She added, 'Much much harder than, for example, churning out a bunch of pop braincandy books that prove Americans don't really read as often as they should.'

glad that's over

since they'll eventually make a movie of this crap, she should make it as R oriented as possible. thank you.

She SO desperately wants to be the next Dickens, or the Shakespeare of the 20th century...

...I find her writing quite robotic, devoid of poetry and metaphor

'...I find her writing quite robotic, devoid of poetry and metaphor'

Which she cleverly excuses by stating that her books are for 'young people' [spit]

I hope, oh gawd I hope she tries to write a serious novel next, so that people will see what a pedestrian hack she really is.

Of course, maybe she will, and maybe it'll be really fucking good. Strager things have happened.

But... nah. Even if she does, people will still buy it just for the name, like Tom Clancey, or Stephen King, or that fucktard that 'wrote' the DaVinci Code...

Alas poor literature, I knew thee well.

whatever happened to R.L. Stine?

One of the annoy things I often see is that people forget that the Harry Potter books, the Clancey and King and Dan Brown books are written just to be enjoyed for a story, much like why Steven Seagal movies are popular. Not all books have to have deep philosophical debates or a heavy impact on life or be full of metaphors and allusions or poetry. Some people read just to enjoy the book.

^Bzzzzzt.

Sorry, no. A reasonable sounding and oft-quoted argument to be sure, but I'm afraid that dog just won't hunt.

The trouble with your position is the unqualified assumption you make that only those books with 'metaphors and allusions or poetry' etc. can be thought of as 'good' by us literary snobs who wouldn't know a fun story if it flew up our nightgowns and bit us on the ass.

This simply isn't the case. Many of the best books in history are just stories with no redeeming value whatsoever, except that they are very, very good.

In fact, the Hairy Pooter books could have been very, very good. The premise, while certainly overused, could well have been rescued and a really exciting and fun tale woven thereof… in more capable hands. Whereas in the far less capable hands of J.K. Rowling, the books became a vapid and tedious rehashing of every badly written pre-teen wish-fulfillment tome ever.

The difference, you ask? The writing.

Not the story, or even the idea... the actual words on the page. The prose. The pedestrian, uninspired use of language with which the death knell of society tolls ever more loudly.

And, as far as this type of drek being written and published just to be enjoyed, I fear that this premise also is severely flawed. I guarantee you that the folks at Bantam, or Penguin, or Harper/Collins give not one fetid dingo's kidney whether you enjoy, or for that matter, even read anything that they produce. They care only that you purchase it.

So, in that sense, it can truly be said that works of this caliber really are produced for a very specific segment of humanity; those that cannot tell the difference between chicken shit and chicken salad, do not care that they cannot, and further have no interest in educating themselves to do so.

In other words, the Proles.

Good day, citizen.

Steven Seagal movies are fucking horrible.

And she doesn't ever have to write another book. Her and her kids and their kids and so forth are set for life.

I thought 'Dude, where's my car?' was a perfect little movie. It didn't try to be anything more than it was. It suspended disbelief the whole way thru and it's reality was consistent. It was entertaining.

Chex: Steven Seagal movies are deliciously horrible you mean.

I guess the rest of this is sort of aimed in Sidechain's general direction:
Sure, she's no Vonnegut, Hemingway, or Steinbeck. But she made a boatload of cash off what you call substandard writing.

Honestly, your protests sound more like sour grapes than a true desire to make the literary world a better place. You know that if you could pull off what Rowling, Clancy, Brown, et al, have done (turn so called drivel into best sellers) then you would in a heartbeat. To say you wouldn't is intellectually dishonest.

Glad that's over.

Sidechain: Story is more important than prose. I love prose and all the wordy games of great writers, but plot and characterization trumps prose. If your have a lot of one and a little of the other, you better lean toward plot. So, Rowling wins. Ten-year-olds read 700-page books because they MUST know what happens next, not because the language is so charged with meaning they cry blood.

wrecker:
No, not sour grapes really. Mostly just disgust at the state of the art. If given half a chance, of course I would do the same thing, but, I wouldn't demand that everyone treat me with respect as a writer, or think of me as an artist. I would seriously feel guilty at having perpetrated a fraud. Of course, the helicopter and the harem of japanese girls would likely assuage most of that guilt.

lownotes:
Well... not for me. If the prose is essentially unreadable, I have no chance to discover the plot or the characters. The only Clancey novel I ever picked up, I read literally like 6 pages before thinking, 'this is crap' and never picked it up again. Same with DaVinci Code.

