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eredienA ramble I've been preparing since Friday, which proves that I read and think too much.
Diction in Dialog: with Side Notes on Speculative Fiction
The speculative fiction problem with bad dialog--defined, for purposes of this discussion, as something accidentally anachronistic, language out-of-sorts with with a character's ordinary mode of speech, or overly-period slang (think of those horrible grade-school readers left over from the 1970's!), or plain awkward-sounding speech--is that is boots the reader not only out of the character, but also, by extension, out of the world of the story.
Through their speech, characters create--or at least make more real--the fictional world they inhabit. If it's an out-of-genre story, we might at least be able to let a few things go. So, they didn't have matches yet in 1440? The rest of the world is still there as we know it. So, the assistant-principal character said, "If something doesn't change around here, mister, and fast, it'll be kinda bad?" We wince, but perhaps chalk it up to the fact that it was a first novel, or else that we've all known particularly inarticulate school administrators.
But when anything goes in your world, any dialog can't: in speculative fiction, perhaps more than anywhere else, words have an almost literal power of shaping the reader's thoughts, pointing them toward possiblities: "this is possible here. This is not. This might be, but you can't be sure yet." If the only things the reader can possibly know about the reality are the rules you've implied--partly through dialog--then breaking them unintentionally is the literary equivalent of being spun around before trying to hit a pinata. Don't blame the reader if she ends up mistakenly advancing on the sofa, stick held aloft.
One can occasionally get away with breaking dialog rules when one is setting out the story-world, when things are still flexible--the reader might not know enough yet to be aware that something is off. Even if the reader does notice, or guess, he might be able to keep telling himself "it could make sense later," and keep reading. (Sometimes this is even the case).
Deliberately surreal, even awkward, settings often make this work too. My favorite example is a beautiful parody of the Balrog scene from Tolkien in Weis and Hickman's "Death Gate" series, where the main characters are simply--and properly--mystified by the in-joke between the author, the bit characters making the joke, the acknowledgement of the reader behind the third wall (we know there must be one; we can hear him smirking), and the reader himself.
But not always. Take one of the best books for awkward settings I've ever read: William Hope Hodgson's "The House on the Borderlands." Takes place mostly either inside a half-abandoned remote English mansion, or in what might be outer space. Hodgson somehow manages to pull it off--some of the passages are nothing short of miracles of prose. He very rarely has his characters talk, though, and that's probably a good thing, as it's generally the most godawful cliche. It's not even a problem of antique-sounding phrases: even at the time it was written, no one thought it had scintillating dialog.
Good dialog is hardly ever awkward (an exception in a moment).
Even if the character's speech is hesitant, or if the person is in the grip of some huge emotion or has a speech impediment (like the stuttering Kim Philby in Tim Powers' novel "Declare"), the speech itself, the phrasing and word-choice, is not generally the thing you want to draw readers' attentions to. What do you want? The readers to be so taken in by the natural dialog that they don't even realize it's natural. The last thing you want is for someone to have to ask the question, "do people really talk like that?" That's when you've lost them.
Why is this the case? Listen to real people talking--on the subway, on the radio, on the street, when you buy milk at the corner. Perhaps one person plans what they're going to say, and then says it; perhaps another speaks with little thought involved, or speaks to shock or impress or dazzle with wit or rhyme. But people speak to a purpose, even if that purpose is consciously trivial, and they've generally got that purpose in mind before they ever open their mouths. Therefore, most people don't generally question their word-choice while they're speaking--and that's what makes dialog sound natural.
When *is* dialog awkward? That's right--when people are thinking about what they're speaking as they're saying it. When they're correcting themselves, or when they're embarassed (both times when they're searching consciously for the right word).
That last--searching consciously for the right word--is, in a sense, what authors do all the time, so it's not suprising that there's a lot of bad, bad dialog out there.
This is, I've seen, especially true in short passages, where if something doesn't ring true to the "inner ear"--sense of pacing, flow, word-choice, whatever--it's often read, considered, and rejected as wrong as a whole, practially before the eye is done passing over the type.
