20141204.0719

I have noted that my freelance writing has me read a number of things I would not normally read. Most recently, it has taken me through Preston and Child's Blue Labyrinth. While I know that the series of which it is part sells well and enjoys a great deal of currency, something about the text strikes me as...wrong. It is not merely the Batman-esque protagonist (ridiculously wealthy and possessed of substantial skills in both investigative techniques and hand-to-hand combat), who partakes heavily of the Marty Stu trope (if not actually God-Mode Sue), although I do react negatively to that. (Yet I like many incarnations of Batman--but a reality where illegal aliens land in Kansas farm-towns and Amazons who do not cut off their breasts fly around, invisible jets or otherwise, allows for more...leeway than something ostensibly based in contemporary reality.) It is not merely that those closest to the protagonist partake of the protagonist's nature, becoming the Robin or Batgirl (horrible name, that) to the protagonist's Batman--although that, too, does irk me. Really, there are few challenges (and thus little meaningful conflict) for those such as the protagonist who are already equal to any situation--however unexpected it might actually be.

It is rather that the text uses the words it uses as it uses them, trotting out high-level diction in ways that seem discordant with their context. (Note that I have no problem with high diction in itself. I hardly could, being a literary scholar, and as I have expressed once or twice my appreciation for diction in itself, I cannot complain on that ground alone.) I might expect the highly educated to use such language in speaking with other highly educated people in reference to those matters about which they are highly educated--and Preston and Child do deploy elevated diction thusly. I might expect such diction as a class marker used to remind "the lesser" that "their betters" are, in fact, their betters--and Preston and Child do deploy elevated diction thusly. But for an omniscient third-person narrator to do so, and to do so in attending to the less-educated (although decidedly not less worthy; frankly, the protagonist is an ass if not actually Cohen's douchebag), strikes the eye as discordant. It does not fit, and because it does not fit, something is wrong with the text. (Yes, I do tend to expect narratives to follow their own rules consistently.)

I have to wonder, though, if Preston and Child are not using the device to somehow connect with their readership. As I read the text, I felt as if the narrator and the implied author were somehow sneering at those who do not understand the words being used; the diction becomes a class marker not only within the text, but also within the context of readership. A reader could easily become complicit in that sneering disregard, so that the diction becomes a way to make the reader feel good by self-promotion; understanding the words makes the reader "smarter" than those who do not understand the words. It is not something that I can recommend.