My respect for language began as a child when my father would sit at the edge of my bed and read from an anthology of famous poets. If I closed my eyes, I could see the charge of the light brigade, the raven perched on my windowsill whispering ‘nevermore’, and the words of John Whittier Greenleaf that still define regret for me so many years later: “For all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been’.”
Language and its usage have taken a beating in times more defined by visual screens than written words. I touched on this subject last year in One Down (comma) Two to Go about an English class I was required to take and this past weekend offered illustrations on opposite ends of the literary spectrum.
Husband and I rented two movies we’ve been eager to see which both received lively reviews and comment: Borat and Knocked Up. We were pumped for some great comedy and sat down to see them both in succession. Before long we realized we could not reduce our expectations enough to finish watching either one of them. My finger point goes to the writers. In lieu of engaging characters and involving plot development, they need to at least deliver good dialogue.
Then on a drive upstate, Husband put in a CD that featured old radio shows from the forties and fifties. It reminded me of why I fell in love with books by Dashiell Hammett who wrote The Maltese Falcon, and Raymond Chandler who gave us The Big Sleep. I’m not quite old enough to have listened to shows on radio back when they were popular, but hearing a pre-Dragnet Jack Webb play Pat Novak For Hire on CD reminded me of what it sounds like when writers focus on making words dance.
In one story, hard-boiled P.I. Novak encounters a femme fatale and tells us, “You knew the first time you saw her you were seeing her too often.” He meets with an old man who has a job for him and says “he looked tired and a year older than the Bible. His jowls hung around his face like an empty baked potato.” The old man asks Novak to keep an eye on a young boxer saying that he’s a good boy. Novak responds with, “Good boys don’t need watching. Has he got some bad coming on?”
What situation would you want to know more about: the beautiful young thing from Knocked Up who you’ve just watched sit on a toilet and pee on 10 different pregnancy strips accompanied by “Oh, shit!” or the guy Novak is tailing when he tells us “I found him at a bar down on West Street trying to talk a woman into giving up all men under fifty.” Even pulp dialogue that’s well crafted beats out something going into a toilet no matter how lovely the one is who’s urinating.
You still want descriptive bathroom talk? Here it comes. Private eye Novak laments his disappointment over a failed effort with “It was like washing your kid’s face and finding out he was ugly to start with.” You have to hate when that happens.
Captivating describes Daughter’s Featured Fotos taken in Jamaica, mon
cool seating
colorful leaf
elegant table
private rock pool