It’s hard for me to not finish a book, unless it’s non-fiction, in which case I’m doomed to read the first half three or four times over as many years before I finally lose interest. Fiction, though, is cerebral candy, or maybe heroin. Even when I know the damage it’s doing, I can’t stop. This is bad for me, I think, turning pages madly into the night.
In college I got halfway through a promising SF novel when I realized the promise had not been kept… the lifeless characters remained so, and the plot flopped around on the dock of the author’s best intentions, gasping for assistance. I doggedly finished the book, hating every page, resenting every word.
I finished it, and then I sawed it in half with an Xacto knife. I left the top half of the bisected, paper-bit-shedding carcass on my shelf as a warning to other books.
I recently had an opportunity to test my patience with lousy fiction. Many years have passed since the book-butchering incident. Am I still addicted?
A houseguest left behind a promising diversion, Vince Flynn’s Memorial Day. The cover declared this to be a New York Times bestseller. Seeking distraction, I flipped to the first page:
Mitch Rapp stared through the one-way mirror into the dank, subterranean cement chamber. A man, clothed in nothing more than a pair of underwear, sat handcuffed to a small, ridiculously uncomfortable-looking chair. A naked lightbulb hung from the ceiling, dangling only a foot or so above him. The stark glare of the light combined with his state of near total exhaustion, caused the man’s head to droop forward, leaving his chin resting on his chest.
“Ridiculously uncomfortable-looking”? It’s not just uncomfortable; it’s ridiculously uncomfortable. Looking.
The glare caused the man’s head to droop? That’s some kind of oppressive glare. By the way, can an entire scene be a cliche?
Rapp checked his watch. He was running out of time and patience. He’d just as soon shoot this piece of human refuse
The sentence continued, but I did not. I gratefully closed the book, thinking: I have the power!
I have to thank Vince Flynn for writing so badly on page 1 that I needn’t continue even past the second paragraph. I’m no literary snob, but I can detect clumsy composition and grammatically challenged prose. I mean, I went to High School.
I am aware that the story is told from the perspective of the Mitch Rapp character. In other words, the issue might not be that Flynn is a “ridiculously” bad writer, but that Mitch Rapp’s internal dialog and imagery is straight out of Freshman Comp. Either way, I’m not up for 573 more pages of it.
Just in case you’re tempted, here’s the last sentence, a spoiler offered as a part of my occasional efforts to save you some time (you’ll thank me later):
There was only one way to wage it — head-on and with brutal and overwhelming force.
Gad, does that mean there’s a sequel?
posted to area: Fiction
updated: 2007-01-23 06:02:21
