The bane of having read voraciously since an early age: bad writing stands out like a sore thumb. Now, don’t take that as an assertion that I can readily emulate good writing. No, I’m simply critical of others’ bad writing. *heh*
What spurred me to comment once again? Raymond Khoury. I picked up his first novel at the library yesterday while I was there checking my email and performing other “essential” connectivity tasks (because service had not yet been restored here at twc central). What a waste of time. Cardboard cutouts for characters, straight from central casting–no surprise since Khoury apparently cut his teeth on television production–combined with stock “footage” of scenes from all the really boring cops shows that’ve come down the pike are bad enough, but his presentation is worse.
Example: a car chase (near New York City’s Central Park, no less), complete with driving through a chain link fence and vacant lot (where?!?) and this little gem of stupidity:
“Reilly jinked the Chrysler through a chicane-like cluster of cars and trucks… “
OK, setting aside the Irish Catholic “cop” (OK, in order to make him BIGGER, Khoury’s “promoted” the cop to FBI agent *feh*) as the primary in a novel about a stolen Vatican artifact *sigh*, what’s with “chicane-like cluster of cars and trucks”? Really stupid. Better, if one is going to have the boring car chase at all, would be “through a chicane of cars and trucks”. Much better imagery, much tighter reading. (Assuming the subliterate boobs reading the book were to know what a chicane is. Or how to use a dictionary to find out.)
But everything in the first 70 pages of this book has persuaded me that this is as good as it gets. The best is pedestrian stock “footage” from bad cop shows. This is one of those rare books I have no desire or motivation whatsoever to read to its predictably boring conclusion.
I suppose it’s a truism for a reason, but the good writers just don’t write fast enough. *heh* And writers like Khoury (and Dan Brown, for that matter–a few of the worst-wasted hours of my life were forcing myself to finish a Dan Brown best-seller) flourish–and even make best seller lists–because their readers are subliterate boobs who would’t recognize good writing if someone slapped them between the eyes with it. OK, OK, I’d not recognize good writing if it were presented to me in that fashion either, but you get my intent, eh? 🙂
I’ll admit to not knowing what a chicane was when used in that sentence. Which made me want to go look it up right after I read the sentence in question. 🙂 So I am perhaps only a semi-subliterate boob since I know how to and will use a dictionary. 🙂
No, Nicole, knowing what “chicane” means is simply a matter of vocabulary (and I know of very few people like me who grew up reading dictionaries for fun). People who know how to and DO look up words they aren’t familiar with have one of the essential traits of literacy: the willingness to amend a lack of knowledge. subliterate boobs just wallow around in a text making ignorant guesses, lurching from one hole in their understanding to another rather than fill those holes with substance. I blame it on feel-good “parenting” (really just trying to buy children’s affections) and “teaching” (A.K.A. perpetuating the subliteracy of the “teacher”) combined with lazy readers who may have been taught “reading” as hieroglyphics (“look-say” etc.) but who’ve never, even as adults, made the effort to fix their poor “reading” habits of childhood.
My real gripe with the excerpt is that using the simile “chicane-like” (an awkward construction at best) was a much weaker construction than the metaphor I offered (“a chicane of cars and trucks”), and that such construction had been typical of Khoury’s prose to that point: anywhere he could choose a weak construction over a strong, succinct image, he did. And did his editor catch such things? No. Probably because his editor had read no more well-written prose than had Khoury.
See Holly Lisle’s How To Write Suckitudinous Fiction for other examples of the worst in writing that have infected a generation of book editors as well as writers. I’d like to beat Academia Nut Fruitcake English professors over the head with a bound copy (bound in iron) until they remove 20th Century crap (for example, almost anything by James Joyce *gag*) out of their curricula.
Suckitudinous Fiction, heh!
And yes, you are right. “Chicane-like is a needless extension of the same basic word.
I always read with a dictionary to hand, just in case. It prevents me from being one of those people who gets the hoary old quotes wrong because I’ve never bothered to see how they were written, just heard them. None come to mind at the moment as examples, but I’m sure you know of what I speak. Bugs me no end to see common phrases written with the wrong word choice.
Notice that “chicane” and “chicanery” derive from the same root. Interesting how the words relate to one another, eh?
Thank you, David, for doing the job no one else wants to do! You saved me from this folly. “Chicane-like”….urg…..