I see a distinction between pedestrian prose and effective prose when reading, but your descriptions don't work for me at all. (Not that I can do better!) To me, it's not the prose that brings me to re-read something, but the story. Merely pedestrian prose might keep me from sinking into the story as well as more effective prose, but not enough for me to put the distinction there.
"Lapidary" prose, on the other hand, usually makes me run very, very far in the other direction. I don't *want* to slow down to parse the sentences. I don't want to be aware of the words, as such, when I read; I want to fall through the words into the story.
This is not to say that anyone with other preferences is in any sense wrong.
This is an excellent point. I guess I'd have to qualify by saying, for purposes of comparison, the same type of story. For example, take romance. For me Jennifer Crusie writes in effective prose--evocative, vivid, funny. There are others whose prose gets the job done, but ten seconds after I close the book, I've forgotten the entire thing, and if I sort my books a few months later, I can't remember if I read it or not, but I can tell you a lot about the Crusies.
Then there is another popular romance writer. I can't remember her name right now, but a lot of people love her historical romances, wax rhapsodic about their lyricism. I tried three of them, and bogged about forty pages in on all three--what they found lyrical, I found positively sodden, like I was drowning in a bath of syrup and tears.
It's true--we can have highly individual reactions to all these works. But it's interesting to try to perceive patterns. (At least I find it interesting!)
My rule of thumb, formed from hard-earned experience, is that if a reviewer emphasizes how wonderful the prose is, I'm not going to like it.
On the other hand, the writing has to meet a certain minimum level of competence. youraugustine mentioned Dan Brown; I found Robert Ludlum to be unreadably bad. James Patterson wasn't quite unreadable: the prose was bad, but the story was enough to keep me going, although I skimmed a lot. (Not going to try to read another of his, though.) Yet Patterson's books are all runaway bestsellers; a lot of people must find his prose just fine.
My rule of thumb, formed from hard-earned experience, is that if a reviewer emphasizes how wonderful the prose is, I'm not going to like it.
Which is very often the reviewer’s fault, for trying to pass off a sow’s ear as a silk purse. As Orwell observed long ago, professional reviewers are frequently called upon to manufacture reactions to books when their only honest comment would be, ‘I don’t care about this book and would not have read it if I hadn’t been paid.’
It’s fairly hard to fake an interest in the plot, or the characters, or the setting, without revealing actual information to the reader which may blow the gaff. Much safer to praise the prose style, which you can’t quote at length and which is notoriously a matter of taste anyway. All reviewers have a ready catalogue of clichés about literary technique, at least some of which can be plausibly applied to any given book
( ... )
There's that, of course. But even from people (friends, for example) who genuinely like the book--if the prose was noticeable enough for them to mention at length, it's almost certainly too obtrusive for my taste.
I'd say mostly this too, though with an exception for amusing prose, which does move a book from category 1 to category 2 for me. I'm unlikely to see or hear a story, so evocative prose can leave me at best indifferent and at worst frustrated, which kills most category 3 stuff and some of the others (I bounced off the first Sasha book in part because there are too many auditory words). I do make an exception for LotR, but I read that more as poetry, so...
"Lapidary" prose, on the other hand, usually makes me run very, very far in the other direction. I don't *want* to slow down to parse the sentences. I don't want to be aware of the words, as such, when I read; I want to fall through the words into the story.
This is not to say that anyone with other preferences is in any sense wrong.
Reply
Then there is another popular romance writer. I can't remember her name right now, but a lot of people love her historical romances, wax rhapsodic about their lyricism. I tried three of them, and bogged about forty pages in on all three--what they found lyrical, I found positively sodden, like I was drowning in a bath of syrup and tears.
Reply
(The comment has been removed)
Reply
(The comment has been removed)
Reply
On the other hand, the writing has to meet a certain minimum level of competence. youraugustine mentioned Dan Brown; I found Robert Ludlum to be unreadably bad. James Patterson wasn't quite unreadable: the prose was bad, but the story was enough to keep me going, although I skimmed a lot. (Not going to try to read another of his, though.) Yet Patterson's books are all runaway bestsellers; a lot of people must find his prose just fine.
[editted to fix bad markup]
Reply
Which is very often the reviewer’s fault, for trying to pass off a sow’s ear as a silk purse. As Orwell observed long ago, professional reviewers are frequently called upon to manufacture reactions to books when their only honest comment would be, ‘I don’t care about this book and would not have read it if I hadn’t been paid.’
It’s fairly hard to fake an interest in the plot, or the characters, or the setting, without revealing actual information to the reader which may blow the gaff. Much safer to praise the prose style, which you can’t quote at length and which is notoriously a matter of taste anyway. All reviewers have a ready catalogue of clichés about literary technique, at least some of which can be plausibly applied to any given book ( ... )
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
What a brilliant line! The ultimate in damnation by faint praise.
Reply
Reply
Reply
Leave a comment