jonquil | Diction, always diction

I admit that I'm an odd reader; I love the English 19th-century novel, from high to unbelievably low (Ouida); I also love British social history. This makes me likely to pick flaws that the ordinary romance reader may miss.

Or maybe not. Regency readers, after all, are saturated in the prose of Georgette Heyer. Hers is an invented prose, but founded on scrupulously-researched period sources. It is inimitable, but can serve as a model. There is also, slightly earlier, Jane Austen, with which we have been pounded over the head for twenty years. (I remember when liking Austen and Mozart wasn't a cliché.) You would think, then, that the bar for a Regency would be fairly high.

Which brings me to C.S. Harris's What Angels Fear, which I bought on the recommendation of a friend. It's the first of yet another Regency detective series; it's a thriller in which the hero, a psychically wounded alpha male with yellow eyes who can see in the dark -- I say no more -- must defend himself from the accusation of hideous crimes. I cracked the book open on BART, coming home from an exhausting but exhilarating visit to Lacis.

p.1 "It was such a foul, creeping thing, the yellow fog of London." The infamous late-century London pea-souper was caused by coal fires everywhere. The London population in 1887, the publication year of A Study In Scarlet, was between 4 and 5 million. The London population in 1811, when the book is set, was 1,303,564. In 1811 the pea-souper was not yet notorious. That's a nit, the sort of thing that most people wouldn't notice (and that I might be getting wrong; I await the lash of

oursin,

madrobins, and

sartorias.)

p.2 "She hadn't expected to be so edgy." "Edgy" sounded weirdly modern to me; when I looked it up, "edgy" in the sense of "on edge", was first attested in 1837.

p.5 "Maybe he won't show", said Sir Christopher. "Maybe" is a classic Americanism, so much so that it's called out for comedy in late 19th century plays and novels; in any case, "Perhaps" is the more formal word, and the speaker is upper-class.. And "won't show" seems suspicious to me; "show up" is from 1888.

p.7 "Shut up about it when Talbot threatened to call him out -- for naming Talbot a liar." "Shut up", first recorded 1840.

p. 16 "But it seemed somehow disrespectful, a violation of that poor girl lying there against the wall, to be tromping heedlessly through what had once been her lifeblood." Tromp, 1892, variant of tramp; mainly Amer.Eng.

Trust me on this; there are clangers throughout the text. But that's not all; the characters' attitudes are weirdly modern, and there are some physical impossibilities. "The inescapable tang of semen still hung in the air, mingling with the heavy metallic odor of blood and the pious sweetness of incense and beeswax." Hands up everybody who could smell semen at a bloody murder scene in a church. (No, the speaker isn't our yellow-eyed hero, who also has superhuman powers of scent.)

On p. 30 we have this, from a noble speaker who is said to be "the power behind the Throne."

"You're a sophisticated man, Sir Henry. Surely I've no need to explain to you what it means, to have the son of a prominent peer -- a member of the government, for God's sake -- implicated in such a crime. If we are seen to hesitate" -- he swept one well-tailored arm in an expansive gesture toward the streets -- "if the crowds out there believe that being born to a position of privilege is enough to allow an Englishman to get away with rape and murder, and sacrilege --" Jarvis broke off, his arm falling back to his side, his voice dropping to a deep, solemn hush. "I was in Paris, you know, in 1789. I'll never forget it. The sight of blood running in the gutters. Of men's severed heads, stuck on pikes. Of gentlewomen snatched from their carriages and torn limb from limb by the howling mobs." He paused, his gaze sharpening suddenly on Lovejoy's face. "Is that what you want to see here, in London?"

