Flocked

euphemism--the substitution of a word or meaning and the subsequent substitution of it with a word, phrase, or concept that sounds more agreeable and polite; abduction of a word or meaning by inferring a less bold, graphic, or socially acceptable meaning.

Perhaps the most common euphemisms in Western culture are those connected with death. Passing, passing on, passing away, and passing over join company with expired, gone to his/her reward, called home, pushing up daisies, the latter of which at least appears to be making fun of itself, and croaked, also far from polite, seems to draw on death rattle for an ironic trope.

There are euphemisms for the three widely touted taboos, sex, religion, and politics, as well, just as split-up is used as a euphemism for divorce or a broken long-term arrangement of any sort. In sports, being sent down to the minors may be literally true but it is also a cover-up for being demoted, just as being held back is a euphemism for flunked.

In much of the world, the infamous n-word has become replaced with Negro, black, Black, and if appropriate, African-American, almost all the euphemisms (including person of color) enjoying a cycle of popularity before falling off the radar (not a euphemism, but a definite cliche). Thus also does midget or dwarf become person of challenged height, which opens yet other doors for vulgar, demeaning conditions manifest in individuals suffering from neurological disorders.

What to do? Of course some characters, by their nature, will use the n-word or any other word that suits their purpose when dealing with a person or trait out of the mainstream, and it is appropriate to show them in full, non-euphemistic action as, say, Ernest Hemingway did when referring to certain of his characters as a rummy, which lets us know that person has a strong attachment to spiritus fermenti or, if you will, booze. Other characters, whom you intend as an embodiment of PC (not a euphemism for personal computer) will pour on the euphemisms, and other still, characters you conceive of as covert bigots, will reveal themselves with their broadcast liberalism by wanting to introduce you to "my Chinese wife." You would be within your rights to say how much you look forward to meeting his Japanese wife and perhaps his Polynesian wife, but you hold your tongue.

Others still of your characters will use euphemisms to deliniate for friends and acquaintances alike the sexual orientation of other characters, including such euphemisms as light in the loafers, walks with a notable limp, and wears pink handkerchiefs as well as the one euphemism most of us use, gay. Some characters will refer to bisexuals in baseball terms as in he/she swings from both sides of the plate or switch hitter, and to women homosexuals as holding passports from the Isle of Lesbos and the one-size-fits-all lesbo, or perhaps dyke or the throw-away observation, "she tends to ride the clutch on her Harley."

There are risks in using PC euphemisms just as there are risks in using vulgar, hurtfully intended ones, and thus the question arises about whether to call characters out in stories that have nothing to do with their sexual, religious, or political orientations, using this information only as it relates to the development of a story.

The answers (for there are more than one) reside within your characters and their intent. If a character brags of having friends who are Jewish, LDS, Catholic, and, say, Lutheran, as well as friends who are Republican and even some who are gay, what does this say of your character. If a character is constantly reminding other characters that little people are not to be called midgets and that the "correct" designation for an Oriental person is Asian, what does this say of her>

And what does it say to readers, literary agents, and editors if the writer writes, "Dennis yanked the Glock from his waistband, squeezed off three shots at point-blank range, then bent down to see if his assailant had crossed over."

Landscapes and Degrees of Separation

Earlier it was George Pelecanos, Dennis Lehane, and Richard Price, qv as the more scholarly indexes would say, quod vide. Tonight it becomes Louise Erdrich, Ruth Rendell, and flip a coin between Margaret Atwood (esp. Cat's Eye) and anything by Alice Munro. This splendid half dozen is part of the equation, the part being the authorial lens for looking at character. The other part of the equation is landscape, by which I mean not only the setting but the inherent mood or tone of the setting. Although four of the six I mention are writing about situations where crime or the immediate threat of crime is a constant threat, even to the point of being a genre promise, each of the six write about situations in which a larger crime lurks in potent display, the crime of emotional violence that more or less goes with the lunch.

There is no doubt in my mind that each of the six has brought writing about crime into literature that not only goes beyond mere entertainment, it becomes writing that closely defines through event and locale and attitude the effects of crime on individuals. This is important to us now in 2008 when the traces in our own political landscape reek of various types of torture and humiliation; it is also important as a looking glass into historical eras when, in effect, only certain types and classes of society were thought to have the capacity to be humiliated.

