MORE FICTION B.S.

A new review, of a book I just tried to read:

THE NERUDA CASE – by Roberto Ampuero 
(2012, Riverhead Books, Penguin Group)

9/29/2012

I saw this recommended somewhere and tried to read it. But I found it very confusing. At the same time, I started rereading “Seabiscuit” by Laura Hillenbrand and her writing is a thousand times better, more engaging and clearer.

I can’t read this Ampuero stuff. I can’t tell where we are or what is going on. I found the sentences convoluted and confusing from the get-go.

The beginning: 
 

“What could be bothering the partners of Almagro, Ruggierio & Associates, who had asked him to appear at their headquarters in such a hurry?”

What? Why not just say they called him and they were on the rag? Even the names are boring. The sentence is long and wordy.

I managed to wade through the first chapter, but then I got lost again. Slow, boring and complicated. Not my kind of stuff.

Where did this guy learn to write, in a law firm?

His purpose seems to be to obfuscate. To bore. To cloud the mind.

He's a typical acadmeic. Required to publish, whether his work is any good or not. You might know he teaches at a university and is Chile’s ambassador to Mexico. This writing is sad.

-- Roger

Copyright © 2012, Roger R. Angle

 

 

JOURNALISTIC CRAP

I was appalled the other day to read this opening line of an article in the June 3, 2012, issue of Los Angeles Times Magazine:

"The world is obsessed with Blake Lively."

Really? Who the hell is Blake Lively? I never heard of it or him or her.

The article's headline is "Blake Lively." Then the teaser lines say she is "at the center of Oliver Stone's crime thriller Savages." I never heard of it either.

I hate this kind of journalistic crap.

How are we supposed to believe anything in this article? Why would anyone read further? I didn't, and I won't.

I tried to find an e-mail address for the bylined writer, Leslie Gornstein, but couldn't find one. I was going to gently and politely point out that she is a purveyor of journalistic bullsh**. Of course, it could be that her editor added that stupid line. Such things happen.

You can see why some people have lost respect for newspapers and magazines.

I have to point out that the news pages of the LA Times are enormously more respectable than those of this cheesy magazine. And there are still great newspapers and magazines out there. I rely on The New Yorker and The New York Times. The latter's weekly magazine is good, I think.

The problem is that a lot of people have no quick and easy guide to what is junk journalism and what is reliable.

-- Roger

Copyright © 2012, Roger R. Angle

MORE BAD WRITING

The Los Angeles Times published a letter to the editor of mine yesterday:

     I got all excited, at first, when I saw a novel excerpt on Page E9, in Oct. 2's Book Review.   

     Then I started to read it. What bad writing. Most of it is clunky exposition and awkward back-story. The rest is lame story and poorly done description.  

     Why should we care if Richard wears boots or cross-trainers, or if anyone would notice?     

     Shotguns don't "stomp" people. That is ridiculous.

     I wish you would look for better writing to reprint. 

     If this book is a bestseller, that's sad. 

     As Flannery O'Connor said, “There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.”

     This one should have been prevented. 

     Roger Angle

     Culver City

It referred to a novel excerpt that they had printed:

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-neal-stephenson-excerpt-20111002,0,6255869.story

What do you think? Is that stuff crap or what?

-- Roger

Copyright © 2011, Roger R. Angle

MYSTERY WRITING VS. REAL WRITING

I've been hoping to get published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, so I've been trying to read some stories published there.

You know, get the lay of the land.

I got, from the library, a book called "The Cutting Edge," a collection of short mysteries published in EQMM.

The first one is by Lawrence Block. In "Looking For David" a retired detective is on vacation in Florence, Italy, and runs into an old criminal he arrested for murder years ago. The bad guy tells him why he killed and carved up his gay lover.

As I read it, I got the feeling that Block didn't care about any of this. He didn't seem to care about the characters or the story or the writing. The whole thing is lackluster. No oomph. No pizazz. No jazz. No music. No depth. No energy.

So when I read it, I didn't care either. I quit about halfway through and skipped forward to the end. I cared even less when I finished.

On the other hand, I just started reading "Hayduke Lives!" by Edward Abbey, a sequel to "The Monkey Wrench Gang," one of my favorite novels.  

The writing is completely different. I get the feeling that Abbey cared about everything: every line, every description, every cactus, every blade of wild ricegrass, even an old turtle, every word, every character.

The writing is full and rich. Full of imagery and detail and insight. Full of energy. The prose dances, and rocks and rolls, and puts the pedal to the metal and drives ahead. It illuminates the characters and brings the story to life.

It's a treat to read, and a startling contrast to the dull, lackluster writing of the genre mystery.

I think caring is part of the game. Like any art form, or any profession, if you don't care, it shows.

One time I went to a doctor who told he had been retired in his mind for ten years. The work just didn't interest him anymore. Boy, I got the hell out of there as fast as I could.

That's how I felt about this mystery story by Lawrence Block.

My advice: Whatever you do, especially if want to get paid for it, and if you want other people to participate, you better damn well care about it, and you better do your best.

Otherwise, your work will be dead, and that will show.

-- Roger

Copyright © 2011, Roger R. Angle

BAD STORYTELLING: 'DIRT'

Today, I was lazing around, trying to recover from a bout of hypoglycemic fatigue, as I often am in the afternoon, and I tried to read a mystery novel called "Dirt" by Sean Doolittle, published by Uglytown, a small press in Los Angeles devoted to pulp fiction.

Uglytown books are fairly attractive, quality paperback originals well produced and hip looking. Unfortunately, this author didn't understand something vital to the writing process: the mind of the reader, the canvas upon which the writer paints.

There are three stories in any fiction: on the page, the most obvious; in the writer's mind, which changes as it takes shape on the page; and in the reader's mind, most important of the three.

In "Dirt," an inauspicious title if there ever was one, the writer did the set-up poorly, in my opinion, and failed to create an interesting story in the reader's mind, at least for this reader.

"Dirt" starts out with the funeral of a man the narrator claims was his "good buddy." The traditional funeral is interrupted by some environmental activists cum maniacs who arrive with road flares and jump on the coffin and give a speech about the misuse of mahogany.

I thought the action was stupid and pointless , out of left field. All surprise, no suspense. But it didn't have to be that way.

The disruption of the funeral could have been integral to the plot, if the tree-hugging activists had been set up properly. The dead man could have been (a) a member of the activist group, which would have made the disruption ironic, or (b) a sworn enemy of the group, which would have made the disruption seem like revenge.

Either way, the story would have made sense and not made this reader throw it down with a pronounced, "Ugh."

There is a lesson here for new writers: Do your set-up carefully, and avoid he dreaded deus ex machina -- god from the machine.

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

BAD WRITING -- GOOD FOR LAUGHS

This morning, I took a break from my own writing and picked up "Three Seconds," the "award-winning" Swedish crime novel.

I opened it arbitrarily somewhere in the middle (Page 174, by chance) and read a paragraph at random. The writing was so clunky that I burst out laughing. So bad, yet so funny.

Here's why: It was exposition thinly disguised as dialogue. People don't talk like this, in real life or in good fiction. Nobody ever says this stuff.

Here is the graf:

"I love you. I love Hugo. I love Rasmus. I love this house. I love knowing that there's someone who calls me my husband and someone else who calls me Daddy. I didn't know it was possible. I've gotten used to it. I'm completely dependent on it now."  

It sounds like complete and utter horseshit. Like what some horse's ass would say on the Oprah show, a festival of bullshit if there ever was one.

The problem is, these people don't know bad writing when they see it. They probably don't know good writing when they see it. That's too bad. It's sad.

But anyway, it handed me a good laugh.

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle