LET’S TALK FOR A MINUTE ABOUT BAD WORDS

A Rant.

Sara Read

Jan 21, 2024

We are writers.

We use words.

Swear words are words.

Adverbs are words.

Words in languages other than the language we write in are words.

Words like amanuensis and mimetic are words.

Made-up words are words.

There are no such thing as “amateur” words and “pro” words; legitimate words and illegitimate words; good words and bad words.

They are just. Fucking. Words.

I happen to be fond of swear words. Other writers may be fond of words like niggle and hubby which make me want to run and get a shot of whiskey and more tattoos. Still others may take pleasure in words that no one ever uses or everyone overuses. In sex scenes, it makes me roll my eyes when a writer uses alternative after alternative to avoid the perfectly good word kiss. And it makes me absolutely livid that the one power word we have for vagina—the one punchy, one-syllable, true equal to cock and dick—has been corrupted beyond reprieve (cunt). (Personally, I still live in hope that it will be reclaimed one day a word that only women can use.) But here’s the thing: no one is the boss of what words you use except you. You are the arbiter of the rightness or wrongness of any given word in any given context.

I just made my second attempt to read David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest—and remembered why I abandoned it the first time. I just can’t hang with the glacial pace of narrative motion, not to mention pages and pages without a single paragraph break. But whatever. I don’t have to like it. He didn’t write that book to be liked. And he certainly didn’t write that book by being stingey with words. I appreciate that about it. It’s hard not to take some delighted amazement in its sheer, churning overflow of language.

The reverence for Hemingway-esque, Strunk-and-White, spare, economical prose is overrated and, dare I say, outdated. I love nothing more than a book that mixes grand language with gutter language. That makes of fuck an artform. (Which Tom Wolfe does. Alas, I cannot deal with the misogyny that goes with it.) Or that takes big, twenty-dollar words and throws them right where you don’t expect them.

The question I am interested in is, are we getting a voice that is true to itself, that is doing what it wants to do? Are we getting a voice that may be surprising, may take some getting used to, but ultimately hangs together and conveys a vibe? If so, then that voice does not need to please me, or Hemingway, or a style guide, or anyone. Chances are, I will never read all of Infinite Jest. Life is too short for that. Nor am I likely to read any more than the one and a half mafia romances I have already read. But I deeply appreciate that those voices were fully themselves and not holding back. David Foster Wallace, J.T. Geissinger—they leaned in.

In Infinite Jest, characters say things like, “…” and “SHULGSPAHHHH” (onomatopoeia for chugging a soda).

In Ruthless Creatures characters spank each other with hairbrushes in excruciating detail for six pages.

Sometimes I find this kind of prose, as much as I admire it, irritatingly in-your-face; so there as to shove me, the reader, out to the periphery, consigned to the cheap seats where I may do no more than observe the author’s greatness. But I infinitely prefer it to language that chooses never to offend or surprise; language that feels made of a flat sameness that conveys a premise and gives stage directions, but little more. That kind of thing just makes me sad.

These are things I think about when it comes to putting words on paper. I don’t want to write an Infinite Jest, but I aspire to the kind of fuck-all mindset it takes to write that way. I aspire to the kind of confidence and fluency it takes to produce a written voice that sings, hollers, yodels—anything but the PowerPoint presenter delivery that makes me DNF a book after five pages.

And that fluency requires all the words to be on the table. To write with a voice that reaches through the noise and grabs a reader by the neck (or hand, if you don’t like neck; or ankle, maybe, if you’re writing horror), one is going to need all the words. The swear words, the fancy words, the greasy, down-and-dirty words, the over-the-top words, along with the Hemingway-approved simple words. Choose the words that do the work. They’re all fair game.

Thank you, I will step down off my soapbox now.

Sincerely,

Sara