Why We Love Bad Writing. In the Guardian, writer Edward Docx bemoaned the popularity of such writers as Stieg Larsson and insisted on a qualitative difference between “literary” and “genre” fiction. Critic Laura Miller, writing in Salon, disagreed with most of Docx’s assumptions, but wondered what it is that makes the books of Larsson or Dan Brown
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I wonder if that's always that case....that the reader can insert themselves into a favored character, and therefore the quality of the writing becomes immaterial.
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I can read incredibly BAD fanfiction just to soak up more of character type X and character type Y. I can read really, truly horrible manga if the general plot follows a trope I love. Same principles apply to the bad novels I devour. If the story is a mix of favorite tropes and favorite characters, I'll absolutely re-read it, no matter how painful the prose ( ... )
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This means I sometimes miss the beauty of good writing if the plot is insufficiently shiny. I badly misjudged the appeal of one author until I heard him read aloud from his novel and had an epiphany. After that, I read with care and enjoyed his work. It did not suffer from poor plotting, it just wasn't a fast enough ride for thrill-addicted me.
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This was Lewis's test in AN EXPERIMENT IN CRITICISM, in which he talked about many of the same issues you mention. In A PREFACE TO PARADISE LOST he defended Homer's use of epithets as a way to keep things moving.
Imo, 'badness' alone does not suffice to make a best-seller. There needs to be something positive that the utilitarian presentation allows to be seen.
My own tastes range from, oh, say Elinor Wylie and Henry James on the one hand, to Nancy Drew and Perry Mason. In Rowling I found her adverbs and speech tags and such an encouraging signal, that this is going to be a fast reading book that ignores current style taboos. Rather like an architecture so large and complex, that you had better begin with a sweeping look from chapter one to the last chapter, or you'll lose the larger patterns.
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Do you recall it well enough to unpack for me what he meant by that? I'm wondering if Lewis was aware of the oral-formulaic theory or not.
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