It's also especially true of the words--whether written or not--in mediums other than novels. Comics, posters, movies. If some visual shares the emphasis with the written word, as in comics, or usurps it entirely, as in film, there isn't anything to make up for it. In novels, the author has lots and lots of words to build a story for the reader; they're all of a kind. One word in 500,000 isn't too bad, especially if the author excels at something else: describing scenery or relationships, or making clever puns, or explaining difficult concepts with utter clarity. But one word in a ten-word text balloon, surrounded by pictures? Or one old slang term in your driver's-ed video, dating the entire thing? The writer can't cover those up with descriptions that blow your mind and make you inclined to forgive them and keep reading anyway, because those visuals are a place where text can't (usually) go.
How can an author use bad dialog for the Forces of Good? Usually to humorous effect. Shakespeare, Johnson, and the rest of the Elizabethan English playwrights do this amazingly well. Though those fellows are more attuned to our modern ears and sensibilities, and hence a bit easier to ferret examples from than Chaucer might be, but he also provides good ear-fodder.
Terry Pratchett's work is another. Garrison Keillor's "Lake Woebegone" stories use a deadpan, amazingly adept delivery of lines for the narration as well as wonderfully nuanced, equally adept "Minnesotan" when it's called for.
What does dialog, bad or good, do? Denotes to the outside world practially everything about a character's inside world. Even if we don't want to, we carry language-assumptions around with us: put them to good use and feed your writing too. Close your eyes and listen to people on television. Can you make an guess about them based on the words they choose, the rythyms of their speech, their accent or lack thereof? Can you guess their class background, religion, birth language, cultural upbringing and general mental landscape? Can you tell if they're masking or attempt to mask it, or to mock it, by changing something about their speech, or choosing to adopt another's? Sometimes you'll be wrong and sometimes you'll be right and sometimes you'll be suprised. Use this, all of it, for your writing.
What does this mean for a writer of speculative fiction? Diction, need not be--and indeed should not be, unless called for--"high," but it always, in any genre, simply needs to be appropriate. To the time period, to the character, to the tone of the story you're writing and the world you want to create.
A few examples of "high" vs. "low" diction, both of 'em being equally good:
- Shakespeare. Best seen, I think, in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," but also elsewhere.
- From Mervyn Peake's "Titus Groan" (Gormenghast Trilogy #1):
"Sourdust," he said, "have you heard about my son?"
It's a Lord saying that, but while you can't tell--the language is beautifully simple--you can tell that it's probably not an Elizabethan-style "rustic," or someone who's overly-educated and inclined to use thesauraus words, or someone given to a lot
of slang or contractions.
From the same book, we have Dr. Prunesquallor's sister Irma.
"You have broken in, Alfred!" said his sister. "Haven't you? Haven't you? I will have a suit cut for you tomorrow, Steerpike," she continued. "You will be sleeping here, I suppose? Where are you sleeping? Is he sleeping here? Where do you live? Where does he live, Alfred? What have you arranged? Nothing, I expect. Have you done anything? Have you? Have you?"
I'm just taking dialog passages at random here to show that you don't necessarily need context to convey character--sometimes the speech alone, itself, will do the trick beautifully well. Neither of the Peake examples I chose here are particularly "high" in tone. Simple language, really; words we still use everyday. The only phrase that's even a little archaic, in the second example, is "I will have a suit cut for you," but the rest doesn't even give a clue that she's nothing more than perhaps British, or has some small affection for litte mannerisims of speech and affected turns of phrase (I myself have a great weakness for them). But they are very clearly two different people. Their pacing is different, their word-choice is different--they have different natural ways of speaking without being awkward.
A counter-example, and the thing which got me started on this whole question of "what makes speech awkward, and why is it so annoying to be jolted out of a speculative fiction work, especially, by a badly-penned sentence?" is Neil Gaiman's comic 1602. The whole thing, I think, is worth reading, and Gaiman--his early works especially--is one of my favorite authors for creating a scene, an ambience, a tone, a new idea, and tying these things all together; he's also good at creating individually memorable characters.
But recently, and regretfully, I've been finding that I've been enjoying his work less, and figured out why that was when my attention was caught by examples in 1602--I think the tone of his characters' dialog is occasionally inconsistent.
No spoilers here, I hope. While reading, please keep in mind that the premise of the series was that events were taking place in Elizabethan England. The following is in one panel; and there is only one character, a woman, speaking:
"Were you not listening? This is what he wants. [First Name]. [First Name]. You heard him: Make it happen."
