that some might.

[blp]

You mention Flaubert which was one of Wilde's most favourite prose authors of all time. You also talk about Wilde coming under fire which has nothing to do with realism to any degree.

I know. I didn't say it did. How many times do I have to tell you that realism isn't my concern here?


I am not talking, nor was Wilde, about morality in literature.

I know that too. My point is just that there are many ways to give offense in literature. I don't see why swearing should be singled out for special opprobrium – as it obviously was throughout the 19th C. And if the offense caused by swearing doesn't bother you, I don't see why it bothers you at all.


You will not find a stronger advocate of freedom of the artist than me and Wilde, what we are saying concerns the burden of absolute fact in literature, which is not necessary at all. We are totally empowering the author, but insisting that the author doesn't have to debase himself to fact only. That is all. :)

That's OK, I wasn't saying that either. That's kind of what I meant about tilting at windmills.

And Brian, if it's all the same to you, I'll leave it there. I feel as if we're both just repeating our entrenched positions and not much is getting through.

[Emil Miller]

And Brian, if it's all the same to you, I'll leave it there. I feel as if we're both just repeating our entrenched positions and not much is getting through.

You are right blp, it is often the way with this kind of discussion but it's interesting to exchange ideas nonetheless. After all, that is the raison d'etre of a forum.

[Scheherazade]

I am extremely familiar with the events of the Salem witch trials and the McCarthy Hearings. Were you part of the defence teams or prosecution on those occassions?

:p
You are right blp, it is often the way with this kind of discussion but it's interesting to exchange ideas nonethelessAfter all, that is the raison d'etre of a forum.Excellent point... As long as people don't get too carried away with it! :D

And, Brian, when you type everything in bold, it is very difficult to figure out your comments from the ones you are "quoting".

[MarkBastable]

If it is complicated for you that racial slurs are racial slurs, I am not going to waste my time trying to clarify it for you.

That's okay. I'm very happy to spend time trying to clarify it for you. Let me know when you're ready.

[blp]

You are right blp, it is often the way with this kind of discussion but it's interesting to exchange ideas nonetheless. After all, that is the raison d'etre of a forum.

Yes, definitely.

[kelby_lake]

If I think a word fits in a sentence, I am going to use said word. If people are really offended by an instance of swearing in a novel, it's probably because the word wasn't the most appropriate word to use in that sentence. We could say that of pretty much any word that doesn't fit.

As for racial slurs, most of the words are considered as outdated racism, regardless of the context you say them in. Slurs are more offensive than swearing; they are unashamedly nasty behaviour, normally stemming from ignorance.

[prendrelemick]

Well, those of us who advocate swearing in novels have to be careful of finding ourselves in questionable company. There are some really bad writers out there who use profanity all the time - though we'd argue that it's not the profanity that makes the stuff bad.

Then again, those who are against swearing also have to consider who their friends are.

This is my favourite Amazon Reader's Review.

I never heard of this book before our daughter said she had to read it for high school English. As soon as the teacher started reading it in class our daughter said it was dumb, she wanted out of English class ,I want to quit school, and why do I have to listen to my teacher read all this foul language including the F word repeatedly. We said you don't and pulled her from the class. Christian or not if you have any moral compass at all Catcher in the Rye is a book to avoid. The book inspired the murderer of John Lennon. It talks about and seems to condone all sorts of sin,including prostitution. drunkeness, lying,blasphemy, and fornication.It is a very depressing book and is filled with foul language on every page. It doesn't edify or build up the reader to become a better citizen or self governing individual.It makes every attempt to drag you down to its level, the gutter. The Bible says whatsoever things are honest, true, just , pure, lovely, and of good report, if there be any virtue, think on these things . You can't think on these things reading "goddamn "245 times in a 200+ page book. Beware Parents. Don't fall for the line that its on the schools approved reading list or that it is a literary 'classic'. This book is filth ,pure and simple. Its a sad commentary on our times that it is taught in our public schools. I had to give it a one star rating but it really doesn't rate to be opened let alone read.

....do we think she has a point?

Actually I agree with her rating:p

though not her ranting

[myrna22]

Actually I agree with her rating:p

though not her ranting

I disagree very much with her rating. Catcher in the Rye has become and will be one of the most important novels ever written not because it titilates with 'bad' language but because it so very much speaks for the adolescent heart and soul.

