I've been absent from the blog for some weeks and have picked up my George V. Higgins' "On Writing" again as we move from 'Creative Non-fiction' into 'Drama'. It's appropriate.
I said that Higgins is famous - and often criticized – for his novels being at least 95% dialogue. Higgins is a great fan of John O’Hara, probably best known for “From the Terrace” (not least because it was made into a successful movie starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward), but whose best novel is probably “Appointment in Samarra”. But O’Hara is most famous as a writer of short story fiction and, of course, his mastery of dialogue. I have not been interested in short stories (until now, perhaps), but Higgins reprints one of O’Hara’s completely in “On Writing”. The story is entitled “Appearances” and you can read a 1960 review of it and other O’Hara short stories at: http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1963/3/21/how-important-is-ohara-pjohn-ohara/?print=1 According to Higgins it’s a little over 3,300 words and I would guess it’s probably 98% dialogue.
Higgins then proceeds to analyze how O’Hara tells the story so economically through dialogue in what he – Higgins - calls “the density of his material”. Having just read the story, Higgins’ analysis shows me how much of a picture of the characters and their surroundings and circumstances I have created from the dialogue alone. Higgins points out that “Reading is not a spectator sport, not when the writing is done by a John O’Hara; it is a participatory event”.
With regard to the ‘technique’ of writing dialogue, Higgins tells a true story of O’Hara. After submitting a short story, O’Hara was called in by his editor and questioned about his quote of a young well-educated society girl: “Robert didn’t come with she and I.” The editor, too, was college educated and insisted the college-educated character would have said “… with her and me.” O’Hara claimed that fashionable schools at that time so labored the grammatical rule in such phrases as “Josephine is prettier than I.” to the extent of developing an aversion to the objective pronouns, “her” and “me”; O’Hara got his way and the editor contacted him weeks later to confess that all the girls of that age and class she had met delivered the phrase exactly as O’Hara had written it. Though the simple error seems like a small point, O’Hara claimed, “… that it revealed more about the girl than a hundred words of descriptive matter.”
I guess my labored point is that the step between prose and drama can be almost non-existent.
Yes Roy this book sounds very interesting. There is definitely something to say about a writer who paints a clear picture of the story that they are telling, and to do so is clear talent. By seeing the clear picture of the characters and what is going on, is almost a guarantee that it will make the reader want to indulge more into the story. I love reading stories like that. Also, as you stated in your blog, the enforcing of some grammar rules can put a damper on the story itself. I notice when I write that I tend to write proper awhile, but then I make a turn and start writing using grammar that will stand out to different readers. By you ignoring the properness of the words you use, sometimes it can ignite a great effect in the story that otherwise wouldn't be captured.
ReplyDeleteI guess not only is a picture worth a thousand words but so is the most precise bit of dialogue. By the way "with" is a preposition and the correct phrase would be "with her and me", since objects of the preposition should be the objective case. How ironic that such "over correctness" actually leads to error. . . but also leads to a great bit of characterization in only 4 words. . .
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