Mrs.D, a prolific reader has remarked how some recently published* works sport dumbed-down plots and weirdly mangled and ungrammatical Engrish (punctuation optional), seemingly pitched to the modern, sub-literate audience. (I'm content with perusing picture books mostly) Yeah, it's not about the quality.
*actually printed with hard covers, fulsome praise quotes and everything, available in the lieberry.
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Indeed, some of the stuff churned out by even some quite respectable publishers is desperately in need of more editing. It's a sign of the times; most authors earn publishers next to nothing so don't get the editorial oversight they need because it's expensive. Successful authors are often handled with a light touch so as not to jeopardise the money flow - and they often need as much if not more editorial control. Commerce is king in the end. And that explains the endless flow of celebrity shit masquerading as everything from writing for children (hard to find a celebrity who doesn't think they can somehow write for children) to great art.
never trust a man in a blue trench coat, never drive a car when you're dead
Dan Brown was the one who floored me. I picked up The da Vinci Code out of a sense of obligation when it first ran away with itself. I wasn't hoping for Austen, but I was expecting basic syntax and the rational use of words. Don't get me wrong: the narrative rattles along energetically (if predictably) enough: but I'm not sure I've read worse English in any professionally published work.
"We all have flaws, and mine is being wicked."
James Thurber, The Thirteen Clocks 1951
Yeah, I didn't want to mention him because I suppose he is doing something well - and I think you've hit on it. The stories rattle along and are easy to follow. But, my God his writing is utter shit. No grasp of grammar at all: commas in the wrong places, sentences that end in the most implausible. Constant use of pointless and almost meaningless adjectives, adverbs and analogies: the very wealthy man glanced at his watch... Oh and the ridiculous over-use of ellipses... Then there are simple mistakes because he grabs at ideas he thinks he knows. My absolute favourite, 'P a n d o r a is out of her box.' I can't help wondering whether Dan thinks his masterwork, the Da Vinci Code, is actually based on fact rather than being mainly plagiarised from another load of old bunkum (The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail) by authors who were completely taken in by a hoax perpetrated partly for fun, and partly as a bit of self-promotion by some French tricksters.
Incidentally, the earnings figure I quoted of £13000 came from figures the Society of Authors published a couple of years ago and it seems that this applies to writers of novels, short stories and book-length non-fiction work. I'm assured it's possible to earn a great deal more (3 or 4 times as much) if you put the famous novel on the back burner and concentrate on magazine short stories, filler pieces bordering on journalism, journalism, competitions, commercial blogs, etc. etc. That does surprise me and I suspect that in order to achieve this one would need to work very hard indeed.
never trust a man in a blue trench coat, never drive a car when you're dead
Just out of interest, why is there some kind of word filter on P a n d o r a? Doesn't appear to be something I've set in the past so I assume it's forum wide. Maybe/maybe not.
never trust a man in a blue trench coat, never drive a car when you're dead
What did you (and Mrs D) think of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, assuming you've read it?
There's very little punctuation throughout the text, in fact I'm not even sure he uses full stops. I read the whole thing as a work of poetry rather than a novel and quite liked the frankly impersonal way the main characters are referred to; the man and the boy.
I'll ask her, I certainly haven't read it. Don't do much reading anymore, mainly look at photo books, with the odd graphic novel thrown in, and follow a ton of news online. Once in a while she tosses me some murder mystery -type thing that's due back at the lieberry before I've half-read it. She talked about some book she had recently that has no chapters, which she found remarkable, other than which -- not well written. I did see McCarthy's No Country For Old Men the movie, which I thought had an excellent plot.
Oh yeah, I have been reading a translation of The Aeneid, which I found in our building's laundry room and find it pretty interesting.
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