The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon [222]
(By the way, I do hope you read the books themselves; owing to abridgment constraints, only about one-fifth of each story is on the audio versions.8)
Cordially,—Diana
From: Doug Toole
To: 76530.523@CompuServe.COM
Date: Sun, 8 Jun 1997 04:58:34 EDT
Subject: Re: commendation & word
question
Diana
The fact that you have heard my concerns puts it to rest, thank you for that personal response. My wife and I will continue to be readers and listeners of your works. We hope that you have many rewards and much happiness in your life.
“TAKING THE LORD’S NAME IN VAIN”
The following is a letter I wrote to an early correspondent in reply to her objection to what she perceived as unnecessary blasphemy. As it stated my position fairly clearly and was well received by my correspondent, I’ve continued to use variants of it in reply to similar complaints, whenever they occur.
December 7, 1993
My dear Mrs. F.:
Thank you so much for your lovely letter. I do try to answer all of my mail9—I love to hear from people who read my books—but it often takes me months, since there is rather a lot of mail, and my husband and editor tend to object strongly to my writing letters when they think I ought to be writing books!
Still, I thought I would snatch a moment to respond to your letter, today being slightly less busy than usual.
I’m happy that you appreciate the research and the quantity of detail that goes into these books; it is a great deal of work, but I do enjoy the research very much, as well as the embodiment of detail in the story. And, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, it is in great part this use of detail that gives the books their sense of immediacy—of the reader “being there,” so to speak.
What I would like to observe, though, is that this concern with accuracy and detail extends as much to the language of the characters as it does to the physical details described in the book. I appreciate your concern over the use of profanity and vulgar expressions; I am myself an observant Roman Catholic, and—owing to having been raised in a Catholic home, and gone to parochial school throughout my formative years—I don’t use any form of such language myself.
However, I have read a great many documents composed in the eighteenth century—and earlier—comprising correspondence, journalistic accounts, essays, and fiction of the period. I have an extensive collection of dictionaries, dealing with Scots, Gaelic, idiomatic French, and historical English slang, which I consult while writing. Such terms (including what my children refer to as “the s-h word”) have been in use—and the common use of them deplored by moral writers—for a very long time indeed. If I could unearth it from the huge piles of material in my study, I would send you an extract from an essay written in the Middle Ages by St. Jerome (of Vulgate Bible fame), in which the writer strongly deplores the common use of profanity and vulgarity, and laments the undoubted corruptive effect of such language upon society.
In addition, owing to the oddness of my previous careers—I was a professional ecologist (I was a university professor for twelve years, prior to the publication of Dragonfly in Amber), an “expert” in scientific computation, and a marine biologist—I tended to work in environments where most of my colleagues were men, ages 20 to 45. And the unfortunate truth is that men do talk that way.10
The casual use of profanity and vulgarity is much less apparent in mixed situations—and women in groups tend to do it much less frequently—but it is a common pattern of speech in male groups. There seems to be no real intent of disrespect to the Almighty or offense to one’s companions; it’s simply a common and accepted manner of speech. This is particularly true in military situations, and—so far as I can ascertain from my reading of World War I and World War II documents, as well as the private journals of earlier combatants—it has always been the case.
This being so, I do feel that depicting speech as it is or