This is a reminder to revisit Balzac and Eugenie Grandet. It is also a reminder to revisit Gaylord Dold, the bard of Topeka, Kansas, a mystery writer virtually unknown to all but a few who look at the confluence of character and landscape as surpassing plot, having a fate-driven inertia that pulls us, yanks us into story, keeps us there.

This is official notice as well that much as I enjoy Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds, I have over indulged on the Georg Pelecanos The Turnaround to the point where I will have to review it this week and get to the O'Brien for next week's column (which is going to be difficult because of Philip Pullman and the three-volume set of His Dark Mystery, pulsing away on my desk. When we speak about interconnectedness on a global scale, we're looking at a figure of about 5 or 6, so I guess it shouldn't be too surprising, having just found out about Philip Pullman from Michael Chabon to have noticed him on the link list of mapelba, a blogger I check in on.

And since I was seriously thinking about Christopher Hitchens' splendid book on George Orwell for a bi-weekly Golden Oldie review, what are the chances that someone from my home town would call to see if I'd be interested in being invited to a private session at a posh conservative venue here, where one of the locals had paid big bucks to fly Hitchens in for the evening last night? This being what it is, the chances were good, and so, when Q and A time came around and the conservatives were getting het up about whether we should bomb Iran or China, I was able to get the mike and ask Hitchens if he thought Orwell was still relevant today and if so why and how. Half an hour later, Hitchens, by all accounts a splendid speaker, apologized for taking so long to answer the question, then hoped his answer conveyed a measure of his regard for Orwell. Which occasioned another question: Do you in your work carry Orwell's mantle forth? Which provoked the answer, Come have a glass of wine with me.

Summertime

...and the living is easy.

So easy, in fact, that Sally is snoring, just having returned from a kick-ass encounter with a coyote in the upper fields of Hale Park. There is something about a snoring dog...

In the market to pick up some over-priced fruit (because the summers in many places have been inhospitable to fruit), I run into Jim Buckley, publisher of the Montecito Journal, which carries my weekly review. A shrewd business man and a pretty solid copyeditor, he reminded me of the time he and the now departed editor, Guillaume Doane (off to seek his journalistic fortune in Europe) argued whether to allow a sentence of mine that had run seventy-six words, or to ask me to break it up (or down?) into more manageable declarative sentences. Then JB drops the bomb that got me thinking about tonight's entry. Some time in the next few weeks, he will send me the opening chapters of his mystery novel. "Everyone," he calls forth, "is writing a mystery novel."

This, I reflect, is true. With all of the things I should be working on more diligently, I, too, am playing with the idea of a serialized mystery which I will think to inflict on the Montecito Journal, circulation twenty thousand.

The mystery is popular this time of year because we are all trying to guess the identity of the persons who leave packages of zucchini on our doorsteps as we are out leaving packages of our own zucchini on the doorsteps of others. Indeed, in the parking lot of the market, I met a neighbor who asked me if I'd seen her clever solution to being banned by a local ordinance from leading the Fourth of July Parade with her horse. Her second question went right straight to zucchini, as in, was I the one who left so much.

I know it is a digression but I can't help it. The entire Santa Barbara area, largely peopled with conservatives (and grouches), is a hive of bureaucratic building and zoning regulation, to which I think it would be funny to add a restriction on how much anonymous zucchini we can leave on the front entry way of a neighbor.

We do like to solve puzzles, particularly since so many magazine features for the elderly suggest how healthy it is for us to be doing crossword puzzles. My dear chum, Digby Wolfe, developed the notion that one advantage of a failing short-term memory is the potential for organizing our own Easter-egg hunts. Well, why not solve even more intriguing crimes? And so, the better writer can make us identify with the fictional Hawkshaws, allowing us to imagine how we would track and carefully interview suspects, then put the facts together, which allows us to assemble the evidence, which allows us to feel quite superior.

It disturbs me that more readers don't recognize the skills of Thomas Perry, and to my knowledge, the only local who is even aware of Gaylord Dold is J.F. Jerry Freedman, and Jerry is often too busy writing new books to wonder too much about why Dold is not as well read as he ought to be.

It gets worse before it gets better, because Gaylord Dold is one of the favorites of Daniel Woodrell, whom I first found about from Dennis Lynds who, prolific as he was, was also woefully under-read, and don't ask about Daniel Woodrell's figures. I should work Tim Gautreaux into this equation, but even though he is not widely read, he has had things in the New Yorker.

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