The Poul Anderson Oh

[calimac]

Since my last attempt at fiction critiquing didn't get me beaten heavily about the head and shoulders, I feel encouraged to venture another one.

I wish to express my dislike for what I call the Poul Anderson Oh, a common feature in SF and genre fantasy but which I've rarely seen outside the field. I give it that title because of its prevalence in the works of that otherwise estimable author. The Poul Anderson Oh occurs when a character is delivering a diatribe, or an explanation or defense of his or her actions, and anticipates and attempts to disarm a possible objection or plot hole with a sentence beginning with the word "Oh."

There are other ways to say "Oh" without it being the Poul Anderson Oh, of course. If that's the first word of what the character says in response to another character's comment, it's not a true case. The Poul Anderson Oh only occurs during the course of unbroken speech, and the finest specimens are found in the middle of a paragraph. There's just something about that "Oh" said by itself, not in response to someone else: it sounds pompous and artificial.

I didn't read all of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (a book that I keep calling Dr. Strange & Mr. Normal, and not as a deliberate joke), but I was very impressed with author Susanna Clarke's command of period language and feel in her related fiction. So I was a bit dismayed to find a golden example of the Poul Anderson Oh in the excerpt recently posted on Making Light.

Comments

[scribblerworks.livejournal.com]

Well, however, maybe perhaps ... :)

I don't know. I've been known to use the occasional "Oh" in just that way in real-time conversation. So perhaps I'm not one to judge. Oh, I'm not saying that you're wrong about it, just ...

Heh.

[fishlifter.livejournal.com]

That's very well observed. And I know I do that, absolutely as a pre-emptive thing, when I'm writing e.g. fanzine articles.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't see why you would be dismayed in this case. You say that the "oh" sounds pompous and artificial. I think that was Clarke's object, not to be pompous and artificial herself, but to make the character seem so. Isn't that an appropriate use of Anderson's Oh?

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I don't know why an author would want a character to sound artificial. And it's not the character who sounds pompous this way. It's the author.