Who’s Bad?

Phelan goes on to say, “There will, I’m sure, be no consensus about what constitutes badness or whether it belongs to the book, the reader, the situation of reading, all of the above, or none of the above,” though he’s almost wrong there. The list is pretty varied, from the morally-bankrupt to the so-bad-it’s-good varieties, though generally the harshest judgments come against fussy stylists and purple prose. Cormac McCarthy gets singled out, by name and illustration, multiple times.

Everybody’s Got Advice

Essentially, the Guardian collection can be seen as advice on what to do before sitting down to write, and Lennon’s is a toolkit for looking back on that work with the purpose of sharpening and tightening it. There’s overlap, since everyone writes with grammar in mind and usually edits with a larger purpose beyond the single page in front of them, and both are useful in their own ways.

But one thing I found curious: barely anyone ever advocates composing your own Rules For Writing and/or Revising.

When Republicans Read Orwell . . .

Ezra Klein wonders how exactly Newt Gingrich came to read 1984 as “proof of Hayek’s principle that centralized planning inherently leads to dictatorship.” As others have noted, Gingrich obviously didn’t get around to the essays, like “Why I Write,” where the author said flat-out, “Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 [...]

Mailer’s Muddled Methods

The Executioner’s Song is simultaneously more explicitly journalistic (nearly every line of dialogue seems pulled right from an interview, as do many of the physical descriptions) and more authorially neutral. I was expecting something a little more opinionated about the death penalty itself, and was surprised by how nonjudgmental Mailer remained throughout.