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posted 25-09-2008 11:30
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That quote from HHGTTG isn't actually bad prose as such, though, is it? Just unimpressive.
I remember someone once posting the first paragraph of the Da Vinci Code on here(was it AIATL?). Now that was bad prose.
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posted 25-09-2008 11:35
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Obviously all depends on the standards you're setting, which normally depends on the genre & target reader in question. Some seem to want to raise Douglas Adams to a category he probably doesn't belong in, i.e. a notable exponent of English prose, whereas he's not outright bad as PG says. (The paragraph quoted by Tiny is definitely clunky.) He still manages to appeal to the sort of reader who appreciates fine writing, though, where Dan Brown would not.
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Last Edit: 25-09-2008 11:37 By BrunoMaggiore.
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posted 25-09-2008 11:41
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What Bruno said. Terry Pratchett suffers even more from this sort of thing ("Guilty of Literature"), and while admittedly a better prose stylist than DNA, he ain't that good.
Still it's all subjective, innit?
Innit?
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posted 25-09-2008 11:44
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But he does write finely; it's just that what he writes finely is verbal gags: "It's unpleasantly like being drunk", "By a strange coincidence, 'None at all' is exactly how much suspicion ..." and so on. That's very good writing. Descriptive passages he writes adequately.
I like the idea of a landscape that gets blurrier the closer you get to it, but you're right that that paragraph doesn't really do that idea justice. But it's not bad enough to put me off.
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posted 25-09-2008 12:41
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Douglas Adams could write really imaginative passages (I fondly remember the part about the whale materializing high in the atmosphere and achieving self-awareness just in time to go splat) and had a humorous way with words, which I agree disqualifies him from inclusion in the poorest of prose you read from prominent authors of note.
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Last Edit: 25-09-2008 12:43 By BrunoMaggiore.
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posted 25-09-2008 12:41
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Will Self is capable of going from amongst the best prose to the worst prose around, within the space of a paragraph.
Robert Llewelleyn's book The someone on platform something or other (I forget the exact title) has the absolute worst prose I've ever read - including undergraduate history essays - closely followed by Jean M Auel.
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posted 25-09-2008 12:44
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Ooh, Jean Auel sounds promising. It's been ages, time for a refresher.
We actually ran into her when I was a kid traveling with my family, in Turkey. She was over there researching one of the sequels (the Mammoth Hunters?) and was hanging out at this out of the way beach where we were the only other Americans, or people really, who were there.
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Last Edit: 25-09-2008 12:47 By BrunoMaggiore.
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posted 25-09-2008 12:48
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I mean, if we're in that vein Ken Follett can be pretty darn bad. I enjoyed Pillars of the Earth well enough, but man.
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posted 26-09-2008 12:01
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The worst prose I can recall reading is by a fantasy author called Stephen Donaldson, who makes HP Lovecraft look like Raymond Carver - http://www.stephenrdonaldson.com/RotE_Prologue_Chapter1.pdf
I find writers like Lovecraft more interesting though - on one level it is very badly overwritten, but on another it has interesting ideas and the sheer relentlessness of it can be effective.
As for Douglas Adams, his genius was in writing that radio series, which he then cannibalised for the far less successful (artistically speaking) books. I can't read those lines quoted above without hearing them spoken by Peter Jones.
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posted 26-09-2008 12:05
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Jean M Auel:
QUOTE:
Trembling with fear, Ayla clung to the tall man beside her as she watched the strangers approach. Jondalar put his arm around her protectively, but she still shook.
He's so big! Ayla thought, gaping at the man in the lead, the one with hair and beard the color of fire. She had never seen anyone so big. He even made Jondalar seem small, though the man who held her towered over most men. The red-haired man coming toward them was more than tall; he was huge, a bear of a man. His neck bulged, his chest could have filled out two ordinary men, his massive biceps matched most men's thighs.
Ayla glanced at Jondalar and saw no fear in his face, but his smile was guarded. They were strangers, and in his long travels he had learned to be wary of strangers.
"I don't recall seeing you before," the big man said without preamble. "What Camp are you from?" He did not speak Jondalar's language, Ayla noticed, but one of the others he had been teaching her.
"No Camp," Jondalar said. "We are not Mamutoi." He unclasped Ayla and took a step forward, holding out both hands, palms upward showing he was hiding nothing, in the greeting of friendliness. "I am Jondalar of the Zelandonii."
The hands were not accepted. "Zelandonii? That's a strange . . . Wait, weren't there two foreign men staying with those river people that live to the west? It seems to me the name I heard was something like that."
