The DD Book Collective discussion

This discussion was initiated when I attempted to challenge the premise that a bad book can be well-written, in a comment to Jacob's review of The Corrections. The discussion began with this comment. But the direction of discussion started to shift, and rather than risk a total hijack, I'm taking it up from where it left off, here.

Here is a sample of nearly-randomly selected excerpts from various books.

The authors of these books are:
-Erich Segal
-T.C. Boyle
-Amos Tutuola
-Bernard Malamud
-Charlaine Harris
-The Anonymous Author of Njal’s Saga (Translated from Icelandic)
-Shen Fu (Translated from Chinese)
-Wilkie Collins
-Chinua Achebe

Possible discussion topics:
-Which lines seem well written, which seem poorly written, and which seem indifferent or difficult to judge?
-Which lines intrigue you and/or make you think that the source book is likely to be worth reading in its entirety?
-Since there are two samples from each author, can you match the samples into pairs?
-Do you know which author wrote each sample?

Unfortunately, I don't think we will find well-written lines from bad books in this sample... I could be wrong, but I'd more likely expect "indifferent" lines from good books, but that just depends on the sampled works. Three of the authors, by the way, I've never read, and one I'd never heard of (Best Seller Harris... but cool that she's from Tunica).

-----------------(1)------------------------
There was one black Durant that should have had a mortuary sign in the window, and there must have been a dozen or more Fords sitting there looking as dull as dishwater in the faded paint Henry Ford had dubbed Japan black (and I can’t imagine why, unless he was thinking of ink sticks and kanji, but then how would he or any of his designers in the remote xenophobic purlieus of Detroit know anything of kanji?).

------------------------(2)--------------------
As he could only go out at night to fetch his food, so when he reached the place that I slept he stumbled on me and fell down unexpectedly, because he did not know that somebody was there already and also the hole was very dark, so some part of his body was wounded as he was armless to defend himself. I woke up unexpectedly as he fell down on me suddenly, after a few minutes he tried his best and got up with pain, then he asked with rage--“Who is that?”

------------------(3)-----------------
Little boats sailing back and forth on the river were being tossed in all directions, like fallen leaves thrown about by the waves. Dreams of worldly fame and fortune faded before such a scene.

------------------(4)-------------------------
‘Please calm down,’ I said. ‘You’ve been worrying about it too much. You can only blackmail someone who has money; with you and me, it’s all our four shoulders can do to support our two mouths.’

----------------------(5)---------------------
Here I should have protested again. But my daughter had got the hair brush by this time, and the whole strength of her feelings had passed into that. If you are bald, you will understand how she scarified me. If you are not, skip this bit, and thank God you have got something in the way of a defence between your hair brush and your head.

----------------------(6)---------------------
She advanced to the curtains. At the moment when she laid her hand on them--at the moment when the discovery of me appeared to be quite inevitable--the voice of the fresh-coloured young footman, on the stairs, suddenly suspended any further proceedings on her side or on mine.

------------------------(7)-----------------
Furthermore, unlike the vows made in matrimony and religion, theirs was made not to God, but to Man. If renouncing God would bring perdition, they would know it only in another world. But should they fail to serve Mankind, they’d know it in this one.

And so they sallied forth to do battle with disease and death. And one another.

----------------------(8)-------------------
Christ, he thought, have I grown old so quickly? What’s been going on since I was locked inside that concrete and linoleum dungeon where there’s no day, no night, no change of season? Ten years ago I walked in like a young lion, and now I suddenly feel like an old goat.

--------------------(9)-----------------------
“Yes, goddamn it, but I’m not the only one in the whole wide world. Without prejudice, I refuse the obligation. I am a single individual and can’t take on everybody’s personal burden. I have the weight of my own to contend with.”

-------------------(10)--------------------
The horses went to it and bit at each other for a long time so that there was no need to touch them, and it was great sport.

------------------(11)------------------------
I felt like a freshman coming to campus for the first time, wondering where he was going to sleep, what he would eat, how his coevals would view him and whether he’d experience the grace of acceptance and success or sink into disgrace and failure.