I really don't even get this discussion, this thread. Language, choice of diction, in literature depends on the needs of the subject. To censure what a character says or how it is said because of the sensibilities of the reader is to not write well, in my opinion.

To put profanity in a work of literature gratuitiously is not good writing. To put profanity in a work of literature because it is the appropriate diction choice is good writing. It is just so obvious, I don't get the point of arguing about it.

[kelby_lake]

Amazon.com reviews are always fun to read. They can give considered opinions on stuff and more people review stuff than on Amazon.co.uk.

Some reviews for Hunchback of Notre Dame (the Disney film):

'I was appalled at this film. The female main character of this story is a gypsy woman, which wouldn't be a problem but given her attire and manner, she acts more like an exotic dancer and is by no means a role-model for little girls. Her dress looks like it will fall off during much of the show and the hunchback has a bunch of stone character friends that come to life. They do one skit where they make a joke of the Catholic pope and the pope figure head pops off. The only good character in the film is the side priest who tries to defend the hunchback in the beginning.

The film is also very long for children and I just thought given the female character manner, it is not proper for children to watch. I don't have problem with most kids films but this one had too many problems in my opinion. Little ones might not get the immoral treatment of the lady in the film but it does stick in memory without realizing it. Kids tend to mimick everything they see at some point and so the reason for my rating.'

And my favourite:
'this is by far the creepiest Disney movie of all time. It is far too sexual and just all around not fun. Esmerelda's dancing is basically a cartoon dancing like a stripper while keeping her clothes on.'

Surely the point of a stripper is that they take their clothes off?

And someone's view of Pinnochio:
'As a child I grew up loving Pinocchio. I loved the story and the movie. But as an adult I have had time to reevaluate this story and it's effect on our children. This movie contains too much violence and way too much fantasy for our children to handle. With all of it's fluff and happy themes, how can you show this to our children when there is so much suffering in the world? I think its grossly unfair to the children of other countries who are dying of starvation or war for our own children to enjoy something so blatently moralizing. I believe that there are some religious undertones in the story as well that should have been kept in check. Please, for our children's sake and future, avoid this harmful film.'

[Aelita]

Originally posted by BienvenuJDC
"I agree with some of the comments here concerning a portrayal of realistic life, in order to show the moral character of the persons or the setting. However, if anyone thinks that the general communication requires the use of profane language, then the intellect of this current society has diminished. I'm not offended by a word every now and again, but there are certainly some words used more than once that will cause me to put a book down and throw the author off my book list. Let us develop our vocabularies elegantly."
If profane words are overused, they don't shock anymore and become the norm. I don't like it. It's leaving a bad taste in my mouth.

[MarkBastable]

If profane words are overused, they don't shock anymore and become the norm. I don't like it. It's leaving a bad taste in my mouth.

You can't have it both ways. If they become the norm, they won't leave a nasty taste in the mouth. Unless you find normality distasteful - in which case presumably you'd prefer the situation in which profanity was used but was not normal.

Me, I don't find them shocking. And frankly I'm surprised that so many people here seem to. I think we should all read less and get out more.

[kelby_lake]

Not everybody uses profanity in order to shock. That's already been done in literature. Read some David Mamet and you'll get over it.

[ForKnowledge]

who gives a ****? people do it it should be in novels good or bad

[stlukesguild]

I disagree very much with her rating. Catcher in the Rye has become and will be one of the most important novels ever written...

:smilielol5::crazy::skep::smilielol5:

Right up there with Harry Potter.

[novelsryou]

Speaking of profanity, I started Tropic Of Cancer and quite frankly I don't get it, maybe I should get a study guide, so I put it down for The Oxford History Of The French Revolution and now I'm bogging down halfway through that in the French revolutionary wars. I was hoping for more Guillotining.

[blp]

I disagree very much with her rating. Catcher in the Rye has become and will be one of the most important novels ever written...

:smilielol5::crazy::skep::smilielol5:

Right up there with Harry Potter.

You're right up there with Harry Potter.

Don't ask me up where. :D

myrna's right.

[stlukesguild]

You're right up there with Harry Potter.

Don't ask me up where.

myrna's right.

