Garovorkins Asks #1 Worst Writers of All Time

Mr. Garovorkin of the Doctor Who Forum has been setting us some writery tasks lately.



Who Are The Flat Worst Writers and Worst Books Of All Time?

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Thank god no one has said, that Michael S. Collins posts here all the time and I've never read anything half-decent of his!

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Originally Posted by Garovorkin No I can't deny the fact that Walpole did set the Pattern . As for Bulwer Lytton I agree he is hideous , but he is so bad he;'s fun to read. I am amazed at some usage words and Descriptions. he bad and funny as hell at the same time. I could be wrong but i think he is the reason why there is both a happy and sad ending in Great Expectations He convinced Dickens that A happy ending would improve sales, or something like that.

Exactly. And to be fair, I think he had a point. So many people talk about the ambiguity of the ending and what it means, and indeed, that seemed to transpire the revival of his reputation. F.R. Leavis, for example, excluded Dickens from his critical roundup of British literature! A bit mad with his prose, but Bulwer-Lytton had some interesting ideas and is nowhere near as bad as some other examples.

I was recently told some of my prose could qualify for the award. I was mortified. It was however meant in jest for amusement and I guess thats what himself would think as well.

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Originally Posted by Duncan H If you read "The Spanish Tragedy" (by Kyd) looking at it with the knowledge of what came later, it seems a list of the most awful cliches, and over the top pantomime action. But it's influence was huge. I don't think you can criticise texts when they're early examples of a style.

Something can influence well even when dated now.

The most horrid example is Birth of a Nation. Everyone knows that film and no one watches it. It helped revitilise the bigoted offspring of the Klan, and for that it will forever be a dreadful stain on the history of cinema. And yet, whilst immoralising the screen, it also gave birth to it.

And yet think on this: the long shot, flashbacks, fade ins and outs, close ups. Can you think of a film nowadays without any of them? And Griffiths invented them all in Birth of a Nation. Says Barry Norman, "He was the father of the cinema, it was a pity that he was a bigot as well."

Best example of an outdated creation being still influential I could think of. Apology it's not a book though. But the point is a good one.

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Originally Posted by War Arrow Hmmm. Would it be unseemly of me to mention an author who may or may not have produced certain Doctor Who tie-in novels, because I am absolutely certain I have never read anything quite as atrocious as one particular novel by this particular person?

Let me guess....would it involve some daleks and a war, or would it include some doctors, eight of them in fact?

One of those I alone hated when it came out, the other I seem to be the only fan of. You can decide which is which.

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Originally Posted by Imbolc Fire It always puzzles me that anybody considers Martin Amis a good writer. His metaphors are so overdone his prose starts to resemble Vogon poetry and you can hear the man's arrogance seeping out through every line.

AAAAAAAH, you mentioned Martin Amis. The man has the arrogance of his father and not even one hundredth of the talent. Say what you want about Kingsley - and a fair few have - he knew how to spin a good yarn.

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Originally Posted by WSK Agreed; he's awful

Right, I'm off to find my list of Reasons To Dislike Martin Amis....

Found it in five minutes, wrote it up for a tutorial last year and thought it might come in useful one day.

Reason One
He revels in his status as an "author" (pronounced awww-four) and establishes an era of snootishness around it. Not a writer is he.

Reason Two
He gives other writers a bad name by association, especially given some of his views and outrages.

Reason Three
His excuse of using "intellectualism" to promote what he calls "controversial issues" and what in laymans terms should really be called "incitement of racial hatred" or worse.

Cf, The Martin Amis race row

Reason Four
The fact, expressed throughout, that he is one of the chief architect snob writers in Britain, one of the merry precious alongside Giles Coren and co. (Which is amusing as both had far superior talented fathers).

Reason Five
His stance on Iraq. Flip flopped more than Brown to the point I cant remember if he's for or against it anymore. Cover anything up with flowery language and you can disguise a thousand solemnities.

