Obsessing over the details

Sometimes when you're reading old pulp fiction you get a delightfully strange sentence. Here's one from Thirteen Women by Tiffany Thayer.

"Say - that swami started the round-robin," Buck Olsen discovered aloud.

I really like the phrase 'discovered aloud'. It makes sense but it feels like a very peculiar way to describe the experience of learning some new information and commenting upon it. It also has a pleasant redundancy, the fact of the discovery is quite evident from what Buck Olsen says and the use of quote marks already indicate that he is speaking out loud. The phrase 'discovered aloud' hints at a possible emotion such as surprise or, in the context of the story, alarm but fails to accurately convey a sense of Buck's state of mind which is a failing in a sentence designed to heighten the drama of a scene.

It might be technically better to write something like,

"Say - that swami started the round-robin," Buck Olsen said in alarm.

Or, if you want to be more concise,

"Say - that swami started the round-robin!" cried Buck Olsen.

This second version has the advantage of conveying a sense of surprise or alarm without needing to be explicit. It enables the reader to project their own feelings onto the utterance made by Buck. 'Discovered aloud' is a curiously bloodless description, that focuses on the mechanics involved in thought and speech. 'Cried' has more emotive associations. I think it's fair to say that a good writer (whatever that means) probably wouldn't choose the words 'discovered aloud' and yet in a strange way I love this phrase. It's sufficiently odd that it stands out, memorable in its own quirky way.

One of the things I like about reading pulp is the sense of immediacy, the rawness of the prose. These are books that were written very fast and haven't gone through the laborious process of editing that some writers regard as essential. That's why strange little phrases slip through. I doubt I'll remember much about the plot specifics of Thirteen Women in a couple of years time but I'll always remember that one clunky piece of description and the way it made me think about the craft of writing. Congratulations Tiffany Thayer, your prose is more memorable than that found in many of the more literary books that I have read over the years.

If you want to rip my prose apart I have a nasty little novella called This is Not a Lovesong available as a digital download on Amazon. I also produce noise music and power electronics under the name Malesperi. You can find all sorts of horrible sounds on my bandcamp page here.