NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #23/NN_1992_23.iso/spool/misc/writing/3177

Internet Message Format | 1992-10-13 | 3.0 KB

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From: [e-mail] (Fred Welden)
Newsgroups: misc.writing
Subject: Re:    It, as a subject.
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 13 Oct 92 20:49:06 GMT
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In article <[e-mail]>, Jon L. Campbell <[e-mail]> writes:
|[additional crticism of Stephen King's writing in NEEDFUL THINGS,
|including the fact that King starts sentences with "It" and makes
|grammatical mistakes.]

I went along with you when you criticized King for failing to develop
and maintain tension in his novel, but I'm starting to feel I have to
take exception with your complaints here.

First, I don't usually respond to spelling errors in net postings
because a good argument is still a good argument even when it contains
some misspellings, and because it is often hard to distinguish a
spelling error from a typographical one.  But you consistently spell
"grammar" as "grammer," and since you are complaining about the low
standard of King's writing, I feel compelled to point this out.
"Endeavor" has an "a" in it, too.  There are also several grammatical
errors that I could point out, but that would get tedious.  I will
e-mail them to you if you are genuinely interested.

Second, there is no reason a sentence may not begin with the word "It"
as a subject.  Sentences may begin with "I," "You," "He," "She," "We,"
and "They." Why should the neuter singular pronoun (not a modifier, as
you imply) be singled out as an exception?

Third, King's purpose in writing is not didactic, nor should it be.  He
writes to entertain.  It is quite possible that run-on sentences,
comma-splices, and even misspellings make the book more entertaining to
its intended audience.  I'm not saying that they actually do, because I
haven't read the book.  But they might.  Certainly there are books that
use these techniques.  You might try reading THE SOUND AND THE FURY by
William Faulkner as an example.  This is one of the great American
novels, in my admittedly arrogant opinion, and it would have lost almost
all the power of its entire first book had Faulkner been forced to
comply with the standard grammatical rules that apply to a scholastic
essay.

In conclusion, my response is no, fiction need not be held to the common
rules of grammar, spelling, and punctuation.  All these rules may be
broken to great and desirable effect.  It is annoying in the extreme to
read the work of a writer too ignorant or lazy to know or follow the
rules, but not the work of a writer who knows the rules and breaks them
deliberately, with good reason.  That, as the saying goes, is jazz.

--
--Fred, or another blind 8th-century BC  |  [e-mail]
        Hellenic poet of the same name.  |