I'm reading "A World The Color of Salt," a crime novel by a friend who is truly a great writer, Noreen Ayres. She has published three novels but as far as I can tell has not made a million dollars.
I love her writing. She is literate, sensitive to the language, and creative. There is a lot of poetry in her prose.
On the other hand, look at the big bestsellers. Take, for example, Tana French. I tried to read one of Tana French's books, “Faithful Place,” and I found it to be boring, trivial, diffuse, and unengaging. The first ten pages had exactly one interesting line.
Look at all the bestsellers: James Patterson, John Grisham, Lisa Gardner, and even the so-called literary writers, like Jonathan Franzen. Their writing is less than admirable, I would say, to be kind.
Why does weak writing make more money? Is it that the book-buying public is illiterate and poorly educated? Maybe.
Whatever reason, the fact that great writers languish while crappy writers make millions is an example of Unbearable Crap.
One novel by a famous mystery writer was so illogical that it gave me a headache. Now that same writer has published more than a dozen novels to world-wide acclaim.
To me, everything about Noreen Ayres's book is better: the story, the setting, the characters, the underlying logic, and of course the writing.
I give you two quotes by the poet Ezra Pound:
"A man reading ought to be a man intensely alive. The book ought to be a ball of light in his hands."
"The public will buy a certain amount of poetry if you give them their striptease.”
And, from Ernest Hemingway, mocking Ezra Pound:
“In the end, the age was handed / the sort of shit that it demanded.”
“In the end, the age was handed / the sort of shit that it demanded.”
(Pardon my French. But I assume you speak French.)
It breaks my heart.
And there is this, from the most famous mystery writer, Raymond Chandler:
“As I look back on my own stories it would be absurd if I did not wish they had been better. But if they had been much better they would not have been published.”
I don't know if that is true.
I hope it isn't, but I fear that it is.
And one last truth:
“There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.” -- Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964)
Amen to that.
Copyright 2011 by Roger R. Angle.
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