Maybe the "Worst" isn't so bad after all

During the time when I was an active Authonomy member, I read some incredibly bad writing. But a yellowed newspaper clipping reminded me that these Authonomists couldn't hold a candle to Michael “The Fastest Typewriter in the East” Avallone.

The article, a “Weekend Whodunits” column by Henry Kisor, in the April 17, 1987 Chicago Sun-Times, reviewed Gun in Cheek: An Affectionate Guide to the “Worst” in in Mystery Fiction (Mysterious Press) by Bill Pronzini, a compendium of bad mystery writing, mainly of the hardboiled variety. Kisor begins with this excerpt from “one of a series of abominable pulp mysteries of the 1950s by Richard F. Prather, that featured a private eye named Shell Scott,” Take a Murder, Darling:

He was dead, all right. He had been shot, poisoned, stabbed and strangled. Either somebody really had it in for him or four people had killed him. Or else it was the cleverest suicide I ever heard of.

Two of the funniest examples were from the speeding typewriter of Avallone, who seems to have had trouble with human anatomy:

“His thin mustache was neatly placed between a peaked nose and two eyes like black marbles.” (Don't Die in Bed)

“She...unearthed one of her fantastic breasts from the folds of her sheath skirt.” (The Horrible Man)

Pronzini even finds examples from more contemporary mystery writers: “The sun [was] shining its ass off.” (Looking for Rachel Wallace by Robert B. Parker, “who of all writers should have known better,” remarks Kisor.)

Pronzini's examples were not exclusively American. “Nobody,” writes Pronzini, “approached the art of name-calling with more verve and scorn” than British writer Berkeley Gray's detective, Norman Conquest. Kisor provides a few examples:

“'Reach, slugs!' he said calmly.”

“'There are a a lot of things you don't know, reptile.'”

“'It's a shame that a chunk of hellspawn like you should be one of the throng.'”

“'Say that again, filth, and my trigger finger will give a very nasty jerk.'”

But it's an American Kisor uses for the final quote in his column. “Nobody,” he writes, could construct a stumbling metaphor better than Joseph Rosenberger... in his Death Merchant spy series:”

Tuskanni stood in the open doorway at the top of the stairs, a .38 Colt automatic in his hand, watching as the burly drivers tried to bring down the two brothers—their efforts making as much sense as the termite who was a conscientious objector and went around trying to eat up draft boards.

The column inspired me to read Pronzini's book. As I recall, though, Kisor managed to get the best examples from the book. But rereading the article gives me pause to reconsider my judgment. All of the examples are in grammatical English, with no comma splices, dangling participles, or other errors. Richard Prather uses “all right,” as opposed to the “alright” which abounds in Authonomy—even among the better writers. (What's scary is that the spell check in Open Office Writer has no problem with “alright.”) Avallone may have had trouble placing the parts of the body, but he knew the parts of speech. Quite a few of my fellow Authonomists don't.

“May their roscoes forever spit 'Ka-Chow! Chow!'” concludes Kisor.

Amen.

Authonomy: The Game

In November I uploaded the bulk of my novel, Things Done and Left Undone, onto the HarperCollins Authonomy website. Authonomy's motto is "Beat the Slush." The idea is to supplement the "slush pile" editors, who sift through the thousands of unsolicited manuscripts HarperCollins receives, with what amounts to volunteers. I suspect that Amazon.com's reader reviews were the inspiration for it.

The publisher has apparently found some gems among the slush. And I've read some fine writing. I've also read some writing that needs a team of editors to work overtime to get the writing in shape. One such book, which has a very interesting storyline, has potential. It's a Black Mask-style detective novel set in 1945 New York. But the author is British or Australian and uses terms that would be foreign to an American. I've made some comments on the book, explaining, for instance, that "suspenders" in American means "braces" in British. The term he needed was "garter belts." He uses British/Australian terms such as "whilst" and "walkabout" and puts in a lot of anachronisms, such as a reference to the New York Mets in 1945. I'm afraid this author will get his book to the Editor's Desk before it's ready for the editors. Maybe I'm wrong. In any case, he's extremely good at playing the game.

The object of the game, of course, is to get published, and a big step toward getting published is to reach the Editor's Desk, where a real, professional team of HarperCollins editors will review your book. Every month the top five books are sent to the Editor's Desk. But getting a manuscript to the Editor's Desk has less to do with writing than with horse trading. I haven't been playing the game very well. Each book has a ranking, based on the number of people who have recommended it by placing it on their bookshelves. You can back up to five books at a time. I wasn't sure how it worked, until another writer let me know:

"A good tip--you can back any number of books and if you take one off your shelf to save space it loses no points."

I thanked him for the tip and got a further explanation:

"I'm afraid it's a bit of a game on site here, the more books you look at, the more people are likely to look at your book. The better ranked a person is that backs your book the more points you get."

I replied that I thought the point of looking at books is to provide constructive criticism. His reply:

"HC would love you to read whole books and make weighty comments. But I'd only get through 2 or 3 books per week. And that's not going to compete with someone who's apparently reviewing twenty books a day. I usually judge on one chapter plus the pitch. I honestly think that's enough."

I backed his book, even though it's not the type of book I'd normally read. It was well-written.

So it's back to Authonomy, to rewrite my pitch and start judging books one one chapter plus the pitch.

Column Writing: The Toothbrush School vs. the Nymphomaniac School

I recently applied to write for the Indiana History Examiner. Examiner.com is a sort of online newspaper covering numerous cities throughout the United States. My fellow blogger Kellie Davis writes for the Anchorage Examiner, so I became interested in writing a local history column for the Indianapolis version. After applying, I got a response saying that Examiners are expected to write four to six articles of 200 to 400 words every week. That reminded me of Donald Kaul, onetime columnist for the Des Moines Register, who used to say there were two schools of daily column writing: the toothbrush school and the nymphomaniac school.

The toothbrush school was championed by Sydney J. Harris, who wrote a daily column for the Chicago Daily News and later the Sun-Times, from 1944 to his death in 1986. He compared writing a column to brushing his teeth in the morning. For him, it was a matter of routine.

Kaul then went on to quote another Daily News (later Sun-Times and the Tribune) columnist, Mike Royko, who quipped, "It's like being married to a nymphomaniac." (George Grizzard and Nora Ephron said the same thing--I'm not sure who said it first.) Like Kaul, I'll side with Royko, though not from personal experience.

So I gave a tentative assent to the Examiner offer, but only if I weren't subjected to the four-column minimum. That was a week ago and I haven't heard from the Examiner since. Perhaps the wedding is off.