Good Writing/Good Reading
Semi-recently a friend and I were talking about books and what we liked and didn’t like and turned out we both liked detective and crime books and we talked about why and here’s what we came up with:
In detective and crime stories (these are now often labeled “thrillers”) things happen and the story moves forward to a logical conclusion and after a lifetime of reading (more on that momentarily) I’ve had it up to here with books about peoples’ feelings and emotional problems (I’ve got plenty of my own) or their love-hate relationship with a White Whale.
Speaking of which…
Here’s an essay I wrote a while ago and now seems like a good time to use it because it’s about readable writing.
Unfair Writing
A while back I picked up Tomato Red, a Daniel Woodrell novel (he’s the guy who wrote Winter’s Bone which was turned into the movie that made Jennifer Lawrence famous) and at the end of the book there was a question and answer section in which Woodrell told a story about speaking at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and being asked this question by a young girl:
“Don’t you think it’s sorta cheap to have an opening sentence that makes the reader want to keep reading?”
Apparently, serious writers are supposed to write opening sentences that makes the reader want to stop reading immediately and claw their eyes out, which happens every time I pick up a book by Marcel Proust or William Faulkner or the King James Bible, a problem I’ve solved by not picking them up more than once.
I asked my son the novelist (he’s published four books) about this Woodrell story and my son said, yeah, there seems to be a lot of writers who think books should be hard to read and filled with words nobody actually uses, so you’re getting out a dictionary twice a page and the plots should be murky and vague and when you get done reading 772 pages of murky vagueness, the point still isn’t obvious and you need to form a book club to drink cheap wine and discuss what the White Whale in Moby Dick symbolized.
What the White Whale In Moby Dick Symbolized
I just asked Google that question and Artificial Intelligence (which is a good name for what happens when people get together to discuss books, but wind up getting hammered on boxed wine) and AI seems pretty confused, just like the rest of us.
According to him/her/it/they, the White Whale means different things to different people and here are a few of the possibilities:
The personification of Nature’s power.
The Unknowable Universe.
Evil.
A socially acceptable reason for getting together with friends and drinking cheap chardonnay at 2 PM on a Tuesday.
Google this question and it immediately becomes clear that nobody knows for sure what the White Whale symbolizes and it’s up to you to decide and I’m getting lazier in my Old Age because after reading a book thick enough to use as a doorstop or hold up one end of a couch or knock out a burglar, I don’t want to have to supply the ending which is also why I don’t buy furniture from IKEA.
You expect me to put this shit together myself?
I prefer authors who have a reason for writing a book and don’t keep that reason a secret.
And Now A Rant About Overly-Prolific Authors
Most days I walk to my local library because the walk’s about the right distance and it has a bathroom in case I feel the urge to urinate which at my age happens every 15 minutes and on a good day you won’t find a homeless person setting up housekeeping in a toilet stall.
And my local library has also saved me thousands of dollars that I would have spent on books and movies and when we get invaded by a superior species from Outer Space which then has to decide whether Earth is worth saving (according to the movies I watch, that scenario is pretty much inevitable) and the Space Aliens look at fast food and social media and the fact that we elected Donald Trump twice, one of the few things we can point to that might mean the Human Race is worth saving are libraries.
(Libraries and Richard Pryor standup routines assuming the Aliens don’t mind profanity and if they do, fuck them.)
And when I get to the library and look in the “New And Notable” section there will be at least six books by James Patterson written with a wide variety of co-authors including Literary Geniuses like Bill Clinton and Dolly Parton, but maybe you shouldn’t take my literary criticism too seriously because it just took me three tries to correctly spell “geniuses.”
Nevertheless…
As I’ve already said, I’d like the author to be clear about why he/she/they wrote their book and in the case of James Patterson his motivation might best be explained by a story of my own:
A friend of mine (not the reading friend) went to a strip club to get drunk (he could have done that at a book club, but unless the book is Lady Chatterley’s Boy Toy and a huge amount of chardonnay was consumed, nudity probably wouldn’t have been involved) and my friend gets hammered and enamored (which would be a great name for a Guns ‘N’ Roses album) with a young lady who has artificial breasts the size of beach balls.
In his drunken state, he then decides it’s a great idea to stagger to the stage and tell the young lady she’s beautiful and ask why she had her breasts enlarged to a Guinness Book of World Records degree and after he asks that question, she answers:
“FOR THE MONEY, YOU FUCKING MORON.”
And I think we have to admit that sounds likely.
In the case of James Patterson the reason to write so much seems to be money and according to the once again confused AI, James Patterson averages 10-to-18 books a year and has had either nearly two dozen, nearly twenty or over two dozen or over 30 coauthors.
Under the “people also ask” section, someone wanted to know why James Patterson has so many coauthors and I think we now know the answer: he didn’t want to have his breasts enlarged.
But I’m pretty sure James Patterson doesn’t give a flying monkey shit what I think because his estimated net worth is $800-to-$900 million and he lives (or lived, I don’t keep up on this stuff) in a Palm Beach mansion (Jeffrey Epstein was a neighbor) and can publish a shit ton of books every year because he writes an outline and lets his coauthors do the rest and there’s just no way to publish a book every few weeks and have them be worth a shit.
