I have a minor bone to pick with some of the writing in this book. Kitty grew tired of hearing me complain about it last week so I decided to blog about it. My point of contention is best demonstrated by the following single-sentence book excerpt of one Augustin’s lines:
“That we blow up an obscene bridge and then have to obscenely well obscenity ourselves off out of these mountains.”
When I first read this I thought “what the freak does that mean?” It made no sense. Was Augustin really saying obscene and obscenity, because if he wasn’t, then he is clearly being misquoted. I am forced to assume (and you know what it means when you assume) that Hemingway was implying that Augustin cusses like a sailor, but the author was too modest to put the actual words in his book. Well, I think he went about it all wrong. I think he should have used parentheses for clarification, like this :
“That we blow up an (obscene) bridge and then have to (obscenely) well (obscenity) ourselves off out of these mountains.”
Or maybe even this:
“That we blow up an @$?&>^ bridge and then have to %@#! well ?$*&#@! ourselves off out of these mountains.”
Or better yet, just grow a pair and put in the words that you want us to believe Augustin is really using. We are adults here. It’s not like we haven’t heard those words before. Come on!
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9 comments:
Oh Toddcat - don't you realize if he would have put all those naughty words the book wouldn't have been printed. Besides if it were so full of naughty words us Mormons wouldn't be reading it!
Oh yes you would. Someone would have taken the book and blacked out all the bad words just like they make all those "edited for Mormon eyes" versions of movies.
Well let's be honest here - what page are you on? Because it is a good book!
I find it funny that Todd is so upset with this when he used the euphamism freak in his post. I guess you are exactly the same as Hemingway. Who is the pot and who is the kettle?
But I was actually saying the word freak, not inserting it to imply that I would be using another word as you seem to have assumed.
Whoa, whoa...what "other word" are you referring to? *gasp*
Shock, shock, horror, horror.
I do agree with Toddcat that some parentheses would be helpful. I think reading Hemingway in high school kind of traumatized me, but I am trying harder this time around!
I agree that parenthesis would have been helpful. On the other hand, having the word "obsenity" written right into the sentence made it less likely that I would waste valuable time trying to figure out what curseword was being replaced.
(P.S. Thanks, Todd, for posting about this. I was a little late getting started reading and I think I would have been mightily confused by Rafael's speeches if I hadn't read this post first. This is what book clubs are all about.)
Todd- I have also found this to be confusing and find myself stopping to think of what words best fit.. Now isn't that worse than actually just seeing the word and moving on? Now my mind is filled with many words of filth instead of just one.
As my maiden comment, I would like to ask why Hemingway works "milk" into all of his "obscenities"
...and, in general, why he can't stay on point? My hatred of The Old Man and the Sea is resurfacing.
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