Chasing Language
Ever notice how complicated English can be? What if you’re a non-native speaker trying to make sense of this? I put my trunk by the trunk of a tree and an elephant picked it up with his trunk and put it in the trunk of the car.
Or how about: I saw a bird sitting in the branch of a tree, right where the river bank branched off and right across from the branch of the local bank.
And of course: I need to knead the dough because I don’t have enough dough to buy a loaf, and also I’d rather not loaf around all day.
I’ve been studying French, but a lack of vocabulary makes for a surprisingly interesting conversation La plume de ma tante est sur la table. My aunt’s pen is on the table. Also, J’étais en train de preparer le dîner, quand tu es arrivé. I was in the middle of preparing dinner when you arrived.
So what’s your name?
My aunt’s pen is on the table.
Where do you live?
I was in the middle of preparing dinner when you arrived.
You are apparently an idiot.
At your service! And I wish to have pickles with my coffee, unless the nutmeg is cold. Would you care to join me in the bath?
Let’s change the subject from the quirks of language to how writers use language.
Please indulge my cheap shot at unmentionable writers in general. In my view, a writer should never attempt to copy another writer’s style. Just doesn’t work to try to get into another’s writer’s mind and thoughts, unless you are Basil the mind reading dog. Pat your paw two times if you know what I’m talking about.
I recently read a book purporting to present a new book, channeling Raymond Chandler and his star detective, Phillip Marlowe. If you haven’t read one of Chandler’s books, I’ll supply you with a thumbnail sketch of Phillip Marlowe. Tall, slim, debonair, loner, a thinker, with a smooth approach to life, and very clever. Picture James Bond as Ian Fleming wrote him (not the movies), but without the international intrigue and the propensity to shoot people he’s only just met. Marlowe and all the characters and their personalities are clear and stark in each of Chandler’s novels. Just a few bare descriptions and you know the characters well.
In the copycat Marlowe novel I just managed to wade through with the help of several large doses of Spanish brandy and a fistfight with my sleep habit, Phillip Marlowe transformed into a sloppy speaking womanizer, whom I could only picture as five feet four, rotund, balding, with a penchant for over explaining everything, to the point that a competent editor would fling the book across the room with the force of an angry gorilla. Characters are introduced randomly, with the keen ability of a drunken plumber and the book features a plot more abstract than a bad Jackson Pollack painting.
For startling entertainment from the 1940s, try Chandler’s The Big Sleep.
“It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder blue suit, with a dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.
The main hallway of the Sternwood place was two stories high. Over the entrance doors, which would have let in a troop of Indian elephants, there was a broad stained-glass panel showing a knight in dark armor rescuing a lady who was tied to a tree and didn’t have any clothes on but some very long and convenient hair. The knight had pushed the visor of his helmet back to be sociable, and he was fiddling with the knots on the ropes that tied the lady to the tree and not getting anywhere. I stood there and thought that if I lived in the house, I would sooner or later have to climb up there and help him. He didn’t seem to be really trying.”
End of Excerpt.
Writing, real writing, which I have never practiced and probably never will, is a sweet, but simple song of a man sailing down the river of contentment and if the water gets rough, he shows his skill at keeping the boat upright. Even the struggles float smoothly through the plot, and whether the ending is sweet or sour or sanguine, it’s true to itself and true to the man in the boat.
Am I being too nitpicking? Or am I knit picking? Go ahead and bare your soul! I just can’t bear the tension! And don’t hesitate to be frank, Frank. Perhaps you just don’t care what I write, right?
Either way, it’s time to drink a drink. N’est pas?
