From: hjkhjkhd@hhhh.com   
      
   "Martha Bridegam"  wrote in message   
   news:eEFHh.7798$re4.5808@newssvr12.news.prodigy.net...   
      
   >   
   > Maybe this is a more interesting idea phrased as a general question: does   
   > a book, to be well written, have to stay at a consistent level of realism   
   > throughout?   
      
      
   Well I think realism can be a bit overrated at times. Not that I'm much up   
   for magic realism and all that bollox. When Nigel N read a draft of my   
   latest romance he objected to these two passages:   
      
   At a party where someone's been shot:   
      
   'They both went downstairs into a mist of smoke and overpowering din of   
   music. John noticed the spots of blood from the fashion designer's wound in   
   the hallway. A policeman idly rolled a joint as someone shouted a statement   
   in his ear.'   
      
      
   And this, outside a shop, looking at its logo:   
      
      
     'I don't like it,' said John, 'it looks a bit poncy.'   
     He felt a sharp tap on his back. Turning, he found himself facing a   
   mean-looking policeman wearing a fluorescent tabard, holding a long stick   
   and on whose waist jangled the paramilitary appurtenances of postmodern law   
   enforcement.   
     'What did you say?' he demanded with brute authority.   
     'I said it looked a bit.poncy.'   
     The last word of the sentence was obliterated by the sound of a bottle   
   thrown at a passing car smashing on its passenger window. The policeman   
   repeated his question. John answered.   
     'You do realise that's a potential hate crime against homosexuals?' the   
   policeman said nastily, in the archetypal accent and inflection of a London   
   copper.   
    'Come off it,' said John, who was half-drunk. He turned to seek Gimmick's   
   support but he'd disappeared into the crowds with Tina.   
     'He didn't mean it like that,' said Amanda.   
     'How do you know what he meant? Are you inside his head?'   
     People drunkenly pushed past them.   
     'No, but I know that he wasn't being hateful towards homosexuals.'   
     'Intcha read any Michel Foucault?' asked the policeman, raising his radio   
   to his lips.   
     'A bit,' said John.   
     '2-1,' said the policeman into his radio. 'Got section   
   six-three-nine-two-four here. Back up needed.' The policeman looked at John   
   again. 'Foucault was a post-structuralist, basically. The structuralists   
   believed that the individual is shaped by linguistic, sociological and   
   psychological structures over which he has little control. In that respect I   
   have sympathy for you. That's my Derrida sympathies coming out as well. But   
   the law is the law - even though a final and definitive interpretation of it   
   is, by Derrida's standards, impossible. However, it isn't my job to   
   interpret the law - that is a magistrates' job.'   
     A large shaven-headed man in a football kit swiped the policeman's helmet   
   off and danced around with it for a bit.   
     'This guy here is responding to certain pathological deep structures,'   
   said the policeman calmly, indicating the man. 'But at the same time, he,   
   unlike you, is not indulging or promulgating prejudice or bigotry to sexual,   
   racial or gender differences, know what I mean?'   
     'Isn't he making you look foolish though?' asked John.   
     'A righteous thing to do in many ways,' said a second policeman who had   
   just got out of a flashing and squawking patrol car; 'a subversion of the   
   hegemonic debate and all that.'   
     'Gramsci,' beamed the first policeman by way of explanation. The second   
   policeman retrieved the first policeman's helmet. 'Come on,' he said, 'leave   
   this - a barman called someone a 'wop' at the Cod's Eye.'   
      'Did he? Right,' said the first policeman. He turned to John and raised   
   his finger to the sign: 'remember what we discussed.'   
     The patrol car squealed away. John and Amanda walked on quickly, hoping to   
   catch Gimmick and Tina up. The crowds seemed uglier. Someone threw a petrol   
   bomb at a tram and it rumbled past with a slather of flames discolouring the   
   advertising on its side. Inside, people stared placidly through the windows.   
      
      
      
   Now the realistic novel forbades both. But I want them to make points in an   
   amusing way. 'Reality', as Orwell said about Tropic of Cancer, 'but not so   
   much that it turns into Mickey Mouse' *   
      
   *paraphrasing from memory.   
      
   So I don't think a consistent level of realism is the way to judge good   
   writing - that puts Harold Robbins in front of Ronald Firbank and that ain't   
   my critical perspective.   
      
   ROBBIE   
      
      
   ROBBIE   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)