For several months I was part of Autonomy, a online platform created by HarperCollins to discover new writing talent. It finally shut down in 2015, with an announcement almost entirely in the passive voice: “in recent years publishing of titles from the site has slowed as we have opened other submissions channels, and the community has become smaller, so the decision to close Authonomy has been made.” There was some fine writing on Authonomy, but a lot of mediocre to atrocious prose as well. I discovered this post from 2010 on a flash drive, so I decided to repost it. Back then , I didn't know Henry Kisor, whom I've since met through Facebook.
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 were pikers compared 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, which 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.
