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Thursday, September 16, 2010

Why awful writing is tolerated

Over at Lit Drift, Jessica Digiacinto asks, in a fed-up voice, why awful writing is tolerated. The proximate cause of her despair is last year’s Death Wish imitation Law Abiding Citizen, written by Kurt Wimmer. The film is “so full of every writing Don’t,” Digiacinto says, “it makes our mouths hang open in disbelief.”

I know exactly what she means. Several years ago I delivered myself of a lament about “Bad Writing” that earned me a bit of notoriety in academic quarters. “We work our asses off writing, rewriting,” Digiacinto says; “we beat ourselves up. . . .” And by we she means at least herself and me. Many’s the time that, like her, I have thrown up my hands in disgust when some scholar, in a profession dedicated to preserving and studying literary texts that were written with care, is praised and rewarded for writing that consists of little more than stringing together current commonplaces, uncrackable clumps of with-it terminology, careless voluble obscurity, and idées reçues.

Bad academic writers differ not at all from bad commercial writers. Instead of composing in words, bad writers compose in ready-made phrases. They do not notice when they have substituted approximation for exactitude, because their minds are elsewhere, usually on the unthreat­ening shrug of familiarity they want from their readers.

Digiacinto and I must simply accept the fact that an attentiveness to language is a minority pursuit. My wife has recently fallen in love with Daniel Silva’s series of thrillers with their Israeli hero Gabriel Allon. Eager to read anything that represents an Israeli as a hero, I picked up one of the books (my wife has already read five of them), but I was unable to outlast the first few pages—the prose was exasperatingly limp. My wife, who is a physician, has a motto that she teaches to her fellowship students: “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” In literature, though, “good enough” is no good at all.

Update: As long as I have quoted the great J. V. Cunningham once already today, I guess it’s all right to do so a second time. Why is awful writing tolerated? “Tolerance is almost identical to indifference.”

13 comments:

  1. My advisor once described Lacan's writing as "offensive."

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  2. More elitism. If Daniel Silva is good enough for some, who made you judge over him and his readers?

    Elitism does not equal merit; most literary writers compose in ready made language, too, the kind of language that they learn in MFA programs. Often, however, such exercises fall flat.

    Good writing is the kind that reaches the intended audience, which could mean that it is entirely bad as writing.

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  3. Adlai,

    Yeah, I’m such an elitist that I feel superior to my wife.

    Nonsense: I am making a straightforward critical evaluation. Silva’s novels may be thrilling, but they are written in sentences without any distinction whatever. And consequently, I can’t endure them.

    That doesn’t make me a better than the readers who enjoy Silva’s novels, even if it puts me in the minority.

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  4. Because most writing is bad, it's rare that anyone comes into regular contact with careful, intelligent prose. This results in a populace that doesn't know the difference between good and bad writing, and the equating of "good" with "difficult" because good writing has those qualities you mention of precision and thoughtfulness. That kind of writing requires more from a reader than whatever hack prose the reader is used to, and so it is avoided and pushed to the margins of our culture. Plus ca change, etc.

    In your post yesterday you wrote about how holders of advanced degrees in the past had all received good classical educations, whereas nowadays a PhD in physics may not have read anything worthwhile aside from a textbook or academic journal since his days in high school. That's a contributing factor as well, I'm sure.

    So I don't know about toleration or indifference. I'm putting my bet on ignorance.

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  5. @ A.J. "Good writing is the kind that reaches the intended audience" is, I think, merely confusing writing with marketing.

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  6. Do you think it is possible to write a thrilling genre novel while being attentive to language? And if so, could you speculate why this has not happened yet?

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  7. Scott, interestingly, the notion that good writing or a good story is one that succeeds in its intended purpose is not mine, exactly, but perpetrated by none other than Cleanth Brooks in his Understanding Fiction.

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  8. So I don't know about toleration or indifference. I'm putting my bet on ignorance.

    You may be right, Scott. But I wonder. A lot of people seem to enjoy puns, plays on words, and other forms of verbal cleverness; other people spend a lot of time doing crossword puzzles or playing word games. It seems to me that there is a latent fascination with language in a significant portion of the general population.

    When it comes to reading, though, the fascination dissipates into thin air. Ignorance of any other kind of writing? You have to be right about that.

    But why are they satisfied with such indifferently written books when their own pasttimes suggest a deeper interest?

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  9. Do you think it is possible to write a thrilling genre novel while being attentive to language? And if so, could you speculate why this has not happened yet?

    You clearly have not read Charles McCarry.

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  10. Mr. Meyers says: "But why are they satisfied with such indifferently written books when their own pasttimes suggest a deeper interest?" I suspect it's just plain fun, escapist pleasure.
    We all like a cracking good story. After an especially soul stifling day of accounting, I don't want to read Thomas Hardy, but maybe an M.R. James horror story or a true crime paperback. (Now, that's where I've encountered some really mediocre writing lately, but soldiered on anyway for the story.)
    Your professional and personal immersion in literature makes you not elitist, but sensitive to language. That's a great thing. We need people to carry the banner of good language.

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  11. M. R. James is a distinguished prose stylist.

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  12. It seems to me that there is a latent fascination with language in a significant portion of the general population.

    When it comes to reading, though, the fascination dissipates into thin air. Ignorance of any other kind of writing? You have to be right about that.

    But why are they satisfied with such indifferently written books when their own pasttimes suggest a deeper interest?


    I think it might have something to do with the intended use of reading in the general population. People use language as not only a tool for communication, but as a toybox, a set of art supplies, and good on 'em because it is all of that and more. I think it's built in, a hard-wired function in our brains.

    Reading, on the other hand, is something done mostly for pleasure, for escape. And we seem to--as a species--like our escapism to be simple-minded and our involvement passive.

    I love baseball and like to go to a game when I can, but when I read, I want the writing to spark my brain, not to numb it. That is likely a minority use of reading. And that is likely not going to change.

    I'm not at my best today and I apologize in advance for the vagueness of my comment.

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  13. I certainly did not mean to imply that MR James was mediocre in any way! Just that he is terrifically entertaining.

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