Reason Six
The fact that he doesn't like the style of fiction I write, being that it would be easier deemed popular than literary

I would like to point out that I have done my best to avoid break the Code of Conduct here, since all of the above are criticisms of his work or opinion on literature merits/life/etc, and not personal attacks on the man himself.

Needless to say, I don't really have much time for him.

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Originally Posted by War Arrow Pardon my presumption because this feels akin to either shooting a fish in a barrel or turning up at an edition of Question Time just to ask Brian Sewell if he agrees that the cartoons in The Sun aren't so funny as they once were, but Terrance Dicks' Warmonger. I have never felt so insulted by anything as by that book (and I know - why am I surprised?). The Very Hungry Caterpillar it is not. Sorry to lower the tone, please continue.

Never heard of it. I guess that's a good thing. Terrance could write - most of my early Doctor Who was from his TARGET novels. And people moan about them, but hey: they were aimed at the age I was when I first read them. And they were great. So there.

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Originally Posted by Mile Ah, but Bulwer-Lytton was also an influential type who gets, via that prize, an unfair reputation. Sure, his work is flowery to the 21st Century eye but, writing almost two hundred years ago, his prose was some of the most popular of the day. It's only because of that competition that he gets a bad rep, because otherwise nobody would rememer him, but as his descendent says here, he coined so many phrases that later become cliches that surely demonstrate he had the occasional turn of phrase that could capture the imagination and come to best represent what people wanted to say. His supposed turgid prose is just a feature of its day: they liked that back then. Not at all, although I would usually consider such tie-ins as hack territory and not bother to give them the time of day. Now, I think Martin Amis is a great writer. Granted, I've only read Time's Arrow and Night Train, along with his collection of book reviews and essays, The War Against Cliche, but I find the sparkle of his prose to be fascinating. As he says himself: I'm not subtle; I like extremes. Someone once said of my work, and I didn't mind it at all, that I deal with banalities delivered with tremendous force. That's fine by me.

On Amis, I strongly disagree, but I respect your right to a different opinion.

I completly agree with you on Bulwer-Lytton. And I must point out my inherent geekyness, that due to my love of horror anthologies (I now have 30 plus and counting - how else can I find my Burrage tales?) I knew of Edward long before I knew of the prize. It's "The House and the Brain/The Haunted and the Haunters/Whatever it gets called these days" - it's in everything!

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Originally Posted by ZygonBob Sorry to be obvious but Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code? I have never read such unrelenting, two dimensional crap in all my life.

The film was awful as well. Though it did bring an unexpected amusement. I went with a larping lot, and one just happened to be dressed as a monk. On the way out, his habit fell down over his head, and the ammount of people doing double takes on leaving the cinema was amazing.

I was almost tempted to yell out "Watch the Da Vinci Code, get a free monk". Almost.

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Originally Posted by Mile I was avoiding him because I thought it too obvious, but it's not just him but so many others: John Grisham, James Patterson, etc. [i] Matt Reily...

I think I have heard of him...

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...One, his readers have become apologists for his shoddy output. You only have to look at the Amazon reviews that spout things like "hey it's fiction, it's not meant to be real". Well, fiction or not, you'd still expect it not to be inept.

Every writer has apologists, just like every Doctor Who has its apologists. I can't see why. Why apologise for something you enjoy? If someone likes my stuff, I don't want them apologising for it!

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And two,the man is bitter. He wrote on his blog back in 2003 about popular fiction saying: "The term 'popular fiction' (which is often used in relation to my novels) must have been coined by some really bitter author who wrote some serious book which just didn't sell." He then goes on to say "The only way to justify this failure (the one Reilly made up, by the way!) was to say that the book was too good, that the masses were just too stupid to appreciate it. And so the term 'popular fiction' was used to describe, in a negative sense, those books that do succeed." After much warbling he eventually gets to the heart of the matter: "We have a broadsheet newspaper here in Sydney that has pretensions of literary credibility, and every year it puts out a 'Best Young Australian Novelists' list, and every year they dismiss the so-called 'popular fiction' authors and decry the state of publishing generally."

I actually concur with the start of this, that the term "popular fiction" came about as a derogatory remark on "non-literary" books that sell well ie Harry Potter, Have A Nice Day. (Which always struck me as highly amusing, as the literary greats that the modern literati are trying to emulate were the very populists of their day. Take my main man Dickens for one!)

Certainly, having been around writers and personality authors and fellow university people for over four years now, I am surrounded by this smugness. And it annoys the hell out of me. (And to clarify, I dont include the denizens of GSFWC in this, by and large they are down to earth "populists")

One of my more popular "characters" when I did standup had the catchphrase, when mentioning any film/tv show/book/CD/etc, which was "I cant read/watch/listen to that, its popular!" I was trying to be ironic (really trying, even if I did nearly Alanis it), I've met loads of people who mean it.

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Ah, Matthew didn't make that list, did he? Must be because he writes popular fiction. He concludes: "Ultimately, it seems, this newspaper's judges are impressed by authors who use similes ('I am like the raven...') and personification ('the cliffs reach for the sky, yearning, outstretched...'), as if that is the only form of writing worthy of praise. I am like the raven? It only goes to show his whole misunderstanding of what fiction is about. Nobody in their right mind would use such a poor line except Reilly.

Sounds like a song. No..wait, that was "I am a rock". Both of his examples of "good writing" sound awful to my ears. The second would not look out of place in a Martin Amis piece of prose!

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Here's a quote a friend wrote on reading a short story by Reilly: I did take the opportunity to read one of his stories on his website, "Altitude Rush." Now I know I will never agree with some other members on the board about what makes a book good or bad, and I know that tastes differ ... but there are some basic requirements for good writing: and some prominent features of bad writing. Reilly's story has all of the latter: tautology ("pointed peak"), feeble descriptions ("fashionable Fifth Avenue"), clichés ("blasted the window to smithereens," "small and wiry and compact"), Dan Brown-style clunking explication - ("Grauss pressure cases are all but impossible to break open. They are protected by four pressure-sealed locks which can only be opened using a high-pressure air-valve release unit - a machine the size of a small refrigerator. Such machines are rare and very expensive" - yeah, tell don't show, that's the spirit!), laughable strainings for effect and subtlety ("Their cases are known to be used by the US and British governments, nearly every major office at the UN, and not a few billionaires who like to accumulate socially ... unacceptable ... collectibles"), not to mention attention-deficit style (most paragraphs only a line or two long) and no concept of narrative integrity (one minute speaking in the protagonist's internal monologue, next addressing the reader omnisciently - "You see..."). The plot itself is a pointlessly contrived Speed-style race, and the backstory a frankly repellent libel against a dead man who can't answer back.

Tautology (use of redudant language)*, cliche, clunky exposition, such subtlety, and libel! In the same story? We could have a winner. Socks didn't half get shredded at the last meeting, and I am probably guilty of all of these at some point or other, but I like to think they iron themselves out in the drafts. And maybe that is our problem. Does the boy draft?

To be fair, every writers first draft is almost unreadable, be they Reilly, me, Wodehouse, whoever. Hal Duncan's tearing through the book lists in about 100 countries now with Vellum and Ink, but the first draft of Vellum was laughed off as "bad Doctor Who fan-fic"! And, speaking for myself, if anyone sees the first draft of Vamp when its done, I may die of embarrasement. No one ever does an exceptional Draft One, few even do a great or acceptable one..

*Sorry, just in case people didn't know and couldn't guess from the example.

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Now, I reproduce an extract from Seven Ancient Wonders, his most recent novel, to demonstrate how bad this guy is:

Ok, lets get the proper copyright on this thing so we dont break copyright rules...

Seven Ancient Wonders (copyright Matthew Reilly 2005, Pan MacMillan ISBN 1-4050-3692-3), no reproduction for profit without the express permission of the copyright holder.

