Word Choice: Are you a Faulknerian or Hemingwayian?

dragoon_elf · Nov 8, 2007

I don't even know if those adjectives are right...

Anyways, I just received feeback from a good friend of mine who was the first beta reader of my novel (but I only sent him what I had written, which represents only 1/5th of the book).

He's one of the smartest dudes I know, has a master's in Creative Writing from UMass, and is just someone who I would definitely have read my novel before anyone else.

Anyway, this topic is about one of the comments he left me after praising my novel for a good page (I'm really tootin' my horn here, huh??).

I used the word "prodigality" in one of my scenes. He responded with:

[FONT=&quot](“prodigality”…Faulkner said you need to throw in a few ‘dictionary’ words in every novel, Hemingway never used a word that you couldn’t figure out in context…I tend to agree with Hemingway.)

So everyone the question is... what are you? Faulknerian or a Hemingwayian??

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Devil Ledbetter · Nov 8, 2007

That's a pretty subjective distinction. What may be a trip to the dictionary for one reader may be everyday vocabulary for another.

I use words from my everyday vocabulary in my writing.

arodriguez · Nov 8, 2007

im neither. I'm CHRIS CORNELL.

Devil Ledbetter · Nov 8, 2007

arodriguez said:
im neither. I'm CHRIS CORNELL.

Novelhistorian · Nov 8, 2007

I wouldn't have thought prodigality was a word that would have sent anyone rushing to a dictionary. But to answer your question, the word that fits, fits. I'd be wary of using a word that few people were likely to understand, but if that word suited the character of the narrator or whoever was speaking, I'd let it stay.

Judg · Nov 8, 2007

I blame my mother.

She believes that when you learn a new word, you should use it. (Never play Scrabble with that woman.) Then she taught me how to read when I was home sick in first grade and started shoving books at me that were way beyond my age level. I soon discovered I had to dumb down my language not to get laughed at in the schoolyard. But alas, in my writing it keeps slipping out. To me, these are normal words.

So even when I try to do Hemingway, it comes out Faulkner.

Tangent: I tried to read a Hemingway novel this week. Couldn't do it. Yuck.

maestrowork · Nov 8, 2007

The average reading level of my novels is 3rd grade.

If I have to pick, I'd say Hemingway. Big words stop people and anything that takes them out of the fictive dream is not good...

Ziljon · Nov 8, 2007

My favorite write is Patrick O'brian. I'm constantly writing down words he uses and looking them up. I love it. But I can't write that way. Maybe someday. I hope.

Doodlebug · Nov 8, 2007

I love words that don't get used very often (jejune, vulpine, tenebrious). I don't think that its a good idea to overuse them, but sometimes they just express an idea much better than the old stand-bys (dull, fox like, gloomy). They're kind of like pepper in you entree' - a little goes a long way.

dragoon_elf · Nov 8, 2007

Man I didn't know "jejune" or "tenebrious."

But I did know vulpine!!! Thank you college, Ben Johnson, and Volpone!!

funidream · Nov 8, 2007

Vulpine - Boy, that's a good one!

I agree with Doodlebug - a little goes a long way.

I always like it when, a word sends me to the dictionary. Afterwards, I feel edified.

Danger Jane · Nov 8, 2007

I'm definitely Hemingway...ian. I use little words, not consciously.

wayndom · Nov 8, 2007

Though I've always found Hemingway too dry for my tastes, I have to side with him on this one.

In the eighties, I read a few decent horror novels by John Farris (whose, THE FURIES was made into a movie). I kept hitting words I'd never seen before, so I finally sat a dictionary at arm's length before reading.

About every five pages, he'd use a word that WASN'T IN my dictionary. Now, granted, it was a collegiate dictionary, not the OED, but for gawdzakes, what the hell was he thinking? It ended up souring me on his work, since he seemed to be blatantly showing off his uselessly obscure vocabulary.

I never use words I don't think the average reader would recognize (which includes some of my favorite words, like penultimate and defenestrate). Language should serve the story (and the reader), not the other way around.

blacbird · Nov 8, 2007

By writing style preference, a Hemingwayian. But I enjoy reading them both, and if pressed to rank the two as to their achievement and influence on literature, I'd have to vote for Faulkner.

caw

Will Lavender · Nov 8, 2007

I think the best writers tell stories in the most effective way possible: simply, with common language and usage.

There are exceptions. Faulkner, of course. Cormac McCarthy. DeLillo. Annie Proulx. But it is a very rare writer who can use unusual language and/or an unusual style and raise literature to a kind of art form. This is why you see so many new writers trying to ape Faulkner and...not succeeding.

arodriguez · Nov 8, 2007

love the caw

wayndom · Nov 8, 2007

Judg said:
I blame my mother.
Tangent: I tried to read a Hemingway novel this week. Couldn't do it. Yuck.

Blatant hijack: I don't care for Hemingway either, but I watched a PBS show about him recently (American Masters?), in which they pointed out that his bone-dry style was a very practiced and deliberate assault on the overly-flowery style that was in vogue at the time (e.g., F. Scott Fitzgerald).

So his style was an act of rebellion against the status quo, not necessarily what Papa thought was ideal writing.

Will Lavender · Nov 8, 2007

wayndom said:
Blatant hijack: I don't care for Hemingway either, but I watched a PBS show about him recently (American Masters?), in which they pointed out that his bone-dry style was a very practiced and deliberate assault on the overly-flowery style that was in vogue at the time (e.g., F. Scott Fitzgerald).

