And yet there are values in realism-in making people look, and sound, and act like real people.
For instance, back in 1919, some of the players on the pennant-winning Chicago White Sox were accused of accepting money from gamblers to throw the World Series (the so-called “Black Sox” scandal) and were barred from baseball for life as a result. At the trial, a young lad is supposed to have followed his idol, the greatest of the accused, “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, and to have cried out in anguish, “Say it ain’t so, Joe.”
That is a deathless cry that can’t be tampered with. It is unthinkable to have the boy say “Refute these calumnies, Joseph,” even though that’s what he means. Any writer who tried to improve matters in that fashion would, and should, be lynched at once. I doubt that anyone would, or should, even change it to “Say it isn’t so, Joe.”
For that matter, you couldn’t possibly have had Kate Nickleby cry out to her brother, “Say it ain’t so, Nick.”
Of course, during much of history most people were illiterate and the reading of books was very much confined to the few who were educated and scholarly. Such books of fiction as existed were supposed to “improve the mind,” or risk being regarded as works of the devil.
It was only gradually, as mass education began to flourish, that books began to deal with ordinary people. Of course, Shakespeare had his clowns and Dickens had his Sam Wellers, and in both cases, dialog was used that mangled the English language to some extent-but that was intended as humor. The audience was expected to laugh uproariously at these representatives of the lower classes.
As far as I know the first great book which was written entirely and seriously in substandard English and which was a great work of literature nevertheless (or even, possibly, to some extent because of it) was Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, which was published in 1884. Huck Finn is himself the narrator, and he is made to speak as an uneducated backwoods boy would speak-if he happened to be a literary genius. That is, he used the dialect of an uneducated boy, but he put together sentences and paragraphs like a master.
The book was extremely popular when it came out because its realism made it incredibly effective-but it was also extremely controversial as all sorts of fatheads inveighed against it because it didn’t use proper English.
And yet, at that, Mark Twain had to draw the line, too, as did all writers until the present generation.
People, all sorts of people, use vulgarisms as a matter of course. I remember my days in the army when it was impossible to hear a single sentence in which the common word for sexual intercourse was not used as an all-purpose adjective. Later, after I had gotten out of the army, I lived on a street along which young boys and girls walked to the local junior high school in the morning, and back again in the evening, and their shouted conversations brought back memories of my barracks days with nauseating clarity.
Yet could writers reproduce that aspect of common speech? Of course not. For that reason, Huck Finn was always saying that something was “blamed” annoying, “blamed” this, “blamed” that. You can bet that the least he was really saying was “damned.”
A whole set of euphemisms was developed and placed in the mouths of characters who wouldn’t, in real life, have been caught dead saying them. Think of the all the “dad-blameds.” and “goldarneds,” and “consarneds” we have seen in print and heard in the movies. To be sure, youngsters say them as a matter of caution for they would probably be punished (if of “good family”) by their parents if caught using the terms they had heard said parents use. (Don’t let your hearts bleed for the kids for when they grow up they will beat up their kids for the same crime.)
For the last few decades, however, it has become permissible to use all the vulgarisms freely and many writers have availed themselves of the new freedom to lend an air of further realism to their dialog. What’s more, they are apt to resent bitterly any suggestion that this habit be modified or that some nonvulgar expression be substituted.
In fact, one sees a curious reversal now. A writer must withstand a certain criticism if he does not make use of said vulgarisms
Once when I read a series of letters by science fiction writers in which such terms were used freely and frequently, I wrote a response that made what seemed to me to be an obvious point. In it, I said something like this:
“Ordinary people, who are not well educated and who lack a large working vocabulary, are limited in their ability to lend force to their statements. In their search for force, they must therefore make use of vulgarisms which serve, through their shock value, but which, through overuse, quickly lose whatever force they have, so that the purpose of the use is defeated.
“Writers, on the other hand, have (it is to be presumed) the full and magnificent vocabulary of the English language at their disposal. They can say anything they want with whatever intensity of invective they require in a thousand different ways without ever once deviating from full respectability of utterance. They have, therefore, no need to trespass upon the usages of the ignorant and forlorn, and to steal their tattered expressions as substitutes for the language of Shakespeare and Milton.”
All I got for my pains were a few comments to the effect that there must be something seriously wrong with me.
Nevertheless, it is my contention that dialog is realistic when, and only when, it reflects the situation as you describe it and when it produces the effect you wish to produce.
