People say that you can't criticise something until you have tried it for yourself. Nonsense. I am about to criticise Dan Brown and I have never read one of his novels. So what are my qualifications? Well, a resort to authority, or perhaps pseudo-authority. An over reliance on authority is a terrible thing ("I was just following orders"). However, who would wish to argue with this collection of thoughts on Mr Brown's oeuvre:
Stephen King: "the intellectual equivalent of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese"
John Humphreys: "the literary equivalent of painting by numbers, by an artist who can’t even stay within the lines"
Salman Rushdie: "so bad that it gives bad novels a bad name"
Stewart Lee: "there is nothing of any value in Dan Brown"
Stephen Fry: "complete loose stool-water"
New York Times: "primer on how not to write an English sentence"
Anthony Lane: "unmitigated junk"
Geoffrey Pullum: "(one of the) worst prose stylists in the history of literature"
So imagine how pleased with myself I was this morning when I saw a fellow passenger reading Brown, and thought to myself "something to do while you wait to die." (The smug commuter mentally criticised the bespectacled fat man.)
Did I steal that from somewhere? It came to me unbidden, which is always a hint that something isn't original thought. But it felt original. And it felt good.
Showing posts with label literature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label literature. Show all posts
Friday, 26 November 2010
Monday, 27 September 2010
Won't Someone Think Of The Children?
Apparently To Kill A Mockingbird is one of the most objected-to novels on US curriculae, due largely to the language used.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11417672
As one 'commenter' points out, use of the word "nigger" reflects in part the era in which the book was set. However, we can make a broader statement. In order to excuse particular forms of language in novels, it is enough to recognise that reported speech is just that. If we want authors to write honestly and meaningfully, we need to accept that characters in novels will sometimes use language that we do not approve of. If parents object to that, they are in effect saying they want their children to be sheltered from certain aspects of reality. That is OK to a point, of course, but it sounds as though there are an awful lot of censorious parents out there who cannot tolerate any version of reality that doesn't look and sound a lot like Disneyland.
Catcher In The Rye is also on the list for similar reasons. A shame. It should be on the list because it's rubbish.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11417672
As one 'commenter' points out, use of the word "nigger" reflects in part the era in which the book was set. However, we can make a broader statement. In order to excuse particular forms of language in novels, it is enough to recognise that reported speech is just that. If we want authors to write honestly and meaningfully, we need to accept that characters in novels will sometimes use language that we do not approve of. If parents object to that, they are in effect saying they want their children to be sheltered from certain aspects of reality. That is OK to a point, of course, but it sounds as though there are an awful lot of censorious parents out there who cannot tolerate any version of reality that doesn't look and sound a lot like Disneyland.
Catcher In The Rye is also on the list for similar reasons. A shame. It should be on the list because it's rubbish.
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