next »

[farm_boy]

I guess in the real world everyone is reading _The Shack_.  So I checked it out and I tried...

Now before you assume I'm your typical elitist professor who looks down on "common" novels, let me say right now that I loved reading _DaVinci Code_.  I think Dan Brown is a good writer and a good theologian.

So that should establish myself as pretty down to earth, right?

I just barely got through the first 30 pages of _The Shack_.  There are a lot of descriptive words, but they aren't used right sometimes.  There are many metaphors, but they are vague or just don't work.  The characters are unbelievable (no willing suspension of disbelief for me).  In the opening pages a young boy poisons his father, but that detail seems to be forgotten in the rest of the novel.  His father had tied him to a tree and beat him non-stop for two days in a drunken stupor, or other such nonsense...

I skipped ahead and read the final 30 pages, and I felt bad.  Bad, because the story line was very interesting and creative, the message was constructive, but the poor writing made it impossible for me to enjoy the book.  If they make it into a movie--and I hope they do--it will probably be much better than the book.

I also couldn't get through _The Bridges of Madison County_.

So why does Dan Brown seem to be a much better writer for me?  (I was disappointed with _Angels & Demons_, however).

[canonicalkumquat]

I think Dan Brown is a good writer and a good theologian.

You lost me there.  (Though not because I don't like a good crappy novel--see my contributions to "What have you read lately"...the White House Executive Chef mysteries as a chief example.) 

Dan Brown aside--sort of--I think it's striking how many people manage to get books published in the U.S. who don't seem to be really fluent in English.  Beyond boring plotting, or too-obvious/too-obscure characterization, bad writing for me just sounds clunky and awkward.  Bad word choices, excessive or imprecise use of figurative language, odd sentence constructions...all of these things are characteristics of bad writing for me. 

I think a good, engrossing book is actually pretty hard to find, as it needs to hit a variety of notes simultaneously: engaging plot, sensitive character development, effective pacing, and fluent writing.  Not too many authors can actually manage all of those simultaneously.  Some very successful authors whose work I enjoy (Stephen King, for example), don't manage it.  To continue with King, I often find him to be an exquisite plotter but an awkward (not to mention excessively scatological) stylist.  I read some of his work, and often enjoy it, because his success in one arena compensates, for the most part, for his problems.  But that's rare, I find. 

This is something I love about my Kindle: the fact that I can get a sample of any book before purchase has cut down on disappointment or buyer's remorse.  I can get just enough of a book, generally, to know whether or not a book is going to hit the right notes in my brain.

[frogfactory]

I saw this thread title, and my first thought was 'Dan Brown'.  The man cannot write at all.

So I can't answer your question either.

[farm_boy]

So.... if I want to look for more members of my Dan Brown Fan Club, this might not be the place??

[mythbuster]

I have not read The Shack, but I was given a copy by a religious family member. Even as a big fan of the book, they warned me that the first 30 pages or so were rough going.

[oseph]

I don't know what The Shack is.  It doesn't sound very good.  I am going to Google it...

Okay I'm back.  I don't do books with weird name symbolism, e.g., El - ouisa.  Have fun.

[aandsdean]

Dan Brown's a bad writer.  His plotting is pretty decent, and he does interesting things with conspiracy theories, but his prose is godawful.  He's windy and pompous, and you can hear the fanfares, ominous drumbeats, and shrieking violins (think shower scene in Psycho) in the background basically all the time.

He doesn't know that a "cathedral" is more than just a big, impressive church (an error in The DaVinci Code that, for some reason, I found seriously irritating).  He's a doofus, in short.

His writing is turgid, and if he had plots that required one moment's pause for reflection, every single reader of his books would set them down never to pick them up again.  Fortunately for him, his books don't allow the reader to stop and think, and so on you go to the end.

A lot of thriller writers suffer from the same issues to a certain extent.  For example, David Baldacci, of whom I am a considerable fan (in terms of audio books to listen to on the way home, while working in the yard, or on long road trips) suffers from a similar, though less dire, form of pomposity and gaseous overinflation.  But his grammar is a heck of a lot better than Brown's.

I've found that bad popular fiction is a lot like bad student writing.  Both categories of writers substitute awkward, inflated, turgid diction for profundity, and use vocabulary in a way that suggests not intimacy with the English language, but rather an excessive affection for Roget's, coupled with an ear that sinks below tin to clunky iron for the nuances and shades of meaning in different high-falutin' terms for the same thing (see above w/r/t Brown's use of the word "cathedral.")