I think that covers it. (See I'm much less scarier than Mr Topping about it!)

Now here's the passage, now duly noted as copyright...

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Australia December 1, 2007 9 Days Before the 1st Deadline Zou chu lai dao jia ban shang! Wo yao kan de dao ni. Ba shou ju zhe gao gao de!" Translation: "Hey! Come out onto the deck! Remain in plain sight! Hold your hands up high!" Deleting a final image, Chow did as he was told, kicked back from his desk, and stepped out onto the open foredeck of his barge. The lead gunboat towered above him. It was a modern one, fast, with camouflaged flanks and a huge forward gun. Chinese soldiers with American-made Colt Commando assault rifles lined its deck, their short-barreled guns pointed at Chow. That they held modern American weapons was a bad sign: it meant that these soldiers were elite troops, special forces. Ordinary Chinese infantrymen carried clunky old Type 56 assault rifles -- the Chinese rip-off of the AK-47. These guys weren't ordinary. Chow raised his hands -- a bare second before someone fired and the entire front half of his body exploded with bloody holes and he was hurled backward with violent force. Wizard keyed his radio mike. "Chow? Chow, are you there?" There was no reply. Then, abruptly, the harness that until now had hung suspended from the well hole in the ceiling went whizzing back up into the hole like a spooked snake, hauled up by someone above. "Chow!" Wizard called into his radio. "What are you -- " Moments later, the harness came back into view... ...with Chow on it. Wizard's blood turned to ice. "Oh, dear me, no..." He rushed forward. Almost unrecognizable from the many bullet wounds, Chow's body came level with Wizard. As if on cue, the radio suddenly came to life. "Professor Epper," a voice said in English. "This is Colonel Mao Gongli. We know you are in there, and we are coming in. Try nothing foolish, or you shall meet the same fate as your assistant." The Chinese troops entered the chamber quickly, abseiling down drop-ropes with clinical precision. Within two minutes, Wizard and Tank were surrounded by a dozen men with guns. Colonel Mao Gongli entered last of all. At fifty-five years of age, he was a portly man, but he stood with perfect poise, ramrod straight. Like many men of his generation, he'd been patriotically named after Chairman Mao. He had no operational nickname except the one his enemies had given him after his actions at Tiananmen Square in 1989 as a major -- the Butcher of Tiananmen, they called him. Silence hung in the air. Mao stared at Wizard with dead eyes. When at last he spoke, he did so in clear, clipped English. "Professor Max T. Epper, call sign Merlin, but known to some as Wizard. Canadian by birth, but resident Professor of Archaeology at Trinity College, Dublin. Connected with the rather unusual incident that took place atop the Great Pyramid at Giza on March 20, 2006. "And Professor Yobu Tanaka, from the University of Tokyo. Not connected with the Giza incident, but an expert on ancient civilizations. Gentlemen, your assistant was a gifted and intelligent young man. You can see how much I care for such men." "What do you want?" Wizard demanded. Mao smiled, a thin joyless smile. "Why Professor Epper, I want you." Wizard frowned. He hadn't expected that answer. Mao stepped forward, gazing at the grand chamber around them. "Great times are upon us, Professor. In the coming months, empires will rise and nations will fall. In times such as these, the People's Republic of China needs knowledgeable men, men like you. Which is why you work for me now, Professor. And I'm sure that with the right kind of persuasion -- in one of my torture chambers -- you are going to help me find the Six Ramesean Stones." Great Sandy Desert Northwestern Australia December 1, 2007, 0715 hours On the day his farm was attacked with overwhelming force, Jack West Jr. had slept in till 7:00 a.m. Normally he got up around six to see the dawn, but life was good these days. His world had been at peace for almost eighteen months, so he decided to skip the damn dawn and get an extra hour's sleep. The kids, of course, were already up. Lily had a friend over for the summer holidays, a little boy from her school named Alby Calvin. Noisy and excited and generally up to mischief, they'd played nonstop for the past three days, exploring every corner of the vast desert farm by day, while at night they gazed up at the stars through Alby's telescope. That Alby was partially deaf meant little to Lily or to Jack. At their school in Perth for gifted and talented students, Lily was the star linguist and Alby the star mathematician and that was all that mattered. At eleven, she now knew six languages, two of them ancient and one of them sign language -- it had been easily acquired and was actually something that she and Jack had done together. Today the end tips of her beautiful long black hair were colored electric pink. For