Yep. Catcher in the Rye will rank right alongside The Brothers Karamazov, War and Peace, Les Miserables, Madame Bovary, A Tale of Two Cities, The Glass Bead Game, Doctor Faustus, Dangerous Liasons, Love in the Time of Cholera, The Master and Margerita, Invisible Cities, Don Quixote, The Trial, In Search of Lost Time, Ulysses, Tristam Shandy, Jude the Obscure, Moby Dick, Robinson Caruso, The Scarlet Letter, Blood Meridian, As I Lay Dying, Pride and Prejudice, Crime and Punishment, Portrait of a Lady, The Torrents of Spring, Wuthering Heights, etc... at least among semi-literate teenagers and high-school English teachers wanting to insert a little teen-aged angst into the reading.

[mortalterror]

Yep. Catcher in the Rye will rank right alongside The Brothers Karamazov, War and Peace, Les Miserables, Madame Bovary, A Tale of Two Cities, The Glass Bead Game, Doctor Faustus, Dangerous Liasons, Love in the Time of Cholera, The Master and Margerita, Invisible Cities, Don Quixote, The Trial, In Search of Lost Time, Ulysses, Tristam Shandy, Jude the Obscure, Moby Dick, Robinson Caruso, The Scarlet Letter, Blood Meridian, As I Lay Dying, Pride and Prejudice, Crime and Punishment, Portrait of a Lady, The Torrents of Spring, Wuthering Heights, etc... at least among semi-literate teenagers and high-school English teachers wanting to insert a little teen-aged angst into the reading.
Some of your suggestions are a little thinner than others. You might have said The Brothers Karamazov, War and Peace, Les Mis, Madame Bovary, and left it at that. The Glass Bead Game? Doctor Faustus? Jude the Obscure? Robinson Caruso? Blood Meridian? Even I don't like The Torrents of Spring!

I'd like to vouch for The Catcher in the Rye, since I believe it's a work of real genius, and just one more of those books you didn't care for and which yet rate serious consideration as novels. Add it to the list with Three Musketeers, On the Road, and 1984.

[blp]

You're right up there with Harry Potter.

Don't ask me up where.

myrna's right.

Yep. Catcher in the Rye will rank right alongside The Brothers Karamazov, War and Peace, Les Miserables, Madame Bovary, A Tale of Two Cities, The Glass Bead Game, Doctor Faustus, Dangerous Liasons, Love in the Time of Cholera, The Master and Margerita, Invisible Cities, Don Quixote, The Trial, In Search of Lost Time, Ulysses, Tristam Shandy, Jude the Obscure, Moby Dick, Robinson Caruso, The Scarlet Letter, Blood Meridian, As I Lay Dying, Pride and Prejudice, Crime and Punishment, Portrait of a Lady, The Torrents of Spring, Wuthering Heights, etc... at least among semi-literate teenagers and high-school English teachers wanting to insert a little teen-aged angst into the reading.


Some of your suggestions are a little thinner than others.

Yeah, you lost me, utterly, at Love in the Time of Cholera.

[stlukesguild]

Some of your suggestions are a little thinner than others. You might have said The Brothers Karamazov, War and Peace, Les Mis, Madame Bovary, and left it at that. The Glass Bead Game? Doctor Faustus? Jude the Obscure? Robinson Caruso? Blood Meridian? Even I don't like The Torrents of Spring!

Hesse? Undoubtedly. He'll certainly outlast Sallinger. DeFoe would seem to go without saying as one of the founders of the English novel. I know we disagree on Blood Meridian. I stand by my judgment that it is one of the best if not THE best American novel of the second half of the 20th century and I'm not alone in that assertion. Not a Turgenev fan?

I'd like to vouch for The Catcher in the Rye, since I believe it's a work of real genius, and just one more of those books you didn't care for and which yet rate serious consideration as novels. Add it to the list with Three Musketeers, On the Road, and 1984.

Personally, I quite liked 1984... but I wouldn't rate it (or Orwell as a whole) anywhere near as high as he seems to be rated among many LitNet members (which seems to be somewhere akin to standing shoulder to shoulder with Shakespeare and Dostoevsky). The Three Musketeers...? Good mindless fun... perhaps even a minor "classic"... but you can't expect a whole lot more from a book written by committee... even if Nerval was one of the ghostwriters involved. Kerouac and Sallinger? The less said, the better.

