Today we learn that if you want to affect a particular historical style, it’s not enough to come close. You have to understand the language you’re using thoroughly. And if you don’t, that tells you what qualities you should be looking for in your editor.
What I gleaned about the story: It’s something of a Victorian explorer drama, complete with fusty old academics being dragged off to Faroffistan in pursuit of glory.
Find the book on Amazon.
Kudos: I love the cover. It captures the essence of the Victorian travel poster or monograph beautifully.
and then later…
I am serious when I say that whence I divulge this information…
Analysis: Phrases and words have specific meanings, and you have to understand them, and their appropriate contexts, if you want to use them effectively.
The first of the quoted sentences is at cross purposes with itself. In the context of the story, the narrator is trying to say that a group of people are acting in the only way left to them, given the dire circumstances they’ve been forced into. That their very survival is at stake and they have been left with no alternatives. But “taking it upon themselves” connotes an exercise of conscious choice, and “the way they see fit” also implies a choice. So the narrator ends up defending extreme behavior by saying that the perpetrators consciously chose to do it, which of course, is no defence at all. This kind of cognitive dissonance is a real immersion-buster for me. It forces me to stop and examine the text, trying to discern which of the two meanings was intended.
As for the second example sentence, I’m going to assume it’s either an uncorrected typo, or a leave-behind from a sloppy edit. The word “whence” does not mean “when.” It means “from where.” But again, it changes the meaning of the sentence in a way that puts it into conflict with itself, and so I “demmersed.”
Analysis: Again, I’m confused. If his hair is all “matted about,” how is it clear that it was once well-kempt? Again I had to stop and re-read the passage to see if I’d missed some other clue, but there were none that I could find. If the word “clearly” weren’t there, then I’d have happily assumed that the narrator knew the man well, knew that he was normally a fastidious sort, and everything would have been fine. But by adding “clearly,” it changes the meaning, now implying that the quality of his haircut was self-evident. Except that the only evidence we’re given is that it’s a matted tangle. I wondered, how else could a head of hair convey its usual tidiness? So now I was struggling to make this work, and as a consequence, fell out.
Analysis: The look wore an expression? But a look is an expression. Again, this might well have been another editorial leave-behind. But even so, there have been enough of them now that I’m starting to get the feeling of language being used in a slip-shod manner. It’s like the guy who is introduced to me at a party and when he gets my name wrong for the fifth time and I correct him, he says, “Jefferson, Jackson. Whatever.” It gives me the sense that this guy doesn’t take me seriously, just as these kinds of errors in a book give me the feeling that the author doesn’t take his prose seriously. I’m not saying that’s the case – just that it’s the feeling I get when I encounter repeated language gaffes like this. And a reader who senses disdain coming from the author is unlikely to trust him enough to immerse.
Note: The frustrating thing for me is that I think the story here might have been going to interesting places, but as I’ve said before, details matter. Words matter. It’s not enough to intend to say something profound, or eloquent, or clever. You actually have to execute the words that make it so. This could have been so much better with a strong editor on the team. Perhaps one more familiar with Victorian turns of phrase.
I agree with you that the language of a time needs to be followed carefully. I am currently reading a mystery set in Victorian England and the author does a fairly good job in using the language, but the errors that keeps appearing are the misuse of words such as him, he, I, and me.. An example, “It was him,” instead of, “It was he.” The error cannot be attributed to education as both the upper class characters and the working class make the same sort of error. Each error jolts me from the author’s crafted world and into the awareness that I am reading a book.
That’s another good example, David. I see this frequently with historical fiction, and the older the English, the more problematic it gets. It gets really bad when authors try to use “doth” and “thou” etc. This really is a place where an experienced editor can be worth their weight in gold.
I believe to write in the style of a period it is necessary to read what was written in the period. I’ve read a great deal of Victorian works and such errors jump out. It is one thing if a character is speaking dialect, or if the character has an affectation, but the editor can fix things the writer cannot see. I know when I write, I cannot see what is there; my mind sees what I think I wrote. I have used Naturalreader’s software to read what it back to me and that can make a big difference. It highlights each word as it speaks and I catch those irritating typos; sometimes spell checkers will not allow a word. I was amazed to once have my Anthropology lecture changed from Australopithecus to Australians. I must admit the lecture was much funnier, but I think it would have confused the students and probably made the Australians rather upset. I will often compose without looking at the screen, or keyboard, and such errors will not be caught until later.
Would it be better to just write the book in modern English and forget about trying to imitate the language of the day? I remember when studying English at college we were looking at Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare and I’d misinterpreted ‘wherefore art thou, Romeo?’ to mean ‘where are you, Romeo?’ and my teacher had to explain it meant ‘why have they named you ‘Romeo’?’ and I thought ‘wherefore art I doing this foreign language book?’.
That’s an interesting question, Carl. I agree completely that modern English should be used for most dialogue. But a great deal can be conveyed through the use of incorrect English. Consider this line of dialogue: “That’s not a mule – it’s a donkey.” Seems completely normal. But what would you infer about the character if the line had read: “Is not mule – is donkey.” That rendering makes no attempt to transcribe accented pronunciations, but for most people, it immediately conjures up an eastern European character. And for my money, that’s the way most accents should be rendered. And it’s a lot easier to read, too.
Rex Stout, in the Nero Wolfe mysteries, would have the narrator (Archie Goodwin) write a phonetic version of an accent for a single line and then leave it for the audience to provide a translation from Standard English to whatever accent was being used. I’ve always though that was a good idea.
That certainly avoids the risk of burdening the reader with having to unpack the accented speech, but to my mind, it replaces that burden with another: having to remember which characters spoke with which accents. The thing I like about the word choices and sentence structure approach is that it works subconsciously. Your brain parses the words easily, but they resonate in your head with the same affected coloring that you experience when you hear the language spoken that way, so actually FEEL the Russian-ness of the speech. Or the Polish-ness. Or the Irish-ness. Or whatever.
The Wolfe stories had only a few characters and keeping them in order is not a problem. Also, he did leave the word structure in the appropriate manner for the character, but the spellings would be standard. A Russian character would still have a way of speaking that marked him as a foreigner. I remember reading a book, some years back, that was written in South America. The initial sentence was a beautifully structured English sentence, but announced to a native speaker that the person was speaking a second language. I wish I could remember the book’s title.