Like canonicalkumquat, I read a huge amount of crap fiction.  I'm not terribly bothered, in general, by some of the genres' (there's more than one genre of crap fiction) shortcomings, but really poor prose and overblown vocabulary really do bother me.  I also find it much more grating in audiobooks than in print, for some reason that I suspect has to do with the audibility of the clunkers that might get missed in a rapid, casual reading of the type I employ with this kind of book.

BTW, The Bridges of Madison County is deplorable beyond mention.  I lived in Iowa when it was doing it's thing as a "literary" phenomenon, and man was it awful.  I picked up Robert James Waller's little book o'essays at the college bookstore (picked up, not bought), and read his piece on his work as a writer--I got to the sentence where he talked about toning down the purpleness of his prose in the revision process, and all I could think was, "Good God, if this is the toned-down version, what did it look like before you edited it?"

It must have been postively Tyrean.

And you should never read a book in which the author picture looks like a geriatric Prince Valiant.  

[cranefly]

Yes, I have to agree on the Dan Brown thing. The guy canNOT write.  He has good ideas, but he slaps you over the head with everything so much, treating the reader as if we are completely ignorant of the world. Repeating things we've already been told, going off on long tangents that have little real relevance (too much back story). Clunky phrases, unrealistic dialogue.

Go read some good writing (pick something else made into a movie and then compare--like, say, Cormac McCarthy's the Road)... and you'll see the difference.

[reprobate]

Yes, I have to agree on the Dan Brown thing. The guy canNOT write.  He has good ideas, but he slaps you over the head with everything so much, treating the reader as if we are completely ignorant of the world. Repeating things we've already been told, going off on long tangents that have little real relevance (too much back story). Clunky phrases, unrealistic dialogue.

Go read some good writing (pick something else made into a movie and then compare--like, say, Cormac McCarthy's the Road)... and you'll see the difference.

I submit the following into evidence, your honor:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001628.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/6194031/The-Lost-Symbol-and-The-Da-Vinci-Code-author-Dan-Browns-20-worst-sentences.html

[carebearstare]

Yes, I have to agree on the Dan Brown thing. The guy canNOT write.  He has good ideas, but he slaps you over the head with everything so much, treating the reader as if we are completely ignorant of the world. Repeating things we've already been told, going off on long tangents that have little real relevance (too much back story). Clunky phrases, unrealistic dialogue.

Go read some good writing (pick something else made into a movie and then compare--like, say, Cormac McCarthy's the Road)... and you'll see the difference.

I submit the following into evidence, your honor:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001628.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/6194031/The-Lost-Symbol-and-The-Da-Vinci-Code-author-Dan-Browns-20-worst-sentences.html

Yikes! I had never read Dan Brown before and I hope to never read him again.

That writing is terrible. It's worse than writing that is boring, because it tries to have a "music" and yet it's totally out of tune.

I read a poem yesterday by an eight-year old that was far superior.

[farm_boy]

oh come now...

[oldfullprof]

I don't like too much description, unless it's seamless-- reads easy.  Many love it; not me.  I think some of Updyke's stuff doesn't read well because there's too much reverie-- some of his writing is just right though.  Writers like Dan Brown are from hell.  For me, the big problem is lack of realism, even in speculative fiction. 

[pjflamingo]

The most palpable trait of bad writing, I think, is carelessness. I like this definition because it transcends genre and even authorial ability. In the context of a comp class it may be very easy to distinguish, but you can still see the effects of carelessness in a book, no matter who wrote it, when you're reading along and you think to yourself, wouldn't it have been much better phrased in this other way? This just happened to me with Cheever's Falconer, which is surprising considering how taut and swift most of the writing is there.

[madhatter]

Yes, I have to agree on the Dan Brown thing. The guy canNOT write.  He has good ideas, but he slaps you over the head with everything so much, treating the reader as if we are completely ignorant of the world. Repeating things we've already been told, going off on long tangents that have little real relevance (too much back story). Clunky phrases, unrealistic dialogue.

Go read some good writing (pick something else made into a movie and then compare--like, say, Cormac McCarthy's the Road)... and you'll see the difference.

I submit the following into evidence, your honor:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001628.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/6194031/The-Lost-Symbol-and-The-Da-Vinci-Code-author-Dan-Browns-20-worst-sentences.html

I couldn't get past chapter 1 of DVC, when the protagonist was described as "Harrison Ford in Harris tweed."