his part, Alby was twelve, black, and wore large thick-lensed glasses. He had a cochlear implant, the miraculous technology that allowed the deaf to hear, and spoke with a slightly rounded inflection -- signing was still necessary for those times when he needed to understand extra emotion or urgency in a matter -- but deaf or not, Alby Calvin could rumble with the best of them. West was standing on the porch with his shirt off, sipping a mug of coffee. His left arm glinted in the morning sun -- from the bicep down, it was entirely made of metal. He gazed out at the wide desert landscape, hazy in the morning light. Of medium height, with blue eyes and tousled dark hair, he was handsome in a rugged kind of way. Once upon a time, he had been ranked the fourth-best special forces soldier in the world, a lone Australian on a list dominated by Americans. But he was no longer a soldier. After leading a daring ten-year mission to acquire the fabled Golden Capstone of the Great Pyramid from the remains of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, he was now more a treasure hunter than a warrior, more skilled at skirting booby-trapped cave systems and deciphering ancient riddles than killing people. The adventure with the Capstone, which had ended atop the Great Pyramid, had forged West's relationship with Lily. Since her parents were dead, Jack had raised her -- with the help of a truly unique team of international soldiers. Soon after the Capstone mission had concluded, he had formally adopted her. And since that day nearly two years ago, he had lived out here in splendid isolation, away from missions, away from the world, only traveling to Perth when Lily's schooling required it. As for the Golden Capstone, it sat in all its glory in an abandoned nickel mine behind his farmhouse. A few months back, a newspaper article had troubled West. An Australian special forces trooper named Oakes had been killed in Iraq, shot to death in an ambush, the first Australian battle casualty in any conflict in nearly two years. It bothered West because he was one of the few people in the world who knew exactly why no Australian had been killed in battle these past eighteen months. It had to do with the Tartarus Rotation of 2006 and the Capstone: thanks to his performance of an ancient ritual back then, West had assured Australia invulnerability for what was supposed to be a very long time. But now with the death of that soldier in Iraq, that period of invulnerability appeared to be over. The date of the man's death had struck him: August 21. It was suspiciously close to the northern autumnal equinox. West himself had performed the Tartarus ritual atop the Great Pyramid on March 20, 2006, the day of the vernal equinox, the spring day when the Sun is perfectly overhead and day equals night. The vernal and autumnal equinoxes are twin celestial moments that occur at opposite times of the year. Opposites but the same, West thought. Yin and yang. Someone, somewhere, had done something around the autumnal equinox that had neutralized Tartarus. West was disturbed from his reverie by a small brown shape cutting across his view to the east. It was a bird, a falcon, soaring gracefully across the dusty sky, wings wide. It was Horus, his peregrine falcon and loyal companion. The bird landed on the railing next to him, squawking at the eastern horizon. West looked that way just in time to see several black dots appear in the sky there, flying in formation. About three hundred miles away, near the coastal town of Wyndham, military exercises were under way, the biennial Talisman Sabre exercises that Australia held with America. Large in scale, they involved all sections of both nations' armed forces: navy, army, and air force. Only this year, Talisman Sabre came with a twist: for the first time ever, China was participating. No one was under any illusions. Under the chaperoning of neutral Australia (it had significant trade links with China and long-standing military links with the US), China and America, the two biggest kids on the block, were sizing each other up. At first, the US hadn't wanted China's participation, but the Chinese had exerted some considerable trade pressure on Australia to be involved, and the Australians had begged the US to allow it. But happily, West thought, these weren't matters that concerned him anymore. He turned to watch Lily and Alby scamper around the barn, kicking up matching dust trails, when the computer in his kitchen pinged. Ping, ping, ping, ping. E-mails. Lots of them. Jack stepped inside, still gripping his coffee, and checked the monitor. Over two dozen e-mails from Max Epper had just come in. Jack clicked on one, and found himself staring at a digital photo of an ancient carved symbol. Chinese by the look of it. "Oh, Wizard." He sighed. "What's happened now? Did you forget to take your extra hard drive ag... And if you can't see what's wrong with that, please do society a favour and stay away.

