SLPAD 4

[Michael Bailey]

The idea of rendering accents in fiction -
Thomas Wolfe did this extensively, I seem to remember. Or excessively,
though it was digable.

Here it says it’s a regrettable plot point in TSR, but only regrettable
because wrong.

Mostly I think accents are kind of fun, maybe a little bit informative (if
gotten correct) and part of the practice in mental gymnastics one tends to
rely on fiction for providing. They deepen the illusion if they’re
familiar; if unfamiliar, they pleasantly reify the enjoyable strangeness of
fiction and get tucked away to gleefully subvocalize in odd moments, and/or
test against real speech in the event of an actual encounter with speakers
of that accent.

Like in AtD - I can’t tell you how many times I’ve subvocalized Plug
Loafsley’s “r to hv” shift when the Chums go to NYC. “…some koindt of a
sailboat pitchuhv on it!”

It does accord with the way a girl who’d moved from (I know not which part
of) New York & attended “my” high school in Michigan spoke, for awhile.
Memorable lo these many years.



The next mistake cited is in “attitude towards death.”

“When we speak of “seriousness” in fiction ultimately we are talking about
an attitude toward death—“

There’s an interesting proposition.

I wonder what he’s going to say about that in the rest of the sentence.


When you read that, do you open a little file of possible counter-examples,
other salient descriptors of serious fiction?

- describing & decrying injustice
- championing morality
- avoidance of impossibilities & logical contradiction
- treatment of ideas

Etc etc.

 I have my doubts about serious fiction having to deal with death. Seems
like simply omitting it from the tale would work, or devising a containment
method so that it’s dealt with in logical ways without being a main, or
even a major, theme.

But I’m not dogmatic about it (woof!)