[stlukesguild]

you lost me, utterly, at Love in the Time of Cholera.

Really? And do you imagine that Salinger in any way rivals the literary achievements of Gabriel Garcia-Marquez? Perhaps he's greater than Borges and Beckett while we're at it.:rolleyes:

[mortalterror]

Hesse? Undoubtedly. He'll certainly outlast Sallinger.
I don't think we can say that for certain until we see the rest of his stuff. I like both writers.

DeFoe would seem to go without saying as one of the founders of the English novel.
I'm not saying Robinson Crusoe isn't a classic. I'm saying it's not on the same level as Madame Bovary. It has a certain historical importance, but it's a rather creaky old novel with a lot of rough spots and head shakers. Furthermore, I don't see it as being intellectually more complex than Stevenson's childhood adventure stories such as Treasure Island. Robinson Crusoe is an old warhorse, an artifact with a couple of extra miles on it. Some people still find it amusing and good for them. There are good things inside it, but that doesn't put it on the same level as War and Peace.

Not a Turgenev fan?
Not really. But I thought you were referring to the Hemingway novella of the same title.

Personally, I quite liked 1984... but I wouldn't rate it (or Orwell as a whole) anywhere near as high as he seems to be rated among many LitNet members (which seems to be somewhere akin to standing shoulder to shoulder with Shakespeare and Dostoevsky).
Agreed. It's good, but it's not that good.

The Three Musketeers...? Good mindless fun... perhaps even a minor "classic"... but you can't expect a whole lot more from a book written by committee... even if Nerval was one of the ghostwriters involved.
If the Sistine Chapel can be "painted by committee" as you put it, then good books and movies can be too.

The thing about The Three Musketeers is that it "works" better than almost any other novel I can name. If I pick it up, I won't be able to put it down for an hour. The story is compelling, the characters interesting, it's full of incidents, and the prose clips along without any dull patches. You can't say that about certain other classics be they Great Expectations or Moby Dick.

I also think it's easier to find admirers of Dumas' book than it is to find fans of more idiosyncratic works such as Tristram Shandy or Ulysses; novels burdened by a more checkered and dubious existence in the history of literature.

Kerouac and Sallinger? The less said, the better.
I'm not standing behind the authors. Some of their stuff I don't care for. I'm standing behind On the Road and Catcher in the Rye. On the Road has more vitality and joie de vivre than almost any other book I've ever read. It's prose style is sweeping and smooth in the way that the best parts of Hemingway, Nabokov, and James have. His other books might not add up but that one definitely does.

As far as Catcher goes, it's the same book as Notes From Underground and Nausea, except taken from an American's lips or a teenagers the same philosophical ideas are construed as inane whining. You have to be foreign and old to be considered deep.

[PeterL]

Hesse? Undoubtedly. He'll certainly outlast Sallinger. DeFoe would seem to go without saying as one of the founders of the English novel. I know we disagree on Blood Meridian. I stand by my judgment that it is one of the best if not THE best American novel of the second half of the 20th century and I'm not alone in that assertion. Not a Turgenev fan?

I just laughed at your list. It has some great, some good, some bad, and some quite questionable. I agree that Hesse will have more staying power than Sallinger. I have never figured out why Catcher in the Rye became so widely read. It isn't bad, but there isn't much to it. On the other hand. I started remembering The Glass Bead Game and remembered that it seemed to be devoid of anything. It has been a long time since I read Hesse, but he was a good writer, but he was a bit to deep into Eastern mysticism. Defoe certainly deserves to be on such a list, but I have never heard of Blood Meridian; although I am certain that it is not the best novel of the second half ot the 20th century.

[blp]

Really? And do you imagine that Salinger in any way rivals the literary achievements of Gabriel Garcia-Marquez?

Marquez certainly wins on quantity. Other than that, to be honest, I can't really give you a very definite answer because I stopped reading him after ...Cholera, which I read when it came out in English and hated. You'd have been on solider ground with 100 Years of Solitude, I'd have thought.

[MarkBastable]

You'd have been on solider ground with 100 Years of Solitude, I'd have thought.

I dunno. I gave it a shot and about three years in I felt the hundred was up.

[blp]

I dunno. I gave it a shot and about three years in I felt the hundred was up.

:D

Well, I was only thirteen when I read it.