Re: Phonemes

Brian M. Scott wrote:
>
> On Sun, 19 Jun 2005 04:39:18 GMT, "Peter T. Daniels"
> <grammatim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
> <news:42B4F6F6.3211@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> in sci.lang:
>
> > Brian M. Scott wrote:
>
> >> On Sat, 18 Jun 2005 23:18:30 GMT, "Peter T. Daniels"
> >> <grammatim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
> >> <news:42B4ABC6.7CB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> in sci.lang:
>
> >>> Brian M. Scott wrote:
>
> >>>> On Sat, 18 Jun 2005 13:19:21 GMT, "Peter T. Daniels"
> >>>> <grammatim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
> >>>> <news:42B41F5B.65BD@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> in sci.lang:
>
> [...]
>
> >>>>> It's especially peculiar that he was considered so
> >>>>> "liberal" because you didn't learn until p. 250 of ST
> >>>>> that the hero was dark-skinned. What up wit dat?
>
> >>>> The obvious point is that it doesn't matter -- which is
> >>>> precisely as it should be.
>
> >>> Then why did he make a point of giving him any skin color
> >>> at all?
>
> >> I would say that he didn't, and that your comment says more
> >> about your perception than about what's in the book.
>
> > I don't remember such a thing from the book; I read it somewhere.
>
> Ah, that's the problem.
>
> > He must have had a reason for making the guy Negro halfway
> > through the book. What can it have been?
>
> He didn't. The kid's surname is <Rico>, and as I recall we
> learn near the very *end* of the book -- not halfway through
> -- that he's of Filipino descent.

David says the canard was started by Chip Delaney. (From whose earlier
work, you'd never know is black.)

> >>> If he wanted to make an anti-racist statement, he
> >>> could have had the guy experience racism.
>
> >> That was done in _Farnham's Freehold_. It would have been
> >> out of place in ST.
>
> > Must've been after MiaHM, which I gave up on in disgust
> > halfway through.
>
> FF is 1964; MIaHM is 1966

I didn't see it in high school, so I wasn't getting them as they came
out.

> (and is often considered his
> best-written non-juvenile, an opinion with which I agree).

Agreeing also that that's not saying much!

I've recently been reading "Peter Tremayne"'s Sister Fidelma mysteries
-- the tenth one was just paperbacked; oddly, it takes four years from
the British publication to the American pb., unlike Lindsey Davis's
Marcus Didius Falco mysteries, which are pb.ed after one year -- because
he knows his Celtic environment and does good stories, but he seems
never to have either looked at a writing manual or had an editor. (He
_still_ thinks that "genuflect" means 'cross oneself'!!) A phrase that
seems to appear at least twice in each book is "stating the obvious."
(If he doesn't like his characters stating the obvious, why does he make
them do it?)

BTW when I looked into Martial's Epigrams, I found all sorts of details
that turn up in the Falco books ...
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@xxxxxxx
.

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