This caught my attention first as a reader--something seemed off--and then caught my writer-brain as well. (When I'm reading, part of my attention seems half-taken-up by seeing how an author did such-and-such a thing. While I can read exclusively as a writer/editor, looking for such things, I rarely do: it draws attention to the flaws of mediocre stories I'd otherwise like, and for bad things makes me want to throw them across the room. For good stuff, I often do reads as a writer, but it makes me read slower, as I'm stunned at every sentence by the perfect expression of inexpressible things). Which is to say: I wanted to dissect it, label its guts to see why it seemed off.
Here's how I read it:
- The first sentence seems to go well enough.
- The second is pretty much unremarkable, though perhaps a bit over-wordy for the time; I'd rather see it phrased as: "He wants this."
- The third and fourth sentences are simply names, first names. This, I think, is inappropriate to the time as well as the character, who is a grown woman; a wife--the type that'd be described in almost any cast-of-characters in Elizabethan times as "so-and-so: his good Wife." If she referred to them by last name only, it'd be more military, and possibly (but only barely) more acceptable. But she's referring to them by their first names. There isn't much precedent for that in the time-period, when people generally only called each other by their first name if they were higher in rank--ordering a servant or an errand-boy about, calling to someone on the street, or if they were familiar with them through blood-ties, long friendship, or marriage--and possibly not even the last, in public. Generally women would refer to their husbands as "Mr. Shaw" when making introductions...certainly they'd do the same to near-strangers, even if they had all been on a month-long sea voyage together? If you were being very informal, you might call someone "Goodwife Mary," but even that still strikes me as somehow a bit off.
- The last sentence. First, I don't like the structure. The colon in the middle of such a short phrase seems very modern in usage to me, and the phrasing. Well. "You heard him," maaaaybe. But "make it happen?" I've only heard that phrase twice in my life. The first was in a Frosted Flakes ad; the second was a motivational speaker.
I'm going to resist the temptation to say "here's how I would have written the whole thing." That's one short step from saying "I could have done it better," and I don't have a finished comic to my name, much less zillions of them like Gaiman
does.
And, to his credit, he does use dialog to wonderful effect elsewhere in the comic. There are several characters whose special properties, or whose understanding of the world, far exceeds that of others', and their level of dialog, and their word-choice, shows that to excllent effect.
I just wish he'd be consistent with the characters who aren't the exceptions to the rule, that's all. I find that my favorite works by Gaiman--Neverwhere, the Sandman comics series--are ones where each character speaks as himself or herself, solidly and consistently. These works mix diverse time periods, zillions of characters, roam the globe, so it's not even a question of "is it a weakness in period dialog?" Hob Gadling never misspeaks. There's no question around the edges if the speech creeped in. These characters are the ones that speak as naturally as people in dreams do: what they say is extension, and inevitable consequence, of what they are.
Some suggestions, finally, of things to read, authors who get the full attention of my writer-brain with the dialog of their characters:
- Steven King's entire "Dark Tower" series, starting with "The Gunslinger." Of especial interest is book 6, where the people of present-day interact with those of Gilead.
- Peake's "Gormenghast" series. I've only read the first, but from what I read, and when looking back on it during the writing of this essay, I can see that part of what makes the book so memorable is not just the setting and the characters themselves--who are memorable enough--but it's through their dialog that they are *alive* in this heap of a dead place.
- Every single word of "Watership Down." Not the invented language, really, so much as the way the different types of rabbits use pacing and show what they think of through what they speak of.
- Edward Gorey doesn't use much dialog, but the internal monologues of Mr. Earbrass are good; anything else you find is a great study in how to skirt along the edges of Victorian language while retaining "perspective," aka "dark whimsey."
- I recently read Susanna Clarke's "Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell." All I can say is that the novel that I'm currently writing uses semi-similar antiquated language, and Clarke gave me hope that if the story is good enough and the language is absolutely spot-on (you could play darts with the period spellings in that letter!) the characters' speech-patterns will read as supremely unforced, no matter how stylized, and all will be well.
- John Crowley's work. Anything, really.
Complaints? Suggestions of people to add to the list? Favorite examples of hideous dialog which made you turn your books into projectile weapons? Hey, kids, it's time to share!