Bloody hell. I think you have to say.
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posted 26-09-2008 12:15
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I think we're being too harsh on Douglas Adams as writing comic prose is a hell of a lot more difficult than straightforward prose. He's written some of the funniest stuff I've ever encountered in Englsih literature.
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posted 26-09-2008 12:17
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That's something else, for sure. But here is Donaldson -
In sunshine as vivid as revelation, Linden Avery knelt on the stone of a low-walled coign
like a balcony high in the outward face of Revelstone’s watchtower.
Implacable as the Masters, Stave of the Haruchai stood beside her: he had led her here in spite of the violence with which his kinsmen had spurned him. And at the wall, the young
Stonedownor, Liand, stared his surprised concern and incomprehension down at the riders
fleeing before the on-rush of the Demondim. Like Stave, if by design rather than by blows, he had abandoned his entire life for Linden’s sake; but unlike the former Master, he could not guess who rode with the Haruchai far below him. He could only gaze urgently at the struggling horses, and at the leashed seethe of theurgy among the monsters, and gape questions for which he seemed to have no words or no voice.
At that moment, however, neither Liand nor Stave impinged on Linden’s awareness.
They were not real to her.
Near Liand, Manethrall Mahrtiir studied the exhausted mounts with Ramen concentration
while his devoted Cords, Bhapa and Pahni, protected mad, blind Anele from the danger of a fall that he could not see.
With Linden, they had crossed hundreds of leagues--and many hundreds of years--to
come to this place at this time. In her name, they had defied the repudiation of the Masters who ruled over the Land.
But none of her companions existed for her.
To the north lay the new fields which would feed Revelstone’s inhabitants. To the south,
the foothills of the Keep’s promontory tumbled toward the White River. And from the southeast
came clamoring the mass of the Demondim, vicious as a host of doom. The monsters appeared to melt and solidify from place to place as they pursued their prey: four horses at the limits of their strength, bearing six riders.
Six riders. But four of them were Masters; and for Linden, they also did not exist. She
saw only the others.
In the instant that she recognized Thomas Covenant and Jeremiah, the meaning of her
entire life changed. Everything that she had known and understood and assumed was altered,
rendering empty or unnecessary or foolish her original flight from the Masters, her time among the Ramen, her participation in the horserite of the Ranyhyn. Even her precipitous venture into the Land’s past in order to retrieve her Staff of Law no longer held any significance.
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posted 26-09-2008 13:14
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What a tit.
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posted 26-09-2008 14:35
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QUOTE:
For their principal desire was not wealth but revenge on their enemies, which esteeming the most honorable cause of danger, they made account through it both to accomplish their revenge and to purchase wealth withal; putting the uncertainty of success to the account of their hope, but for that which was before their eyes relying upon themselves in the action, and therein choosing rather to fight and die than to shrink and be saved, they fled from shame, but with their bodies they stood out the battle; and so in a moment whilst fortune inclineth neither way, left their lives not in fear but in opinion of victory.
Such were these men, worthy of their country. And for you that remain, you may pray for a safer fortune, but you ought not to be less venturously minded against the enemy, not weighing the profit by an oration only, which any man amplifying may recount to you that know as well as he the many commodities that arise by fighting valiantly against your enemies, but contemplating the power of the city in the actions of the same from day to day performed and thereby becoming enamoured of it. And when this power of the city shall seem great to you, consider then that the same was purchased by valiant men, and by men that knew their duty, and by men that were sensible of dishonour when they were in fight, and by such men as, though they failed of their attempt, yet would not be wanting to the city with their virtue but made to it a most honorable contribution. For having everyone given his body to the commonwealth, they receive in place thereof an undecaying commendation and a most remarkable sepulchre not wherein they are buried so much as wherein their glory is laid up upon all occasions both of speech and action to be remembered forever. For to famous men all the earth is a sepulchre; and their virtues shall be testified not only by the inscription in stone at home but by an unwritten record of the mind, which more than of any monument will remain with everyone forever. In imitation therefore of these men and placing happiness in liberty and liberty in valour, be forward to encounter the dangers of war. For the miserable and desperate men are not they that have the most reason to be prodigal of their lives, but rather such men as, if they live, may expect a change of fortune and whose losses are greatest if they miscarry in aught. For to a man of any spirit death, which is without sense, arriving whilst he is in vigour and common hope, is nothing so bitter as after a tender life to be brought into misery.
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posted 26-09-2008 23:49
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As much as I'm an avid reader of his books, after trying to read all of the Red Riding quartet in a row I was heartily sick of David Peace's angry repetition = emotion approach.
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