Put soap in my mouth and I'll bite off your hand.
So Im leafing through Stephen Kings ON WRITING book, realizing that Ive read much more of his non fiction than I have of his fiction, and I come to a place in his text that I can really empathize with.
He talks about people getting mad at him because of things his characters do, say, or think. Maybe a character is racist or swears or clubs people with dead cats. Somehow, people get offended and angry as if these characters were the mouthpiece of the author. But they're not. They are characters that come into the storythey have to live and breathe a little and the author has to let them do what they door they dont breathe and they die and they become 2 dimensional.
Its the authors job to be honest, and present (in fiction) what that person would actually say. People dont say oh beans when they hit their finger with a hammer. They say Oh shit!!!
In his words:
The point is to let each character speak freely, without regard to what the Legion of Decency or the Christian Ladies Reading Circle may approve of. To do otherwise would be cowardly as well as dishonest, and believe me, writing fiction in America as we enter the twenty-first century is no job for intellectual cowards. There are lost of would-be censors out there, and although they may have different agendas, they all want basically the same thing: for you to see the world they see . . . or to at least shut up about what you do see thats different. They are agents of the status quo. Not necessarily bad guys, but dangerous guys if you happen to believe in intellectual freedom.
So Im leafing through Stephen Kings ON WRITING book, realizing that Ive read much more of his non fiction than I have of his fiction, and I come to a place in his text that I can really empathize with.
He talks about people getting mad at him because of things his characters do, say, or think. Maybe a character is racist or swears or clubs people with dead cats. Somehow, people get offended and angry as if these characters were the mouthpiece of the author. But they're not. They are characters that come into the storythey have to live and breathe a little and the author has to let them do what they door they dont breathe and they die and they become 2 dimensional.
Its the authors job to be honest, and present (in fiction) what that person would actually say. People dont say oh beans when they hit their finger with a hammer. They say Oh shit!!!
In his words:
The point is to let each character speak freely, without regard to what the Legion of Decency or the Christian Ladies Reading Circle may approve of. To do otherwise would be cowardly as well as dishonest, and believe me, writing fiction in America as we enter the twenty-first century is no job for intellectual cowards. There are lost of would-be censors out there, and although they may have different agendas, they all want basically the same thing: for you to see the world they see . . . or to at least shut up about what you do see thats different. They are agents of the status quo. Not necessarily bad guys, but dangerous guys if you happen to believe in intellectual freedom.
terrakotta:
It's the difference between showcasing surrealism and holding a flashlight up to your neck in the dark... we don't live in Nickelodeon, and anyone who feels that literature should be censored as such should restrict their theater to Sesame Street On Ice and their literature to . . . well . . . is there any LITERATURE that isn't fraught with sex, angst, and raw emotion? If it wasn't, it wouldn't be literature! If we restrict our ideas to what's societally appropriate, we will reduce our existence to hackneyed television programs like those playing incessantly in Fahrenheit 451.