Diction in Dialog: with Side Notes on Speculative Fiction
The speculative fiction problem with bad dialog--defined, for purposes of this discussion, as something accidentally anachronistic, language out-of-sorts with with a character's ordinary mode of speech, or overly-period slang (think of those horrible grade-school readers left over from the 1970's!), or plain awkward-sounding speech--is that is boots the reader not only out of the character, but also, by extension, out of the world of the story.
Through their speech, characters create--or at least make more real--the fictional world they inhabit. If it's an out-of-genre story, we might at least be able to let a few things go. So, they didn't have matches yet in 1440? The rest of the world is still there as we know it. So, the assistant-principal character said, "If something doesn't change around here, mister, and fast, it'll be kinda bad?" We wince, but perhaps chalk it up to the fact that it was a first novel, or else that we've all known particularly inarticulate school administrators.
But when anything goes in your world, any dialog can't: in speculative fiction, perhaps more than anywhere else, words have an almost literal power of shaping the reader's thoughts, pointing them toward possiblities: "this is possible here. This is not. This might be, but you can't be sure yet." If the only things the reader can possibly know about the reality are the rules you've implied--partly through dialog--then breaking them unintentionally is the literary equivalent of being spun around before trying to hit a pinata. Don't blame the reader if she ends up mistakenly advancing on the sofa, stick held aloft.
One can occasionally get away with breaking dialog rules when one is setting out the story-world, when things are still flexible--the reader might not know enough yet to be aware that something is off. Even if the reader does notice, or guess, he might be able to keep telling himself "it could make sense later," and keep reading. (Sometimes this is even the case).
Deliberately surreal, even awkward, settings often make this work too. My favorite example is a beautiful parody of the Balrog scene from Tolkien in Weis and Hickman's "Death Gate" series, where the main characters are simply--and properly--mystified by the in-joke between the author, the bit characters making the joke, the acknowledgement of the reader behind the third wall (we know there must be one; we can hear him smirking), and the reader himself.
But not always. Take one of the best books for awkward settings I've ever read: William Hope Hodgson's "The House on the Borderlands." Takes place mostly either inside a half-abandoned remote English mansion, or in what might be outer space. Hodgson somehow manages to pull it off--some of the passages are nothing short of miracles of prose. He very rarely has his characters talk, though, and that's probably a good thing, as it's generally the most godawful cliche. It's not even a problem of antique-sounding phrases: even at the time it was written, no one thought it had scintillating dialog.
Good dialog is hardly ever awkward (an exception in a moment).
Even if the character's speech is hesitant, or if the person is in the grip of some huge emotion or has a speech impediment (like the stuttering Kim Philby in Tim Powers' novel "Declare"), the speech itself, the phrasing and word-choice, is not generally the thing you want to draw readers' attentions to. What do you want? The readers to be so taken in by the natural dialog that they don't even realize it's natural. The last thing you want is for someone to have to ask the question, "do people really talk like that?" That's when you've lost them.
Why is this the case? Listen to real people talking--on the subway, on the radio, on the street, when you buy milk at the corner. Perhaps one person plans what they're going to say, and then says it; perhaps another speaks with little thought involved, or speaks to shock or impress or dazzle with wit or rhyme. But people speak to a purpose, even if that purpose is consciously trivial, and they've generally got that purpose in mind before they ever open their mouths. Therefore, most people don't generally question their word-choice while they're speaking--and that's what makes dialog sound natural.
When *is* dialog awkward? That's right--when people are thinking about what they're speaking as they're saying it. When they're correcting themselves, or when they're embarassed (both times when they're searching consciously for the right word).
That last--searching consciously for the right word--is, in a sense, what authors do all the time, so it's not suprising that there's a lot of bad, bad dialog out there.
This is, I've seen, especially true in short passages, where if something doesn't ring true to the "inner ear"--sense of pacing, flow, word-choice, whatever--it's often read, considered, and rejected as wrong as a whole, practially before the eye is done passing over the type.
It's also especially true of the words--whether written or not--in mediums other than novels. Comics, posters, movies. If some visual shares the emphasis with the written word, as in comics, or usurps it entirely, as in film, there isn't anything to make up for it. In novels, the author has lots and lots of words to build a story for the reader; they're all of a kind. One word in 500,000 isn't too bad, especially if the author excels at something else: describing scenery or relationships, or making clever puns, or explaining difficult concepts with utter clarity. But one word in a ten-word text balloon, surrounded by pictures? Or one old slang term in your driver's-ed video, dating the entire thing? The writer can't cover those up with descriptions that blow your mind and make you inclined to forgive them and keep reading anyway, because those visuals are a place where text can't (usually) go.