I can honestly say, without immodesty or an inflated sense of self-worth, that the current draft of Vamp (so far) is superior. Not saying much really.

Simple is good. Neil Williamson tells me so. But surely this proves the point I often make - that too simple is equally as bad as too complex? I could probably whizz through the book in a day or less but what would I gain from it?

And I love how he makes his characters both overtly brutal, ciphers and completly detatched pieces of writing in the same instances.

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Originally Posted by wishful_sinful Mile - I admit I didn't make it to the end of that extract but crumbs, I think we have a winner!

Now, what do I think could add to this worthy list of contenders?

Ten Commandments for Bad Writers

It's hard to say, really. Almost all have SOME merit. Aickman builds places and people well but never ends properly. Too many try to be Dickens. Or Tolstoy. And fail miserably.

Someone who springs to mind is Diderot. Lousy characterisation, goes off in tangential huffs throughout his prose (he wrote The Nun due to delays in The Encylopedia, of which he help create), dramatic errors and prose that was outdated in his own lifetime. In The Nun, Suzzane can recall events that, since he is unconscious or not in the room, would have no possible way of knowing. Plus, the writer gets bored and the last few dozen pages are in note format, as if he really can't be bothered with his creation anymore. Never mind it being "artistic licence, if the author doesn't give a s*** about his own work, why should we?

I think that sums that for now. Two hours writing about bad writing - it could give a writer a bad impression of himself!

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And an addendment to the Original

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Originally Posted by Windram Ah, Marty - the Morrissey of the literary world in that he's such a polarising figure and for most readers, it's difficult to separate like or dislike of the man with an appraisal of his work. Personally, I love his writing though I do think with the notable exception of Experience and a handful of essays his recent work has been below-par.

I may admit to being unable to now seperate my dislike of the man with his writing. However, in my defence, I was never a big fan of his writing before I know of him as a person, so at least I remain consistent in that regard.

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Originally Posted by Imbelic Fire I'm quite surprised to hear this (My closing parting shot) as I've always thought Aickman's stories conclude brilliantly, their very ambiguity and opacity creating an unease which lingers long after reading. I certainly think that he intended to end his stories in such fashion rather than it being a stylistic fault. My edition of 'Cold Hand In Mine' opens with a quote from Sacheverell Sitwell, 'In the end it is the mystery that lasts and not the explanation,' which I think is a perfect epigram for Aickman's work.

I read "Ringing the Changes" most recently. It is recommended by everyone. Even Roald Dahl, and I tend to take that mans opinion on literary as gospel*. And it struck me as having the same problems his other work has. Nice buildup, ominous. Good characterisation. Still ominous. Well written prose and a swift build up to.....the end of the story, as opposed to the end of the narrative. It might well be intentional, but its something that irks me no end. It just doesn't fit the narrative integrity that preceeded. In one man's opinion, of course, and I'm not too stubborn to realise it is a minority opinion at that.

*In literary terms I mean, if he says such and such a story/novel is good, I'm inclined to check it out on his word. I'm not saying I agree with his alleged anti-semiticism though, before any accuses me of doing so. I'm talking strictly literary.

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But thanks for so lucidly expressing everything that is wrong with Martin Amis.

I try my best.