Lessons in semantics

Some lessons in semantics lately have, I hope, made me more sensitive. But they’ve been hard lessons. Last year I published a novel titled Pigface and the Perfect Dog. The sobriquet Pigface refers to the major bad guy in the book. One look at him, and protagonist Susan Hogan is reminded of a pig. We’ve all seen people like that—fat, fleshy face, with beady pink-rimmed eyes buried in the flesh, small, pursed mouths. I didn’t think anything about it when I used the word. Susan simply turned when he bumped into her at the butcher counter, and her immediate thought was that he looked like a pig. The nickname stuck throughout the book.

Alas, that book was not my best-seller, and when I investigated, I discovered several people were vocal about disliking that term. Some said it was an insult to pigs. I am amazed I didn’t think of that—pigs are underestimated but truly intelligent and sensual animals. So, I’m guilty on that count. Others countered that in this age when most of us try to be sensitive to others, it was demeaning and nasty, and I can see that too.,I think it was like a lot of childhood insults—we still use them without thinking first. Finally, there was a Jewish friend who reacted because of her religion’s abhorrence of swine. I suspect that doesn’t count for many, but I respect her position.

Would I do it all over differently? I don’t know. I write by instinct, and that’s what came to me. It fit, and it made the title work and carry on the use of “perfect” established in the first book But authors have to look at the marketing side, and if I’d known that word would affect sales, I might have gone an entirely different direction. Of course, I have no proof that was the cause of the low sales. If you haven’t read it, take a look at Pigface and the Perfect Dog. I still think it’s a pretty good mystery.

Now to my current work-in-progress. Titled “Contact for Chaos,” it’s a Kelly O’Connell Mystery on the theme of racism. For shock value and to emphasize how awful it is, I used the n-word on grafitti and banners from the bad guys and, occasionally, from someone’s mouth. In fact, an early stab at a cover had grafitti with that word on it. Several people objected, and my editor wrote a long note about how that jars people, especially in the black community, and how they would particularly resent it coming from a white woman.

The fact that I used it to emphasize the negativity, to show how wrong it was, got lost in the discussion. I certainly can see why it would put people off on the cover, and I’m bowing to wiser heads and writing it out in the text—mostly writing around it, occasionally using “n-word” or “n-----.” Racism was a difficult topic to tackle, and both my beta reader and my editor have praised my handling of it, but I want to walk that difficult line between marketability and intellectual honesty.

It all reminds me of that childhood verse that began, “Eeny meeny miney moe.” If you’re old enough (as I am), you’ll remember the version I’m referring to.  If not, you know the sanitized version, probably from the sixties, and I won’t repeat the older one.

I fear that Americans of my generation unconsciously absorbed racism and its language, even when we knew better. I was raised on the South Side of Chicago, a diverse area if anything is, but I was early taught to respect all people as equal. Still I absorbed the attitudes of the day—in my case, fear—and the language, and though I know much better, those old habits come out sometimes. I’m working hard to banish them forever. It’s one of the many things we all must do in this troubled political climate.