How can an author use bad dialog for the Forces of Good? Usually to humorous effect. Shakespeare, Johnson, and the rest of the Elizabethan English playwrights do this amazingly well. Though those fellows are more attuned to our modern ears and sensibilities, and hence a bit easier to ferret examples from than Chaucer might be, but he also provides good ear-fodder.
Terry Pratchett's work is another. Garrison Keillor's "Lake Woebegone" stories use a deadpan, amazingly adept delivery of lines for the narration as well as wonderfully nuanced, equally adept "Minnesotan" when it's called for.
What does dialog, bad or good, do? Denotes to the outside world practially everything about a character's inside world. Even if we don't want to, we carry language-assumptions around with us: put them to good use and feed your writing too. Close your eyes and listen to people on television. Can you make an guess about them based on the words they choose, the rythyms of their speech, their accent or lack thereof? Can you guess their class background, religion, birth language, cultural upbringing and general mental landscape? Can you tell if they're masking or attempt to mask it, or to mock it, by changing something about their speech, or choosing to adopt another's? Sometimes you'll be wrong and sometimes you'll be right and sometimes you'll be suprised. Use this, all of it, for your writing.
What does this mean for a writer of speculative fiction? Diction, need not be--and indeed should not be, unless called for--"high," but it always, in any genre, simply needs to be appropriate. To the time period, to the character, to the tone of the story you're writing and the world you want to create.
A few examples of "high" vs. "low" diction, both of 'em being equally good:
- Shakespeare. Best seen, I think, in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," but also elsewhere.
- From Mervyn Peake's "Titus Groan" (Gormenghast Trilogy #1):
"Sourdust," he said, "have you heard about my son?"
It's a Lord saying that, but while you can't tell--the language is beautifully simple--you can tell that it's probably not an Elizabethan-style "rustic," or someone who's overly-educated and inclined to use thesauraus words, or someone given to a lot
of slang or contractions.
From the same book, we have Dr. Prunesquallor's sister Irma.
"You have broken in, Alfred!" said his sister. "Haven't you? Haven't you? I will have a suit cut for you tomorrow, Steerpike," she continued. "You will be sleeping here, I suppose? Where are you sleeping? Is he sleeping here? Where do you live? Where does he live, Alfred? What have you arranged? Nothing, I expect. Have you done anything? Have you? Have you?"
I'm just taking dialog passages at random here to show that you don't necessarily need context to convey character--sometimes the speech alone, itself, will do the trick beautifully well. Neither of the Peake examples I chose here are particularly "high" in tone. Simple language, really; words we still use everyday. The only phrase that's even a little archaic, in the second example, is "I will have a suit cut for you," but the rest doesn't even give a clue that she's nothing more than perhaps British, or has some small affection for litte mannerisims of speech and affected turns of phrase (I myself have a great weakness for them). But they are very clearly two different people. Their pacing is different, their word-choice is different--they have different natural ways of speaking without being awkward.
A counter-example, and the thing which got me started on this whole question of "what makes speech awkward, and why is it so annoying to be jolted out of a speculative fiction work, especially, by a badly-penned sentence?" is Neil Gaiman's comic 1602. The whole thing, I think, is worth reading, and Gaiman--his early works especially--is one of my favorite authors for creating a scene, an ambience, a tone, a new idea, and tying these things all together; he's also good at creating individually memorable characters.
But recently, and regretfully, I've been finding that I've been enjoying his work less, and figured out why that was when my attention was caught by examples in 1602--I think the tone of his characters' dialog is occasionally inconsistent.
No spoilers here, I hope. While reading, please keep in mind that the premise of the series was that events were taking place in Elizabethan England. The following is in one panel; and there is only one character, a woman, speaking:
"Were you not listening? This is what he wants. [First Name]. [First Name]. You heard him: Make it happen."
This caught my attention first as a reader--something seemed off--and then caught my writer-brain as well. (When I'm reading, part of my attention seems half-taken-up by seeing how an author did such-and-such a thing. While I can read exclusively as a writer/editor, looking for such things, I rarely do: it draws attention to the flaws of mediocre stories I'd otherwise like, and for bad things makes me want to throw them across the room. For good stuff, I often do reads as a writer, but it makes me read slower, as I'm stunned at every sentence by the perfect expression of inexpressible things). Which is to say: I wanted to dissect it, label its guts to see why it seemed off.
