Slather on the Clichés
By the way, when I get around to writing a novel, remind me not to use the word "slather". It always irritates me when I read it. I was reminded of this while reading Laura Lippman's No Good Deeds this morning — she had someone slather peanut butter on a pine cone (but to maintain a sense of mystery, I won't say why).
It's not that it's a bad word as such, it just always seems to me to draw attention to itself, which gets in the way of the narrative.* Picturesque as the word is, it's of rather limited utility, too. Think for a moment. How many times have you heard of something being "slathered" other than butter? (The Lippman use with peanut butter is a definite aberration.) And then, if its only use is as a verb for doing something with butter, then why use it? Why not use "butter", or any of a dozen other possibilities?
In a novel like this that makes it a cliché, an unthinking use to create a ready-made picture in the mind's eye of the reader, not to mention an easy way to get from one word to another, chalk up another sentence, and move on from this 100,000-word best seller to the next. Imagine! Use "slather" in my book, apparently, and it's the first step on the clichéd slippery slope to turning out literarily sloppy best sellers. I'm sure there're no sour grapes in that evaluation.
In the early eighties I read all the existing canon of books by P.D. James as it was at the time, six or eight volumes. Before you get me wrong: P.D. James was no sloppy best-seller author either. For some reason that I can't fathom I noted and made of a list of what turned out to be six words that Ms. James used exactly once in each one of those books. For some reason these words seemed to draw attention to themselves when I read them. I can't remember the entire list, although I remember that these words were on it: "etiolate" and "detritus".
This is not to say that these words shouldn't be used, not at all. I do mean to say that attention getting words need to be used in a way, in fictional narrative at least, that's aware of their self-importance. It makes me think of a piece of music I heard on the radio a couple of days ago, a ballet suite by some early romantic composer who decidedly overused the triangle in his orchestration. Previously I would have likened it to fingernails on a chalkboard; henceforth I might liken it to an overuse of the triangle in orchestration. It's uncommon that I feel like covering my ears and shouting "arrrrgh!", unless maybe it's for Wagner's overture to "Rienzi", of which I've heard several times more than a lifetime's quota — and it wasn't that good to start with.
At any rate, if you see someday a manuscript in which I've used "slather", just cross it out and write a nasty little editorial note in the margin. I may snarl, but I'm sure I'll thank you for it later.
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*This refers to the theory of fiction of John Gardner's, which I'll write about at more length sometime soon.