Charlie said:
"I've gotta say, as a reader, "voice" fiction is better if
the whole novel is that way. If you don't fall in love with
the voice in the first sentence, you've got the whole book to
let it seduce you (or not). Jim Thompson's Pop. 1280 stands
above all his others for me because I just love the easy way
Nick Corey speaks (writes). Martin Amis created a masterpiece
with a narrator who played with his own accent when he wrote
Money. Trainspotting is so good because the thick language
really makes me see the characters, somehow. These are three
that work for me. There are dozens of others that failed
because the non-standard English just didn't work."
This seems to be what many people think. Good luck with your
invented yockelisms. Yip, Nick Corey does work, and one of my
favourite novels (not HB) is Ridley Walker by Russel Hoban,
which is all written in a post apocalyptic mish-mash language
that starts as hard work but soon pulls you in. I think that
it's the accented speech that threw me, and perhaps over a
longer piece I wouldn't even have noticed it - and it still
doesn't much dilute my enthusiasm for Brookmyre's story. When
do you do it though writers? I am trying to think of other
examples, and not many spring to mind - it seems unnecessary
to me, for example I don't recall New York or Boston accents
being written but a couple of times I have seen Southern US
accents rendered. I think the odd word carries more weight
than the whole shebang. Cheers, Colin.
-- # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 18 Jun 2002 EDT