So his style was an act of rebellion against the status quo, not necessarily what Papa thought was ideal writing.

Interesting. It's been a long time since I read Fitzgerald, but I wouldn't necessarily call his style "flowery."

wayndom · Nov 8, 2007

Blatant hijack, part II ('cause I don't think this is worthy of a thread of its own):

I'm always shortening my sentences (WordPerfect tells me I have a 70-worder somewhere in my current novel, though it doesn't say where), as I gather most people here do.

So I thought I'd offer a link to a columnist in the S.F. Chronicle whose trademark is long sentences (usually every paragraph is a single sentence).

Mark Morford started out as a blogger in the online edition of the paper, but soon proved so popular that he's now a regular columnist in the hard-copy edition.

Joe Bob says, check it out:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2007/11/07/notes110707.DTL

Devil Ledbetter · Nov 8, 2007

Hmmn, I'm thinking:

~~Finally~~ reached for comment in his secret purple bathtub at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, President Bush appeared ~~to be~~ so flabbergasted by the news of Iraq's win ~~that~~ he ~~actually~~ stopped pushing ~~all~~ the ~~small plastic~~ submarines around the water and making motorboat sounds ~~for a full minute~~, so he could gather his thoughts ~~to try and speak~~.

Try and = arghh!

Stuffing a bunch of extra word in to achieve sentence length = not impressive.

a_sharp · Nov 8, 2007

William F. Buckley, Jr. is the consummate Faulknerian. In his fiction he drops in words even the dictionary doesn't know. And he slid a half dozen of them into each of his Blackford Oakes CIA thrillers (mediocre but hey, he's a Name).

Judg · Nov 8, 2007

KTC, although the style didn't thrill me, it was the story and characters that put me off. To Have or Have Not, have you heard of it? When the dominant emotions you're feeling while reading alternate between crushing boredom and revulsion... Time to find another book.

Spiny Norman · Nov 8, 2007

A lot of the time using strange words you've never heard to describe something gives it that sense of strangeness. Cormac McCarthy's novels use ancient, cryptic words to describe deserts and landscapes and in doing so turns them into something alien and unearthly.

I think the common thread in all of this is pacing a rhythm. No matter if you're using short words or fancy words, it had better roll through the reader's mind in a pace that's either comfortably or, better, poetic. Faulkner and McCarthy and such use strange words but they craft their sentences so well that you read through it and it feels archaic and gothic but real. Likewise, Hemingway used terse sentences but, hey, Bach's stuff is beautiful because of its purity in it simplicity. It's much more difficult to play Bach and Vivaldi well than others because not a single note is wasted and each one has to be played perfectly.

I go back and forth. I usually think I'm better at the terse stuff. A short, anticlimactic ending can burn like cold steel if done right.

J. R. Tomlin · Nov 8, 2007

Judg said:
I blame my mother.

She believes that when you learn a new word, you should use it. (Never play Scrabble with that woman.) Then she taught me how to read when I was home sick in first grade and started shoving books at me that were way beyond my age level. I soon discovered I had to dumb down my language not to get laughed at in the schoolyard. But alas, in my writing it keeps slipping out. To me, these are normal words.

.

Pretty much the same here. But I was "the smart girl" in the class. lol

David I · Nov 8, 2007

maestrowork said:
The average reading level of my novels is 3rd grade. If I have to pick, I'd say Hemingway. Big words stop people and anything that takes them out of the fictive dream is not good...

Interesting. Especially as, insofar as I know, the concept of the centrality of the "fictive dream" was developed by John Gardner. Gardner accepted and even encouraged the occasional outrageous word as a "textural blister" that added artistic interest to the composition.

I think any style is legitimate as long as you really own it. Someone like Lee Child writes mostly in sentence fragments that never use a word that couldn't be understood by a ten-year-old. Gene Wolfe uses words that are obscure, sometimes invented, and sometimes not invented but deployed in ways you won't find in the dictionary. Both are brilliant stylists.

(One definition of "good readers" in the educational community, by the way, is those who are able to figure out the meaning of words from context. But, of course, if you insist on writing only for good readers, you limit your audience.)

But, as is often the case, Maestro put his finger on the issue when he said, "If I have to pick..." Exactly. Most of us will have a tendency one way or another, but we don't have to pick. Our style is our own. (And if I were to set up a battle, would it be Hemingway vs. Faulkner, or Hemingway vs. Henry James, or what? There's a lot more going on here than vocab.)

And, I might add, a lot of the generalizations about Hemingway's style aren't quite correct in the first place. I've posted on Hemingway Myths over on my own blog, if you really care...

Word Choice: Are you a Faulknerian or Hemingwayian?

dragoon_elf

Devil Ledbetter

Come on you stranger, you legend,

arodriguez

Renegade

Devil Ledbetter

Come on you stranger, you legend,

Novelhistorian

Judg

DISENCHANTED coming soon

maestrowork

Fear the Death Ray

Ziljon

Tortilla di Patate

Doodlebug

dragoon_elf

funidream

Danger Jane

wayndom

blacbird

Will Lavender

Everything is what it seems.

arodriguez

Renegade

wayndom

Will Lavender

Everything is what it seems.

wayndom

Devil Ledbetter

Come on you stranger, you legend,

a_sharp

Somebody give me an A

Judg

DISENCHANTED coming soon

Spiny Norman

J. R. Tomlin

David I