This morning I read a letter to the editor in my old paper about a story I wrote on the Charlottesville Police Department’s gang task force. The writer is the grandmother of Det. Todd Lucas, the main cop in my story. And she had a problem with some of the langauge I used.
Here’s the letter in its entirety, since C-VILLE’s website shows all letters on a single page.
Recently, I had occasion to read your interesting publication in which my grandson was featured in the article, “Does Charlottesville have a gang problem?” [July 8, 2008]. Todd is a police detective and was accurately described by your reporter Scott Weaver, who appears to be a gifted writer. So, my question is this: Why muddy an otherwise interesting article with offending pornographic language? In the very first paragraph, G—d— (page 18) which is bad enough but then on page 20, he used the “f” word in its entirety. Is his vocabulary really so limited? The bigger question is—why weren’t these edited out? Responsibility goes along with free speech. As Camus noted in his novel The Plague, we must guard against little plagues so they won’t become huge plagues.
I assume your news weekly is read by families including young, impressionable readers. There is no excuse for such language at all but especially in a newspaper that has a 24,000 copies distribution. I sincerely hope that future contributors are warned about the language permissible and that editors will catch and delete inappropriate words that offend all decent readers.
I can honestly say that I feel bad when I offend readers with something I wrote. It’s the straight-A, approval-seeking grade school kid in me. So I want to apologize to the letter writer for offending her. It’s not a good feeling to learn about a reaction like this one.
But I also want to explain why, in this story, I used those word. I thought through using them; they weren’t thrown in on a whim. And I think I have good reasons to write like that, just as the letter writer has good reasons to be offended to read such writing.
She asks why I would “muddy” a story with “offending, pornographic language.” I think here we get to a disagreement between the two of us. I don’t think either of the two words I used, “goddamn” and “fuck” are pornographic. Pornography related exclusively to exrotic and sexually stimulating behavior, and neither of the passages she points to have anything to do with sex.
The offensive part, well, that’s where we disagree. But maybe not completely. I don’t think those two words are offensive. I hear them every day, and while there are some contexts in which you wouldn’t expect to hear them, they are a part of our language. But the letter writer is offended by them, and that’s perfectly understandable. To take offense at something, be they words, actions, pictures, envokes one’s own ethics. It’s not against my ethics to say fuck. It is against the letter writer’s ethics though.
And here’s where I feel bad, but in a very ambivalent way. Because I know those words offend some people, and I use them anyhow. So I know, before the story even runs, that I’m stepping on somebody’s moral, eithical toes. And I do it anyway. And I even feel bad about it, enough to offer an apology.
But I think those words are necessary to the story. Not to use them would change what I was trying to do. Looking at the two instances the letter writer mentions, here’s why.
The first is the opening graph of the story where I introduce Det. Lucas, the letter writer’s grandson:
Todd Lucas is a difficult man to doubt. He is earnest and he is forceful and he is a person possessed of an electric personality channeled through a gleaming sledgehammer of a smile. So if Detective Todd Lucas of the Charlottesville Police Departmentsays that there are gangs operating in a fair city such as this, your tendency is to goddamn well believe him.
This is a story about cops, drugs, guns and gangs. And Det. Lucas is a tough, forceful guy. So I wanted the tone set from the beginning. That’s why I made the first two sentences simple and active. I also didn’t use commas in the run-on because I wanted the headlong rush of the “he is” construction. I tried to run the reader into the third sentence like a brick wall, with its delaying prepositional clause.
And then, after the pause at the beginning of the sentence, I wanted the door to slam at the end of it. So I used a collequial phrase, “goddamn well.” There were a couple of reasons behind it. First, that’s how most of the people I spoke with for the story talked. These, for the most part, were tough guys. So I wanted that tone, wanted a narrator that didn’t stand back and state fact, but instead shared a bit of the speech and rhythm the story.
Second, I wanted the end to be trochaic, that is, to put the stress on the first syllables in the last couple words: “goddamn well believe him.” I wanted the rhythm of the first graph to draw the reader forward. It’s a little thing, but I played with it until I got it how I wanted to it sound.
Here’s the second instance:
Lucas and his crew are about to run up into the South First Street public housing complex in unmarkeds, stomp on their breaks and jump the fuck out like some overproduced Michael Bay movie to see who runs. Then, they are supposed to stop whoever’s running and find out just exactly why it is they are running from cops in vests and black gloves, to see if these people looking for a quick way out of a tightening circle of cops are running for a reason that could possibly be felonious. [emphasis added]
At this point in the story, Lucas and crew are doing jump outs–driving into public housing complexes quickly, and jumping out of unmarked cop cars. I wanted to convey the sheer forcefulness of this act, the feeling of bigness, possible violence, and dramatic hyperbole in the sentence. Speeding into someone’s neighborhood on a Friday evening, squealing to a stop and jumping out with guns and bulletproof vests is an action, at its base, is aggressive, vulgar and unapologetic. And I wanted my language to convey those three things.
I also have to point out that I didn’t use all the bad language in the story. Here’s a direct quote from that night:
“This is exactly the shit we’re talking about,” the ATF agent says to the driver, a young man in his late teens or early 20s, “an assault rifle in the projects.”
Drugs and gangs aren’t pretty, and the people policing both don’t play. I think that a story about both shouldn’t shy away from this. And really, in the end, that’s all I was trying to do with this language–be true to what I saw and what I heard. I’m gratified that the letter writer said I got Det. Lucas right. Because in the end, that’s all I’m trying to do. Tell the truth in an interesting way.
Do I do that all that time? Not even close. But this story, with all its obvious flaws, is an attempt at that.
I also want to address a couple other points in the letter. Way back in the day, I wrote an essay about why I think cursing is valid in writing. It started with an anicdote about my grandmother (who, incidentally, lived a state over in Indiana) telling my that only dumb people curse because they have limited vocabulary.
This never made sense to me. Not cursing limited my vocabulary, giving me a whole list of words I wasn’t allowed to use. So, respectfully, I have to take the opposite position from the letter writer. I think limiting yourself to certin words show a lack of creativity. That’s, of course, just my opinion.
And finally, the language certainly didn’t sneak by my editor. She is one of the best I’ve worked with. And in the past, she did rein in some of my language, cutting profanity she found to be unnecessary or overly harsh. The fact that both these words were OK’d by her and appeared in print backed up my feeling that they serve a purpose in the story. It’s not just me that thinks so.
Anyhow, this has gone long and kind of preachy and a maybe desparately personal, to steal a phrase from an old friend. I started by apologizing, and let me end that way:
I’m sorry that I caused offense, but I believe I had a good reason to do so. That said, I feel bad that I’ve caused you to feel bad.
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