bad stories

while on the subject of books today, why are so many modern novels so bad? i am not even certain bad is the correct adjective. perhaps atrocious is more fitting. i generally have stayed away from most fiction in my reading career, though in recent months i have given the time to read the superb novels and short stories of wendell berry (see the power of words below). but the really popular novels are not those by accomplished artists like wb. instead the books that sell and consistently occupy a place on most best-seller lists read as if their authors have progressed only slightly beyond the level of most high schoolers forced to participate in a creative writing exercise. relying on what one of my co-directors calls a "nancy drew style," these would-be authors construct sentences that make you laugh. sentences like "our hero surpirsed our protagonist with a powerful kidney punch--the kind of punch that makes you double over in pain." yes, such sentences deserve a hearty chuckle, but only after an appropriate period of grief. why do so many of our "best-selling" authors insist on writing as if we can not even read? "In fact," asserted G. K. Chesterton, "a baby is about the only person, I should think, to whom a modern realistic novel could be read without boring him" (orthodoxy, 51). unlike berry, though, i won't lay much of the blame for such bad writing on the personal computer. no, bad writing is simply the fault of bad writers--the kind of people who write badly. or something like that.