Squawk Radio

My vote goes not to a book but to a television series, HBO's profane and fabulous DEADWOOD. I could do a dissertation on the correlation between DEADWOOD's dialogue and Greek tragedies-- the secondaries' asides remind me of the Greek chorus. Or maybe Shakespeare's plays--particularly the loathsome E.B. who makes an excellent Iago.

I know that there is tons and tons of highly objectionable language in DEADWOOD (every other word is &^%$ or %$#@ or &%%*&*-*&^%^% though personally, I don't give a ^%$@) but making the association between it and ancient Greek plays actually got me wondering about the original vernacular of those plays. It stands to reason that as they are handed down through hundreds of years each succeeding generation would get its shot at bowdlerizing it to some degree, omitting a few nastier swear words or vulgarities from the text in the interest of mainstreaming it and making it more palatable to a general population.

In books...? I just finished Lorna Landvik's latest, OH MY STARS and thought it was excellent.