Also, I have never actually seen very many ten year olds reading the Pooter books. I've seen tens of thousands of parents reading them and saying what great books they are for their kids, but not many actual kids.

I covered a Harry Potter book release for a local paper once, and there were hundreds of 10 - 15-year-olds there, and I live in south Mississippi.

I agree with you about Dan Brown and Tom Clancy being soulless and mostly shitty, but they understand the rules of plot and character. So, like romance novelists, they can do a little research and spit out enjoyable, forgettable tomes with consistency. Don't worry, they'll never go down in history - Rowling may.

On the other hand, no one wants to read the written equivalent of a Steve Vai solo.

I remember when Harry Potter came out her in America and the media and everyone else was, like 'OMG, a gewd book that children like has come out and maybe now Americanos will finally learn to read. Hooray! Rowling is the savior of education!' That would be fine, except, NO ONE READ ANYTHING BUT THE 5th GRADE LEVEL HARRY POTTER BOOKS! Fucking cunts... 'Glad that's over.' is an understatement.

a gewd book that children like has come out and maybe now Americanos will finally learn to read. Hooray! Rowling is the savior of education!' That would be fine, except, NO ONE READ ANYTHING BUT THE 5th GRADE LEVEL HARRY POTTER BOOKS!

My point exactly. If it causes more people to read, then great. However, my (limited) observation is that these people come to work, talk about how great Harry Potter Book X is, maybe talk a little about DaVinci Code and how awesome that was, and then... fall back off the map, presumably going back to Danielle Steele or TV Guide, or whatever, having partaken in a fad of novelty reading but not having had their point-n-drool habits improved much.

Much the way the Pet Rock fad in the '70s failed to bring about any sudden explosion of geologists, I suppose.

The trouble with your position is the unqualified assumption you make that only those books with 'metaphors and allusions or poetry' etc. can be thought of as 'good' by us literary snobs who wouldn't know a fun story if it flew up our nightgowns and bit us on the ass.
What book do you think is good that isn't full of 'metaphors and allusions or poetry'? I'm interested in what you would qualify as a 'good book', because I have a sudden feeling you may just start naming as many famous authors as you can.

Maybe I'm wrong about you. Though you do sound like someone that would say you read all these authors just to sound smarter.

I try to read a book a month. Just finished Grishoms' 'Street Lawyer' and am a few chapters into the fun/creepy 'Fast food nation'.

I like to read, and think more people should too.

Never read a Harry Potter and don't intend to.

That is all.

^ (High-five)

What's that sound?

BRRRRRRRRING!



?

mofo:
Well, geez, start with the basics, I guess. LOTR, or course. Hitchhiker's guide. I'm a huge Terry Pratchett fan. John Crowly's 'Little, Big' is one of my all time favs. Recently I've been reading Haruki Murakami... just finished 'Kafka on the Shore'. Also, Neil Gaiman's 'American Gods' is one of my favs in the last couple years.

But ultimately, yes, you got me. Actually I can't read or speak english at all. Eveything I write here was memorized phonetically years ago, so that I could sound smart, which is my only ambition.

People who defend the under-educated tastes of the huddled masses fail to understand the difference between entertaining and exploitation. Yes, they are sides of the same coin used to purchase their intellectual subjegation--Tee vee, is even more of a predigested enzyme eating away the mental faculties and critical thinking abilities of the common man.

Why bother with difficult to parse text? Why read them big words? Why realize that the entire story is just a blind alley meant to draw your attention upwards to the things casting the shadows instead of the shadows themselves?

Great authors that you know are the rare lucky ones that got published and promoted. There are thousands of unnamed geniouses that would have made your head spin if we had given them half the chance we [collectively as a culture and purchasing block] gave this 2-bit hack writing adolescent diary entries.

It sold because the people are stupid. the people are stupid because TB and mass entertainment doesn't aspire to anything more than regurgitated memes and lowering the bar for entertainment. That, and in this country, like most others, we like our peasants poor and stupid so as to distract their hungry bellies with a good punch-n-judy show.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's all nice and whatever...but, can she cook?