Musings Of A New Southern Man

I blogged about this earlier, but it bears repeating. Do I use obscenity liberally in my day-to-day speech? No. Do I consider obscenity objectionable? Most of the time, but it depends on the situation or context. If I hit my finger with a hammer, I will guarantee you that I will utter an obscenity. (So too will most, if not all, of the pastors I know.) There is a key phrase I used, and it concerns the use of obscenity in the novels I write: It depends on the situation or context. Now, I have never had a character hit his or her finger with a hammer, so the use of an obscenity in that situation has been a non-issue. I do, however, have a detective who litters the literary landscape with f-bombs. My antagonist does, too, usually when he is frustrated by the way events are unfolding. Why do I do that? Because that is the way life is, and I want my characters to be lifelike and exist within lifelike situations. I don't think there are many places of work where...

George Pelecanos is a victim of poor timing. It isn't his fault. He's a good author, and his The Way Home is a decent novel. It's just that I started his novel after reading Dennis Lehane's Moonlight Mile . Sorry, but anyone writing in the detective/prison/mob boss area of literature is at a serious disadvantage when Lehane's work is involved. Lehane writes well enough that some of his books have become movies -- Mystic River , Gone Baby Gone , Shutter Island . A wise producer needs to grab Moonlight Mile . It has the natural hook because it is a sequel to Gone Baby Gone , with an older Amanda McCready again in extreme peril. Part of Lehane's master's touch is the plot line. He has a 16-year-old Amanda, a series of American goons who enter the world of Kenzie and Gennaro (Lehane's protagonists in a detective series) and the Russian mob. Danger lurks throughout the novel, as expected. But Lehane separates his work from the lesser detective series thro...