tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2013099116454762594.post2690846613504221066..comments2024-01-31T17:20:47.037-05:00Comments on Ultimate Indivisibility: Book Review: Making Sense by Jim MurdochBrent Robisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06882060411376854563noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2013099116454762594.post-61071812798571746452015-02-09T04:25:46.011-05:002015-02-09T04:25:46.011-05:00This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06838792403422616624noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2013099116454762594.post-36865407412387152092014-04-28T20:22:10.564-04:002014-04-28T20:22:10.564-04:00pretty nice blog, following :)pretty nice blog, following :)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2013099116454762594.post-48400351078594077742014-03-09T23:56:51.123-04:002014-03-09T23:56:51.123-04:00This is an excellent review, Brent. Expected no le...This is an excellent review, Brent. Expected no less of course. Knew you’d treat the book seriously and I appreciate your comments. All the dialect stories started off with much tamer versions and they worked just fine. I changed them later on because I realised I wasn’t reading what was on the page. I was embellishing based on my knowledge of the voices. I would read, ‘just thinking’ but in my head I was hearing ‘jist hinkin’. Now that fine for me as a native Glaswegian but as we only make up about 0.01% of the world’s population most people will read what they see on the page. I did provide a glossary for the Scots since it is a language as opposed to an English dialect but I do accept that all the four stories will take extra effort on the reader’s part. I’ve just finished reading a novel where much of the dialect is written in Medieval Scots and there’s <i>no</i> glossary nor even the occasional footnote—seriously would you have a <i>clue</i> what ‘mortfundyit’ might mean? (the context is little help)—and that <i>is</i> a hard read. I defend the author’s choice to write in dialect but you have to draw a line. I think authors like Irvine Welsh take things too far. It’s a contentious point, I give you that. <br /><br />The collection is called <i>Making Sense</i> and the first thing you have to do with these four dialect stories is literally make sense of them. This was a deliberate choice on my part. I wrote the stories in the accents that came to me. I did toy with changing one of the others to give the daughter a Lancashire accent—my parents were from Lancashire—but I didn’t feel confident enough to tackle it. So why take on a New York accent and what kind of accent is it supposed to be anyway? You know full well that there are many shades of accent in a big city like New York, there is in Glasgow, but what I was aiming for here was caricature. If you imagine Tony Soprano reading ‘Monsters’ then you’re there although to be honest the voice in <i>my</i> head belongs to Steven Van Zandt in the role of Frank Tagliano from the Norwegian television series <i>Lilyhammer</i>. When I first wrote the story I’d not seen the show but after I had no other voice would do although I’ll be honest when I try to read it aloud—which people say you should do when reading a dialect you’re unfamiliar with—I sound Jamaican. I did get a native New Yorker to help me with my construction (plus my wife lived in New York for a while) and it took a lot of work between the three of us to decide just how far to go. After the first rewrite Vito recorded the story for me reading quite fast so we could see where he slipped up and we gave those areas of the text a bit of extra attention.<br /><br />Of course I <i>can</i> tone it down as I did in <i>Milligan and Murphy</i> but I had a point to make and that point has been made. In the next collection there’ll be one story in Glaswegian. I’ve not decided yet whether I’ll rewrite it so that it’s in the same style as the other two but as I intend to release the whole collection eventually as an e-book I probably will to be consistent. <br />Jim Murdochhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12786388638146471193noreply@blogger.com