Profanity

by Sheila Connolly

As you may have heard, a couple of weeks ago my current hometown (settled in 1660; current population 22,207 according to their official website) voted in the annual Town Meeting (a peculiarly New England tradition) to "decriminalize a 1968 bylaw that made public profanity illegal."   Following the vote, anyone using profanity in a public place would be subject to a $20 fine.  The vote was 183 for to 50 against.


The town has a voting population of something like 14,000.  233 voted at the Town Meeting.  This is typical, but that's another story. The ordinance passed by better than three to one.


According to Tuesday's article in The Boston Globe, enforcement of this ordinance is on hold until the state Attorney General determines whether it is constitutional.  That didn't stop some 100 people (from as far away as New Mexico) from gathering in a torrential downpour on Monday to hold a "swear-in"—to defend the right to spew verbal sewage in public.


This process has been fascinating to follow.  The day following the original vote I received emails from a number of friends scattered across the country saying they had heard about it.  I even found one article in an online Irish newsletter.  Clearly this is a hot-button issue.


The arguments against the ordinance seem to fall into two related categories.  One is the right to free speech, guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, no matter who it might offend.  The other is hostility toward what one protester called "pathological bullying" by government.


Off the record, the ordinance was directed toward the local teenagers who gather on street corners in our small town (one stoplight) after dark, and enthusiastically exercise their right to free speech, which aggravates those good citizens who believe in their right to walk through town without being assailed by profanity.  On the other hand, the protesters (funny—quite a few came from out of town, and even out of state) come off sounding a bit childish.  "Nyah, nyah, you can't make me shut up!"


How interesting to find a constitutional conflict taking place in my back yard.  I confess that I did not attend the meeting, although I have in the past.  I'm not sure how (or even if) I would have voted, because I can see both sides of the issue—as well as the potential for abuse by supporters of both sides.  For the moment the kids in town will no doubt revel in their constitutional rights to foul speech.  But the same ordinance would give anyone the right to complain if a neighbor's roofer slams his thumb with a hammer and utters a few colorful words.  Where do you draw the line?


I write cozy mysteries, which by definition are largely free from profanity.  That's what the readers want, and that is our pledge to them when we market the book in that niche.  Yet I am often faced with writing scenarios when an armed killer is threatening my characters with mutilation or death—is it believable to have them say, "gosh darn it, don't kill me"?  Our society designates certain words as extreme and harsh, but there's a reason for that.  We need to signal extreme emotions—fear, hate, anger—and better that we use words that go straight to physical violence. 


Profanity, used correctly, conveys a message and sends up a warning flag.  Or at least, it should. When it's overused, it loses its effectiveness.


Which does not mean I condone a bunch of teenage guys trying to outdo each other with the frequency of use of the F-word, where small children and grandmothers can't avoid hearing them.

How would you vote?  Yea or nay on public profanity?

&#*@?€% AND OTHER BAD WORDS

By Guest Blogger Marshall Karp

Marshall Karp is the author of The Rabbit Factory, Bloodthirsty, and the just released Flipping Out. I've been a fan since I read The Rabbit Factory. (He's a funny guy.) As a young adult writer I'm always struggling with how far I can go in my writing when it comes to profanity. (I've been accused of going too far and not far enough.) When I read Marshall's post about four-letter words I asked him if we could reprint it here. He agreed. Leave a comment and your name will be entered for the chance to win a signed copy of Flipping Out.
And the winner is Sandra Seamans! Sandra send me your address (darlene at darleneryan.com) and we'll get the book in the mail to you. Thanks everyone for stopping by.)

Back in December Darlene Ryan saw a blog I wrote about how I handle profanity in my books. It talked about my sensitivity (or lack of it) to reader concerns about the foul language my characters have been known to use.

She asked if she could reprint it here as soon as my new book Flipping Out is released.

“Shit, yeah,” I said.

So here it is, with a few afterthoughts that have crossed my mind since the blog was first published.
“Profanity,” my father used to say, “is the ignorant man’s crutch.”

He almost never cursed, but while I seem to have inherited a lot of his better qualities, that one seems to have skipped a generation.

I curse.

And now that I write books, my characters curse. Hey, they’re cops. They may be fictional, but I spend a lot of time talking to real detectives, FBI agents, sheriffs, and other law enforcement officers. They are not a genteel bunch. They get up every morning and head out into a dark ugly world. Profanity is part of the currency of that world.

That’s reality. But do those same vulgarities have to been in my books?

According to one critic, no. At least not as much as soiled the pages of my first book, The Rabbit Factory. And this is a critic I listen to. I’m married to her.

My wife was not thrilled about the language in The Rabbit Factory, and when she read the first draft of my next book, Bloodthirsty, her reaction was the same. Love the book. Hate the language.

I took back the manuscript and did a global search for the four-letter offender. It appeared 115 times. I told my wife that was quite an achievement. Rabbit Factory had twice as many no-nos. She pointed out that it also had twice as many pages.

“Please fix it,” she said.

I knew the please was strictly a formality.

I thought this ain’t gonna be easy. I was wrong. As I read the draft of Bloodthirsty I realized that my father was right. Profanity is a crutch. When you’re trying to paint a picture of a tough talking street cop, it’s easier when you throw in lots of tough street talk.

I defused one F-bomb after another. When I was finished there were 30 left in Bloodthirsty — a big drop from the 233 in The Rabbit Factory. Interestingly enough, my new book, Flipping Out, also has 30. They’re in there because they aren’t coming from me. They’re true to the characters that say them.

There are a lot of readers who want vulgarity-free, violence-free murder mysteries. And for them there are lots of wonderful options. I just read one by Denise Dietz. Her earlier works had a handful of &#*@?€% words, but her latest, Strangle A Loaf of Italian Bread, is geared to the more sensitive reader. That said, the book is not your maiden auntie’s murder mystery. It’s fiendishly clever, blatantly sexy, and uproariously funny. Denise Dietz writes like Robert B. Parker on estrogen.

Two years ago I was at the Miami Book Fair and asked the audience what they thought about all those F-bombs I drop in my books.

One woman had the best answer. She said, “You write about murder, mayhem, cops, killers — of course the characters are going to curse. It’s real. I don’t mind when I’m reading it in private at home. But when I’m in my car, with the windows wide open, and I’m stopped at a red light on Biscayne Boulevard, and I have a crime novel on audiotape, it gets a little uncomfortable when the speakers are blasting, ‘bleep you, you bleeping motherbleeper,’ and the little old lady in the car next to me grabs her chest in horror.”

There are horrified little old ladies, sensitive religious fundamentalists, and diehard language purists wherever I turn. They often don’t hesitate to point out my tragic flaw as an author. One recently blasted me in an online review for Flipping Out, which only has 30 offensive words out of 75,000. Sometimes they send me emails letting me know how crude I am, and some even attack my character, and my parents for the way the raised me

I always answer politely. But I have to admit there are times when I just want to respond with two words.

One is a verb. The other is a pronoun.



Marshall Karp is the author of three novels, Flipping Out (released 3/31/09), Bloodthirsty and The Rabbit Factory. His website is www.lomaxandbiggs.com