Monday, July 9, 2007

One more digression (a comment on the book The Raw Shark Texts)

This guy writes exactly how I used to write when I was thirteen. That's not an insult, I just feel it is really ballsy to put something so pretentious and wordy to the asshole eyes of an editor. And to get it published...that is something of a feat. Here is an excerpt for your perusal. I bought the book just to see if he could keep it up for the course of a novel. You can tell he gets tired midway through the story, but I would be tired too after 100 pages of unbridled literary arrogance. The book is actually pretty damn good, and all of this is really just jealously manifesting itself in the form of anger. You'd be mad too if you found someone making bank in a writing style your friends called 'Taking A Shit On a Page And Pretending Its Gold'. Oh well. I guess the lesson to learn from this is: never take a critique from someone that won't write you a check if you change it.

And, on a personal note to all writers everywhere: Italics are for assholes that are too incompetent to establish emphasis through clever sentence structure. If you can't create emphasis without italics, don't. And yes, that goes for vulgarity too. I am a repeat offender on that count, but hey, we are all learning here.

No comments: