InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "your exodus laughing"

cyberghostface (cyberghostface) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-04-05 20:27:00

Entry tags:

publisher: ec comics, title: shock suspenstories

The Kidnapper

This one's from Shock SuspenStories #17.

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psychop_rex
2009-04-07 01:13 am UTC (link)

This is a pretty intense story, all right, but I'm afraid it was somewhat spoiled for me by the writing style. There are almost no contractions in this dialogue - there are four, in fact. Four contractions in six pages of dialogue! Who the hell talks like that? "Come, Teresa. I am hungry. We will eat now." I mean, maybe if this were set five hundred years ago it would make sense, but this is set in what was then modern times. I've never in my life heard anybody talk like that, especially not a poor couple whom one can reasonably assume haven't had much access to higher education. It's really distracting.
Oh, and one more thing - WHO THE HELL LEAVES THEIR BABY OUT ON THE SIDEWALK WHILE THEY HAVE LUNCH? I mean, come on, people! 'Catching the sunlight' or not, that's just asking for trouble. I wouldn't go so far as to say that they deserved to get their baby snatched, but they came perilously close.

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besamim
2009-04-08 02:22 pm UTC (link)

Agree with you on the annoying avoidance of contractions. Fortunately, Feldstein and the other EC writers did that very rarely.

In the discussion of a post on the old s_d (it was a story from Impact), someone said that the writer was imitating a particular prose author who wrote that way. Since comments aren't preserved in the old s_d archive, I couldn't tell you who that author was.

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psychop_rex
2009-04-08 04:13 pm UTC (link)

I suppose it could be Damon Runyon - he rarely used contractions in his stories - but he had a florid, tough-guy style that was usually applied to gangsters and detectives and suchlike, to show that they were tough buys. In fact, if I remember correctly, that post was in reference to a somewhat hard-boiled story, so it made a bit of sense there, even if it didn't work very well - it does not work here.

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