Here's how I read it:
- The first sentence seems to go well enough.
- The second is pretty much unremarkable, though perhaps a bit over-wordy for the time; I'd rather see it phrased as: "He wants this."
- The third and fourth sentences are simply names, first names. This, I think, is inappropriate to the time as well as the character, who is a grown woman; a wife--the type that'd be described in almost any cast-of-characters in Elizabethan times as "so-and-so: his good Wife." If she referred to them by last name only, it'd be more military, and possibly (but only barely) more acceptable. But she's referring to them by their first names. There isn't much precedent for that in the time-period, when people generally only called each other by their first name if they were higher in rank--ordering a servant or an errand-boy about, calling to someone on the street, or if they were familiar with them through blood-ties, long friendship, or marriage--and possibly not even the last, in public. Generally women would refer to their husbands as "Mr. Shaw" when making introductions...certainly they'd do the same to near-strangers, even if they had all been on a month-long sea voyage together? If you were being very informal, you might call someone "Goodwife Mary," but even that still strikes me as somehow a bit off.
- The last sentence. First, I don't like the structure. The colon in the middle of such a short phrase seems very modern in usage to me, and the phrasing. Well. "You heard him," maaaaybe. But "make it happen?" I've only heard that phrase twice in my life. The first was in a Frosted Flakes ad; the second was a motivational speaker.
I'm going to resist the temptation to say "here's how I would have written the whole thing." That's one short step from saying "I could have done it better," and I don't have a finished comic to my name, much less zillions of them like Gaiman
does.
And, to his credit, he does use dialog to wonderful effect elsewhere in the comic. There are several characters whose special properties, or whose understanding of the world, far exceeds that of others', and their level of dialog, and their word-choice, shows that to excllent effect.
I just wish he'd be consistent with the characters who aren't the exceptions to the rule, that's all. I find that my favorite works by Gaiman--Neverwhere, the Sandman comics series--are ones where each character speaks as himself or herself, solidly and consistently. These works mix diverse time periods, zillions of characters, roam the globe, so it's not even a question of "is it a weakness in period dialog?" Hob Gadling never misspeaks. There's no question around the edges if the speech creeped in. These characters are the ones that speak as naturally as people in dreams do: what they say is extension, and inevitable consequence, of what they are.
Some suggestions, finally, of things to read, authors who get the full attention of my writer-brain with the dialog of their characters:
- Steven King's entire "Dark Tower" series, starting with "The Gunslinger." Of especial interest is book 6, where the people of present-day interact with those of Gilead.
- Peake's "Gormenghast" series. I've only read the first, but from what I read, and when looking back on it during the writing of this essay, I can see that part of what makes the book so memorable is not just the setting and the characters themselves--who are memorable enough--but it's through their dialog that they are *alive* in this heap of a dead place.
- Every single word of "Watership Down." Not the invented language, really, so much as the way the different types of rabbits use pacing and show what they think of through what they speak of.
- Edward Gorey doesn't use much dialog, but the internal monologues of Mr. Earbrass are good; anything else you find is a great study in how to skirt along the edges of Victorian language while retaining "perspective," aka "dark whimsey."
- I recently read Susanna Clarke's "Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell." All I can say is that the novel that I'm currently writing uses semi-similar antiquated language, and Clarke gave me hope that if the story is good enough and the language is absolutely spot-on (you could play darts with the period spellings in that letter!) the characters' speech-patterns will read as supremely unforced, no matter how stylized, and all will be well.
- John Crowley's work. Anything, really.
Complaints? Suggestions of people to add to the list? Favorite examples of hideous dialog which made you turn your books into projectile weapons? Hey, kids, it's time to share!
(no subject)
25/11/05 06:08 (UTC)I don't think I'm emailing it to Gaiman, because well gee, I do like good portions of his work, and also haven't yet given his most recent work of fiction (Anansi Boys) a read-through yet and so don't want to comment more on the problem because perhaps it's been cleared up a little since. One hopes.
And also, he gets zillions of emails a day.
I like to write this kind of thing for myself, first, to order my thoughts--and then if an audience happens by it's a pleasant suprise!