Sometimes a bad book isn't worth a whole diary.
That sounds rich, coming from me, but it's true. I've come across some truly lousy books in the course of preparing the itineraries for our weekly forays into Badbookistan, and I cannot tell you how many times I've come across a book that should be perfect fodder for a diary and isn't.
It's not because a questionable idea turns out to be well written; about the only example I can think of off the top of my head is The Bear, where Canadian author Marian Engel somehow managed to create a minor masterpiece out of a subject that would be a major trigger warning on most fanfiction archives. Most terrible ideas are poorly executed, which should not surprise anyone, and usually the worse the idea, the worse the resulting book.
More often the prospective Book So Bad It's Good fails to meet my exacting standards for one of the following reasons:
- The book is simply mediocre, not bad. By this I mean that the book may be bad, but it's about at the same level of bad as most of its peers, without the extra spark that takes the ordinary and makes it extraordinary. This is very common in category fiction, especially romances, mysteries, and science fiction, and it's why this series is not called "Books So Bad They're Blah."
- The book is deliberately silly. By this I mean it's crammed with puns, slapstick, pop culture references that will not make sense in five years, and characters/incidents/places blatantly based on current events that readers will have forgotten about by the time the book hits the stores. The filmic equivalent would be Gremlins 2: The New Batch, where a good chunk of the humor comes from a character called "Daniel Clamp," and those of you who've seen the film know exactly what I'm talking about.
- The book is boring. I can't tell you how many times I'm started what seems to be a promisingly wretched tome only to yawn so hard I have a TMJ cramp in my lower jaw. These books may or may not be genuinely bad, but if they put me to sleep on the first page or soon after, they're not bad enough for these diary.
- The book is so mannered I give up in disgust. This happens quite a bit with contemporary fiction, particularly with books produced by graduates of MFA programs. I have no idea why - I like good writing as much as the next person - but sometimes the writing is so elegant, so refined, and so clearly the result of years of work under the tutelage of highly trained teachers intent on passing along their craft that the result is about as entertaining as a pile of dead sticks. The worst of it is that merely being bloodless isn't really enough to qualify a book as So Bad It's Good, at least until the author throws in something like a lake monster, and even then that isn't enough most of the time.
- The book is actively destructive. I've dealt with one or two of these - Michael and Debi Pearl's To Raise Up a Child, which advocates beating infants, is a notable example - but by and large I give these a miss. Mein Kampf, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, and The International Jew, for instance, led directly to the greatest war in human history and the deliberate slaughter of most of European Jewry, and there is no way in heaven, hell, or purgatory I'm going to poke fun at them. They aren't the only ones to leave a swath of physical or psychological destruction in their wake, either - certain pornographic "classics" also qualify, ditto the non-fiction of L. Ron Hubbard - and seriously? Life is too short for some of these wastes of wood pulp.
- The book is so very, very horrible, no good, and bad that even I, Your Cruise Director to the Wilds of Badbookistan, fail my saving throw and run screaming for shore. This doesn't happen often, but when it does, I run around the house not only yelling "KATIE BAR THE DOOR!!!!" loud enough to be heard several blocks away even though the nearest "Katie" I know lives in California, I willingly fling myself headfirst into either a) a skate sharpener, b) the La Brea tar pits, c) the Winter Soldier's mind wipe device, or d) all of the above in a desperate attempt to purge the mere existence of the book from the lump of tissue I call a "brain."
So you see, my dear friends and faithful readers: even I have my limits.
Yes.
Really.
Tonight I bring you six such books that, for whatever reason, aren't great but aren't really So Bad They're Good. Some are current, some are old, but none of them really had the mojo to rate a whole diary:
Gold of the Gods, by Erich von Daniken - the fourth in Swiss hotelier/amateur "archaeologist" Erich von Daniken's hilariously awful series of books purporting to "prove" that humans are descended from space aliens who landed at Nazca, or Tihuanco, or Ur, or Zimbabwe, or Palenque, or some other place with dark-skinned locals to bring them the benefits of civilization. This one centers on an alleged cache of gold artifacts in Peru that were exposed by James "The Amazing" Randi as being the junk pile of a kindly and extremely gullible priest who lumped tin foil, tin cans, brass, copper, German silver, and for all anyone knows the cerebra of several deposed German warlords in a cave/grotto/hole in the ground. A bit more soberly written than most of von Daniken's ravings, but still worth a pickup at a yard sale if you need something to read in the bathtub.
Bloodline of the Holy Grail, by Lawrence Gardner - speaking of bathtubs, that's where I read this howler that combines Merovingian Jesus, a Belgian claiming to be the legitimate Stewart King of Great Britain thanks to forged genealogies, King Arthur, and a whole heap of misunderstood and very poorly translated "Biblical wisdom." I had to stop reading because I laughed so hard I nearly swallowed my uvula, and no, I am not joking. To be perused only with a doctor's note and a defibrillator on standby.
Come Be With Me, by Leonard Nimoy - Leonard Nimoy was a brilliant actor, a decent director, a philanthropist, a deeply religious Jew who saved the last synagogue in Boston's West End, and a talented photographer. He also wrote poetry of the 1970's Rod McKuen/Kahlil Gibran school, replete with vague platitudes, less than original metaphors, and soft focus black and white shots of trees, people, etc. The fact that this book was originally published by Blue Mountain Arts, purveyor of treacly greeting cards suitable for giving to couples that get married barefoot in a wildflower meadow while someone sings "The Wedding Song" accompanied by a slightly off-key acoustic guitar, tells you all you need to know.
Grey, by E.L. James - as if three wretched volumes about Anastasia Steele, muttering doormat, and Christian Grey, studmuffin BDSM aficionado, weren't bad enough, author E.L. James decided to stretch her literary wings by rewriting the first book from the point of view of Christian Grey. "Unnecessary," "appalling," and "a total waste of innocent trees" are some of the words that come to mind, but the bets is probably that old favorite, "horrendous." Even I can't do this, and that's saying something.
Gadsby, by Ernest Vincent Wright - the author, who might or might not have been a retired sailor, decided to write the ultimate lipogram, or word game, by composing an entire novel without once using the letter "e." This is much harder than it sounds, since "e" is the single most common letter is English, but thanks to judicious word choice, somewhat eccentric grammar, and physically tying down the "e" character on his typewriter, Wright managed it. The result, which was so peculiar that Wright had to publish through a vanity press, is nearly as great a literary curiosity as the oeuvre of "Lord" Timothy Dexter, only without the statues, tropical tabbies, or ghost wife. More grinding than fun, alas.
The Monsters of Templeton, by Lauren Groff - this infuriating book sounds wonderful on paper: quirky characters, lots of homages/borrowings from James Fenimore Cooper, fascinating explorations into the history of a small upstate New York town, even a lake monster...but between names like "Primus Dwyer," a lot of very self-conscious MFA-honed technique, and an annoyingly immature protagonist I wished to beat with a stick at regular intervals, not so much. Throw in a group of middle aged male joggers who go by the oh-so-precious name "The Running Buds," the single dumbest hysterical pregnancy in fiction, a bunch of old photographs, and an ending that should get the heroine thrown in jail rather than thinking ahead to her triumphant return to graduate school, and for the life of me I can't see why this book got past the editors, let alone garnered rapturous reviews and several award nominations. Help?
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So...am I missing something good in The Monsters of Templeton? Should I try to reread Gadsby? Have a good stiff drink and pet Gil the Wonder Cat? Chuck it all and dig for the remains of Jean Louis de Pouffe under the foundation slab of my basement? Advice is welcome, so have at it.....
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