The Death of Literature

[gilee7]

Recently the Fifty Shades of Grey Trilogy came to my attention. I had noticed the books sitting atop the New York Times Bestseller List for the past few weeks, but I knew nothing about them. However, as references to the books mounted on the internet and television, in newspapers and magazines, I grew curious to see what all the fuss was about.

Comments

[narkoleptik]

When I first saw the cover and before I was aware that this book was a 'thing' I thought it was a self-published thing. So it doesn't surprise me that the writing is on par with the cover design.

Also, sweet jesus, are there that really many ellipses in one paragraph? How sure are we that it's not some 13 year old girl?

[2ndhandsunshine]

I didn't watch it, but I did see the video link of an interview on Yahoo! once. She looks a little bit like Stephanie Myers (sp?) except older, fatter, and generally uglier. At least if she were 13, she'd have youthful ignorance as an excuse, but sadly, she's just a complete idiot who never outgrew middle school sentence structuring.

[fatpie42]

I'm not sure that her looks are of much consequence here. Writers can be absolutely hideous or stunningly gorgeous with little effect either way on the quality of their writing.

Apparently this writer was able to publish her work because of the success of her Twilight fanfic online. In the end I'm afraid it is Stephanie Meyer who is to blame. The writing level of the Twilight books isn't exactly awe-inspiring and fanfic probably isn't generally expected to out-do it. Presumably this is actually good enough by "Twilight fanfic" standards to gain widespread support. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, since anyone reading and/or writing Twilight fanfic presumably has to be someone who felt happy with Meyer's writing style in the Twilight books in the first place.) :S

[2ndhandsunshine]

Generally speaking, looks and talent have little correlation (except in this case, where both are lacking) but the comment was more an illustrative answer to narkoleptik's question whether we were sure she wasn't actually a 13 year old girl. She most definitely isn't.

That said, I do believe personality colors appearance and it isn't her physical features that make her ugly so much as the fact she's a shameless purveyor of crap. If her contribution to humanity held any intelligence or profundity, then her looks would hardly matter; but that she looks as she does and writes bad erotic fanfiction with the skills of an illiterate middle schooler just plays so much into stereotypes that it's hilariously laughable. She's an uglier version of Stephanie Myers who writes an uglier version of Twilight. (At least Twilight was aimed at a teenage market where bad tastes and lack of awareness are a norm and something we hope is just a phase. Also, I don't think SM used nearly as many ellipses.)

And as I said below, the publishing of books such as Twilight

[fatpie42]

Yeah, I'm not sure that the comment was about "internal beauty", but I do agree that this writing is very ugly indeed.

I think there's something wrong with suggesting that we should expect children's books to be awful, but I do agree that there's something very bad about writing for adults which is lower quality than the writing given to children.

But yeah, absolutely agree with your conclusion. I stand corrected. The real culprit here is the audience who buys the books, not Stephenie Meyer. That said, I would note that a lot of people buy books because of recommendations. On the other hand, it's pretty shocking that something like this ever managed to get recommended to this degree. There's not much excuse for that.