minor beef[s] is a new feature where you can express your literary gripes, complaints and pet hates …
Is there a writer you despise who is getting too much praise? a lauded critic whose opinions suck? a trend which makes your skin crawl? Let us know …
I’m something of a snob. I cringe (internally!) when colleagues say they love literature and it turns out what they read is mainly romantasy, for example. But I don’t go all the way with it: I don’t care if a writer has an MFA; I don’t think it makes their work worse, and I don’t know how anyone else would presume to measure this. I happen to think the latest Oprah’s book club pick is a great read. And so on.
Bona fides established, here’s the beef: I’ve become bored out of my mind lately reading books where the author writes around something, avoiding writing about the thing itself entirely. I was reading a novel recently where you find out one of the characters gets electrocuted—that’s interesting! Or it would be, except that the author doesn’t bother to write the scene. You read earlier in the book that a character gets electrocuted; your interest is piqued; then the act itself is this and this only: another character “heard a buzzing sound, and then the sound of what could only be a body falling from a chair, landing on the floor.” That’s it. Chapter break. Cut to a completely different storyline. I see this feint happening everywhere in literature: something big and dramatic is mentioned, and I can see there’s a page break, and my heart sinks, because I know the next chapter will open like: In 1986 I was born in a hospital to a mother and a father …
I am aware of the concept of subtleties. I don’t need the event spelled out for me because I’m not sure what happened. I would like it written out because the elision is, to me, obviously a way of not writing: a way of writing around something. Whole scenes are elided in novels because a writer can’t be bothered to write them. I am done giving the benefit of the doubt. I don’t believe anymore that this phenomenon is one of subtlety, of delicacy, of hinting instead of telling. It’s laziness. If you can’t or won’t write the event, if you just throw in a mention of it in the hopes it will keep someone reading to learn more later on, what is that but cheap?
It’s related to the phenomenon, beloved by nonfiction writers, of starting in media res, getting you all turned on, and then going back to the beginning to start a boring lecture. The boat is sinking, the two survivors’ fate unclear. Let’s now have a chapter break where I’ll start by telling you the year one of them was born, and hope you’re distracted from your boredom by the anticipation of returning to the action. It’s a rote formula; it shows a dire lack of creativity. And for us only-kind-of-snobs—and, god bless them, even the non-snobs—it can lead to an obvious problem: the eyes glazing over as we slog through the character’s biography, skimming over whole chapters, waiting for the story to pick up again. It would be easy for a writer to blame a reader for not being attentive enough. I would argue it’s the writer’s fault for being, literally, too boring for words.
Get the MFA, or don’t: it’s no concern of mine. Tweet about the state of indie literature all day long. But when it comes time to write the book, actually write it, will you?
minor literature[s] 