{"id":9813,"date":"2022-06-29T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-06-29T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9813"},"modified":"2022-06-28T21:41:30","modified_gmt":"2022-06-29T01:41:30","slug":"reading-lessons-conversation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9813","title":{"rendered":"Reading Lessons: Conversation"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

I recently read Gary Phillips\u2019s One-Shot Harry<\/em><\/a>, which I snagged with a successfully bid in the Authors United for Ukraine literary auction. Phillips is a Los Angeles-based Black author of twenty-two books, but this is the first I\u2019ve read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What most struck me about this book, set in 1963, was the dialog. Phillips\u2019s characters speak in a remarkably engaging way. Yes, they\u2019re Black and maybe their families originally were from the southern states, and some influences on their speech may be cultural. Having read some really boring dialog in my time (and written some), their talk was really fun. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My mother, born and raised in rural and small-town Texas, also spoke in a colorful way. She had a saying for everything. As a young person, I thought this way of speaking was much too countrified and worked hard to excise it from my own speech\u2014going for bland, a bad choice. But, as I grow older, I find these long-forgotten words and idioms cropping up again. What do you call a baby or cat\u2019s toy? A play-pretty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Authors like to show their characters doing everyday things, perhaps in the hope that because going to the grocery store, putting in a load of laundry, and filling the tank with gas are tasks everyone does, readers can relate to them. But these quotidian activities are, let\u2019s face it, mostly boring. What makes them interesting enough to put in a book is how the character feels about them and how they describe them. If Mercedes dreads the grocery store because one of the produce workers always manages to brush up against her, or if doing the laundry reminds her of the time the dye from a new red t-shirt turned all her husband\u2019s underwear pink and he hit her for it, then it’s getting more interesting. What\u2019s more, none of these tasks needs to be talked about in a ho-hum way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s an exchange as I might write it:
\u201cI\u2019m a substitute math teacher. But I\u2019m working in the Bradley campaign more these days.\u201d
\u201cWhat\u2019s math got to do with it?
\u201cI look for patterns, where to find likely voters, based on their interests and affiliations.\u201d
\u201cYou can figure all that out?\u201d
\u201cSure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s how Phillips did it:
\u201cI\u2019m a substitute teacher. I teach algebra and geometry in high schools and at a couple of community colleges [note how the specifics add realism]. But I\u2019m doing more of the Bradley kind of work these days.\u201d
\u201cHow does the math work in that situation?\u201d
\u201cI look for the patterns to develop profiles. Frequency of voters in an area\u2014break it down by those who attend church, got to PTA meetings and so on [more specifics]. It\u2019s boring shop talk, but you asked.\u201d
\u201cNo, I\u2019m digging it [toss in some slang]. You break down how segments of the voters vote?\u201d
\u201cExactly. Ultimately, what excites them to come out and vote. Now them cigar-smoking white fellas overseeing the state Democratic Party figure just running a negro candidate is enough to get colored people to the polls [her attitude toward the politicos]. Which admittedly is accurate to an extent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The effect of Phillips\u2019s richer conversation is additive, not easily summed up in a specific example. But if your character thinks going to the gas station is going to use up too much of his cash and prevent him from taking his wife out for dinner, maybe he\u2019d say more than \u201cGoing to the Sunoco.\u201d Maybe he\u2019d say, \u201cGotta fill up the damn tank again and turn over my Saturday night supper money to those profit-squeezing vampires at Rich Oil Company.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Order One-Shot Harry<\/em> from Amazon here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently read Gary Phillips\u2019s One-Shot Harry, which I snagged with a successfully bid in the Authors United for Ukraine literary auction. Phillips is a Los Angeles-based Black author of twenty-two books, but this is the first I\u2019ve read. What … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Gary Phillips really makes the most of dialog! Pure pleasure to read.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[174,29],"tags":[89,414],"class_list":["post-9813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-draft-blog","category-writing","tag-reading","tag-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2yh","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9813"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9817,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9813\/revisions\/9817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}