That's not the way it worked. The nobility did not, in 1811, make decisions based on what would please the mob, not when it was a choice between their own class and the vulgar sort. The crime would have been hushed up from the moment it was discovered; the constable would have been told to keep his mouth shut if he valued his position, the investigation quietly quashed. If by some chance the story did get out, the worst that would have happened would have been that the suspected murderer's influential father would have been told in no uncertain terms to get the criminal out of the country, by force if necessary. The trial of an upper-class man for a violent crime would have been seen as far more damaging than his speedy transfer beyond the reach of the law. Earl Ferrers, to whom the text refers, was notoriously insane, and committed his crime in his own home in the presence of witnesses. In the case on which this book turns the only link between the hero and the victim is a monogrammed gun left at the murder scene, a difficult basis for a conviction now and an impossible one in 1811. The hero need only claim theft and the entire case would have collapsed.

Sigh. I think I'll go reread Daughter of the Game.

From:

vehemently

Reminds me of Mr. Timothy, a book from a few years back that aged-up Tim Cratchit from Dickens and got him involved in some crime-solving. The language was constantly clanging period-false (as was the plotting), in ways far less subtle than what you're catching. Clearly, the book would have driven you bananas.

jonquil

On a quick rescan, I could only find the less obvious ones (although I claim "Shut up" is pretty obvious). Some were much worse.

green_knight

IMHO, 'Shut up' the wrong period, the wrong level of diction, and the wrong class for the context.

Yup, yup, and yup. Even if it weren't OOP, it would be a bad choice.

sara

Yeah, I read one this weekend where the protagonist could tell someone had been raped because she could smell the semen, and I thought, wait, srsly? Because you've got everyone in a military camp, where they haven't been bathing regularly, and the assaulted character is a slave, and you seriously think the semen smell is going to be that noticeable compared to all the other human body smells going on in this situation? I have a good sense of smell, and I think I'd miss that.

But then, this was a novel which...well, it felt weird in several different directions.

Yeah. Semen's not like decay -- it doesn't blast through all other smells with a WARNING WARNING WARNING that hits straight in the lizard-brain.

Well, unless you're copulating with zombies....*snerk*

amaliedageek

Would someone please pass the brain bleach?

(I love you, but -- eeeeew.)

Hey now, c'mon, I sent you something with uncharacteristically cheerful happy copulation in it just last night. Given that my usual ratio of really distressing : cheerful is about 12 : 1, I think you should count yourself blessed. *GRIN*

p.s. o/~ Zombie semen smells like rot, doo dah, doo dah, zombie semen isn't hot, la dee doo dah....o/~

Edited Date: 2009-11-15 07:28 pm (UTC)

I'm sure I told you about the Buffyfic that contained the immortal line, "Oh, Spike, fill me up with your cold dead soldiers!"?

Yes, you did. I had successfully blocked it from my mind until now.

whump

I cannot unread that.

*laughs so hard the baby demands an explanation*

YUCK YUCK YUCK OMG SO YUCK.

ironed_orchid

That line sounds like 100% pure buffybot to me.

cynthia1960

I need brain bleach for that.

fridgepunk

It'd have to be a pretty fresh zombie - seminal fluid wouldn't last especially long after death and sperm would probably be blocked on their exit unless they figure out how to do some sort of crazy spermatozoa scale re-enactment of the poseidon adventure.

On the other hand you'd probably get all sorts of things being spurted out, what with tissue decay along the entire seminal tract (if what ever pressure was able to be built up along the tract didn't cause the knob head to just pop off like a small damp cork), so it would in fact smell quite pungent I'd imagine.

so SCIENCE AGREES! apparently... fyi I'm about to go to sleep and I hate you for making me ponder the biology of zombie ejaculate.

"the knob head to just pop off like a small damp cork"

I had to add that bit to complement the adorwable mental image of little chibi-fied spermatozoas treading carefully over a flimsy bridge made of fallen bits of metal over an upside down boiler rooms filled with fire.

and in the finale, a little chibi!sperm kylie minogue trying to kill a cyborg with a forklift...

...I initially read that as "trying to kill a cyborg with a foreskin," which...um.

This is a REALLY DISGUSTING CONVERSATION we're having here, people. IJS.

You've clearly put more thought into it than I did; I just went, "Hee, zombie spunk, gross!" and left it at that.

I'm sure, though, that right now, somewhere on the internet, someone is wearing a rubber glove on their head and writing zombie pron.