(This has become an increasingly popular book publishing model: Famous Author Who Has Publishing Contacts with Guy You Never Heard of Who Will Do All the Work.)
And I include this story just to prove there are shitty detective novels that are somehow beneath my admittedly low standards.
According to the internet, Patterson has published over 21 books this year alone, but recently denied running a “book factory” and claims he doesn’t “need the money” and says what drives him is the question “what can I do most beautifully” which sounds less honest than that twenty-something stripper with big hooters.
Because:
A. Nobody thinks they have enough money. Elon Musk doesn’t think he has enough money. Jeff Bezos doesn’t think he has enough money. Scrooge McDuck doesn’t think he has enough money.
B. Sounds like James Patterson wants it both ways: he wants the Book Factory money, but also wants the respect that a successful writer gets and if I had to choose, I’d definitely take the money.
(And if James Patterson is one of those insecure rich/famous people that gets an alert every time he’s mentioned on the internet and doesn’t like what I just wrote, maybe he should send an outline to Dolly Parton and Dolly can write a snippy response in the comments section.)
And now back to that unfair writer, Daniel Woodrell, and his cheap opening sentence from the novel Muscle For The Wing:
“Wishing to avoid any risk of a snub at The Hushed Hill Country Club, the first thing Emil Jadick shoved through the door was double-barreled and loaded.”
Definitely a cheap trick because I want to keep reading and find out what happens next (the main reason we like stories) but according to that snooty chick in the writers workshop, Woodrell should know great literature avoids being entertaining and accessible.
And because I’ve collected a bunch of them, here are some more samples of Daniel Woodrell’s cheap, unfair writing and if I recall correctly (and I often don’t) they all come from the same book Tomato Red:
“You’ve got to get to where you’re pretty international in attitude toward what she does.”
Her dress was a size low or so and she got that white fabric slamming from side to side like it was a sack she trapped a poodle in.
Jason stood, then, and, cocked an eyebrow and sucked on his lips and closely examined my head like he just might bid on it.
Smelled like a cotton picker’s hat band.
“We weren’t raised with decent values,” she said. “We’ll have to memorize some on our own.”
If I knew what to do I’d be willing to do it.
The wine, which was of the Chablis category.
Like an avalanche late for a date with a flood someplace down the line.
Three times smarter and older in every useful way.
Apparently celebrating some fun moment from history I don’t know about.
Above the average pink in pizzazz, like a pink that had been drinking gin since lunch and wanted to dance.
Those are lines that make you want to keep reading because Woodrell’s describing familiar things in new and inventive ways and even if you’ve never seen those words in that precise order, you know exactly what Woodrell’s talking about.
You can’t write like this if you’re churning out books every 2.6 weeks.
Just looked it up and Woodrell tends to publish a book about every five years, but hasn’t published one since 2013 even though he’s working on it.
Writing well is hard work which is why most of us don’t do it.
Today’s Lesson
Admitting you like detective/crime/thrillers is a bit like admitting you like soap operas or cheap drug store whiskey or Taco Bell tacos and if I actually liked soap operas I’d be three-for-three on that list.
In defense of detective/crime/thrillers, may it please the court for me to recount a scene from The Mary Tyler Moore Show and in this episode Mary tries writing a book and it’s godawful and when she asks Lou Grant what he thinks of her writing, Lou pulls out a book of Raymond Chandler short stories and reads Mary the opening paragraph of Red Wind:
There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.
When Lou asks Mary what she thinks of that, Mary—in her most stick-up-the-butt-tight-ass voice—says:
“He writes nicely about the weather.”
Good writing is good writing wherever you find it and I sent my friend a list of my favorite authors and it occurred to me everybody (at least everybody that reads and that percentage of the population is dwindling and should be encouraged) is looking for something good to read and just in case you missed any of my favorite writers, I’m going post my list starting tomorrow…
Assuming I’m not hungover from cheap drug store whiskey or feeling ill from too many Taco Bell tacos or don’t get invited to a Chablis-fueled orgy at a book club.
You never know.
Damn, this one hit home for me. I’m a lifelong and voracious reader (translation: I read a lot.) I’m also a retired “creative professional” and academic, and one thing of which I’m certain is that there’s absolutely no room in my world for pretentious writing. Academe is notorious for doing so. The free downloadable ebooks on Amazon equally so, not to mention they are rife with bad writing, preposterous plots, and simply not entertaining. This last thing is unforgivable. A book that doesn’t entertain me is wasting whatever time I have left to mope around on this rock. Give me Raymond Chandler or Robert B. Parker any day of the week, which is a little tough these days because my local library has democratically decided to limit the number of titles in their collection by authors who’ve fooled so many people into reading their work, in favor of titles that put me right to sleep.
Anyone who, even on a drunken whim, considers themselves to be a writer should go, at least once to a Writer's Workshop. You're not likely to get into the Iowa Writer's Workshop, but there are others, any one of which, even at the local corner bookstore level, will humble and embarrass you until you admit, at least to yourself, that you can't string three words together, much less create a cohesive narrative. It's sobering. You will consider taking up welding.