Who is Dorfman's neighbor?

 

“The neighbor behind Dorfman was a widower with cats, but no dogs. The plan was to access his property from her backyard.”

So, is the neighbor behind Dorfman a man or a woman?

I was reading American Assassin by Vince Flynn when I was stopped cold by those two lines. They started at the end of a right hand page and finished on the following left hand page. I flipped back and forth a couple of times to verify that I had read it correctly. I had.

With all the “Instant Reporting” we get on the Internet poor grammar has flourished. How many times a day do you see the the repeated article the? We excuse it saying the writers are in a hurry, and we understand. Really it’s about what program are you writing in. I’m using Word right now and that repeat is hi-lighted. The same happens in Open Office. But on Blogger it is missed. I don’t have Word Press up and running but I am assuming it misses the repeat also.

But this was not an Internet article, tweet or blog I was reading. This was a hardback novel published by Simone and Schuster. And it wasn’t the only error. It was just the one that made me talk about the problem. Word and Open Office did not find that noun-pronoun disagreement. I wonder if the publisher doesn’t have software that would check for that type error. If so, they didn’t use it did they? What happened to the line editor? That position was probably downsized during the recession. Everything gets blamed on the recession.

How does one address the issue? Well, I assumed that Simon and Schuster would care less about what I thought. The author, Vince Flynn, may not be involved with the editing; he’s busy working on his next book. And he might take my comments personally. Maybe Flynn’s agent, Sloan Harris, would listen.

I couldn’t find an email address for Mr. Harris. (I’m way too busy to write and mail an actual letter to him.)

Now Mr. Flynn does have a comment page on his web site so I went there and commented on the line editing in American Assassin. It was an action and allowed me to move on with my life.

I know it looks like I decided to slough off the error just like everyone else seems to have done. But this is America and I have decided to ply capitalist pressures on Mr. Flynn, Mr. Harris, Mr. Simon and Mr. Schuster. I am not reading another thing by Mr. Flynn, nor viewing the American Assassin movie when it is released until I find out the true gender of Mr. Dorfman’s neighbor. And I encourage you to do the same.

George Parker

Plausible Stupidity

I do believe in "stupid." It happens all the time. I might be doing it now. And I am sure from some outside perspective my actions do not seem reasonable. But in a story, movie or novel, a sense of plausibility should not be suspended.

There is something I'll call "Plausible Stupidity." As an example, the heroine in a horror film opens the door that everyone (but her) knows should not be opened. Something in the story should give her a real reason for opening the door, missing boyfriend, suspicious noise, something needs to explain/justify her foolish action. Without that slim hook of plausibility her actions are just stupid.

Here are three examples of flawed plausibility which made me lay the books down and carefully and slowly walk away. In Stieg Larson's “The Girl Who Played With Fire” the police accuse Lisbeth Salander of multiple murders and have a nationwide dragnet searching for her while she hunts down her terrible father. Lisbeth's father shoots her and buries her alive. She digs her way out and shoots him. When the third novel, “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest” opens, Lisbeth and her father are in the same hospital, next door to each other, neighbors. And there is no policeman in sight. Really? Suspected murderer, two suspected attempted murderers and not a policeman one to watch over either of them. I wonder what is going to happen next? Actually I don't wonder. I set the book down. That scenario violates “Plausible Stupidity” by the police.

How about this: I am hunting in South Texas and I discover the scene of a drug cartel shootout. Only one guy, who is just barely alive, has survived and he asks me for water. Of course I ignore him and search for the money. I find the money take it home and hide it, drink a beer, eat some supper, sleep with my wife and then wake up and decide to take some water to the dying guy. Really? Guess who by now is waiting for me at the shootout locale? This is the “Plausible” opening from “No Country for Old Men” by Cormac McCarthy.

Or this one. It's 1964 and I am a journalist living undercover as a former Nazi SS death camp guard. I've infiltrated a high level group that is supporting and protecting wanted Nazis. So I drive my highly visible and identifiable English sports car all over Germany from hiding place to hiding place. That's the plan to protect my cover in Frederick Forsyth's “The Odessa File.” For me these examples breach the “Plausibility” quotient. There is also something else they share, best seller success and movie deals. Obviously one man's implausible is another man's plausible.

George W. Parker