---------------------(12)-------------------
After he had ravished the soup and all but chewed the linen, he tore open the Globe to confirm that he was missing nothing. The headlines told him: correct.

-------------(13)--------------------
“You have to sign them again,” the devil said. “For this signature, ink is not satisfactory.”
“I thought you were joking about that.” The businessman frowned.
“I never joke,” the devil said. “I do have a sense of humor, oh, believe me, I do. But not about contracts.”

------------------------(14)----------------
It was clear from his twinkling eyes that he had important news. But it would be impolite to rush him.

------------------------(15)----------------
When I thought over that how we would leave these white creatures, I remembered that if we began to move, perhaps these white creatures would go away, because since 1 o’clock A.M., of that night till 10 o’clock A.M. they were still warming themselves from the fire and did not attempt to go where they came from or to go and eat. Of course I could not say definitely whether they were eating creatures or not.

-----------------------(16)---------------------
One morning three of them came to my house, beat me up and took my wife and children away. This happened in the rainy season. I have waited in vain for my wife to return.

---------------(17)-----------------
“I want Gypsy Kidd. Her real name is Katy Sherboni, if you need that. She work at Bourbon Street Babes. I want her to love me the way I love her.”


-------------------(18)--------------------------
He had been standing up against the gable wall, and his legs were burned off almost up to the knees, but the rest of him was unburned. He had bitten into his upper lip. His eyes were open and not swollen.

As a first step toward further discussion, it seems from this little survey that Shen Fu might seem most pertinent.

His book Six Records of a Floating Life isn't a bad book. It's good book, but to me it seemed a good book of middling quality. It seems easy to pull out quotable fragments that seem pithy, sometimes the "style" seems to be what's good about it, sometimes it's about ideas in isolation, similar to ancient analects, and similar to folksy sayings with a rustic charm, etc., but as a whole work it's not cohesive... and the title and it's nature as a memoir attest to the fact that it wasn't really expected to be cohesive... it's just six records of a floating life. Anyway, its strength seems most apparent in the micro-details, and less apparent in the broader scope.

I think this is what some folks aim at when they criticize a book while calling it "well-written", and maybe my philosophy and choice of definitions makes it hard for me to speak about it in the same way. In my own way of describing it, I might say it's a "somewhat well written work with flaws," or I might get straight to the point and say "I liked several passages and enjoyed what I could extract from it, though I didn't enjoy the work as a whole." Hmmm... is this a compromise, or a substantively different way of approaching the problem of criticism?

This link somehow got posted in the wrong thread AND the wrong group, whereas it's obviously relevant here.

http://reverent.org/bulwer-dickens.html

I was getting all set to boast of my 100% score despite having no familiarity with Dickens or the other dude... but then I went and scored 42%, which is worse than random. Damned random always beats me.

This proves, of course, that I was correct to avoid reading Dickens.

I was a little tempted, when reading about the window that looked as though a goblin had used it for a pocket handkerchief, to say well, maybe if Dickens were intentionally going overboard for laughs... I mean, he does do that, right... but no, I attributed it instead to the worst writer in the universe. Wah wah wah...

I also got 42%; according to lacrosse rules, I think that means we're now on 84.

Woot!

This English major scored TWENTY FIVE PERCENT. I thought most of the quotes had flaws (I was flabbergasted that goblin's tears quote was from D.) and so I attributed most of them to the Dark and Stormy Night guy, at one time suspecting they were all his. The only Dickens quotes I called were ones I thought I recognized. That is so embarrassing.

Don't get me started on goblins. I've just been forced to read The Chimes, having foolishly offered to lead a discussion in another group, and goblins have taken over the belfry. The Bells! The Bells! The Horror.

"Don't Get Me Started on Goblins"
Awesome novella title. I'm tempted to abuse my librarian privileges and invent an entry.

Hey, you could just write the book, then it'll be a legit entry.

Zadignose wrote: "Hey, you could just write the book, then it'll be a legit entry."

Oh, let's us write it, pleeeease? We could do it really, really well written. Like Shakespeare or similar: "For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of goblins.". Open a thread. I'll write the first twenty seven words ish.