At rather rare intervals, I will make use of dialect. I will have someone speak as a Brooklyn-bred person would (that is, as I myself do, in my hours of ease), or insert Yiddishisms here and there, if it serves a purpose. I may even try to make up a dialect, as I did in Foundation’s Edge, if it plays an important part in the development of the story.
Mostly, however, I do not.
The characters in my stories (almost without exception) are pictured as being well educated and highly intelligent. It is natural, therefore, for them to make use of a wide vocabulary and to speak precisely and grammatically, even though I try not to fall into the ornateness of the Romantic Ear.
And, as a matter of quixotic principle, I try to avoid expletives, even mild ones, when I can. But other writers, of course, may do as they please.
Acknowledgements
Cal copyright @ 1990 by Nightfall, Inc.
Left to Right copyright @ 1987 by Nightfall, Inc. Frustration copyright @ 1991 by Nightfall, Inc. Hallucination copyright @ 1995 by Nightfall, Inc.
The Instability copyright @ 1989 by Nightfall, Inc.
Alexander the God copyright @ 1995 by Nightfall, Inc.
In the Canyon copyright @ 1995 by Nightfall, Inc.
Good-bye to Earth copyright @ 1989 by Nightfall, Inc.
Battle-Hymn copyright @ 1995 by Nightfall, Inc.
Feghoot and the Courts copyright @ 1995 by Nightfall, Inc.
Fault-Intolerant copyright @ 1990 by Nightfall, Inc.
Kid Brother copyright @ 1990 by Nightfall, Inc.
The Nations in Space copyright @ 1995 by Nightfall, Inc.
The Smile of the Chipper copyright @ 1989 by Nightfall, Inc.
Gold copyright @ 1991 by Nightfall, Inc.
The Longest Voyage copyright @ 1983 by Nightfall, Inc.
Inventing a Universe copyright @ 1990 by Nightfall, Inc.
Flying Saucers and Science Fiction copyright @ 1982 by Nightfall, Inc.
Invasion copyright @ 1995 by Nightfall, Inc.
The Science Fiction Blowgun copyright @ 1995 by Nightfall, Inc.
The Robot Chronicles copyright @ 1990 by Nightfall, Inc.
Golden Age Ahead copyright @ 1979 by Nightfall, Inc.
The All-Human Galaxy copyright @ 1983 by Nightfall, Inc.
Psychohistory copyright @ 1988 by Nightfall, Inc.
Science Fiction Series copyright @ 1986 by Nightfall, Inc.
Survivors copyright @ 1987 by Nightfall, Inc.
Nowhere! copyright @ 1983 by Nightfall, Inc.
Outsiders, Insiders copyright @ 1986 by Nightfall, Inc.
Science Fiction Anthologies copyright @ 1981 by Nightfall, Inc.
The Influence of Science Fiction copyright @ 1981 by Nightfall, Inc. Women and Science Fiction copyright @ 1983 by Nightfall, Inc. Religion and Science Fiction copyright @ 1984 by Nightfall, Inc.
Time-Travel copyright @ 1984 by Nightfall, Inc.
Plotting copyright @ 1989 by Nightfall, Inc. Metaphor copyright @ 1989 by Nightfall, Inc. Ideas copyright @ 1990 by Nightfall, Inc. Suspense copyright @ 1991 by Nightfall, Inc. Serials copyright @ 1980 by Nightfall, Inc.
The Name of Our Field copyright @ 1978 by Nightfall, Inc.
Hints copyright @ 1979 by Nightfall, Inc.
Writing for Young People copyright @ 1986 by Nightfall, Inc.
Names copyright @ 1984 by Nightfall, Inc. Originality copyright @ 1986 by Nightfall, Inc. Book Reviews copyright @ 1981 by Nightfall, Inc.
What Writers Go Through copyright @ 1981 by Nightfall, Inc.
Revisions copyright @ 1982 by Nightfall, Inc. Irony copyright @ 1984 by Nightfall, Inc. Plagiarism copyright @ 1985 by Nightfall, Inc. Symbolism copyright @ 1985 by Nightfall, Inc. Prediction copyright @ 1989 by Nightfall, Inc. Best-Seller copyright @ 1983 by Nightfall, Inc. Pseudonyms copyright @ 1984 by Nightfall, Inc.
Dialog copyright @ 1985 by Nightfall, Inc.