(How’s that title for misleading? Lit Drift is awesome, for the record)
Lit Drift offers a solid list of ways to appreciate a bad (badly written, specifically) book. This is a great way to find some solace in a world of terrible prose, matched by an equally unfair world of monetary rewards for terrible prose. I’m jealous of the huge number of eyes these books get, yes. but I’m damn thankful for the fewer number of, I would defend, more intelligent eyes my work gets.
Two of the best:
1) Because they’re just as useful, if not more so, than good books in learning how to write well. See also: How To Write Badly Well.
2) Because, if the bad book in question is popular enough, it’s the literary equivalent of a sports team. People say the arts suffer because it lacks the social aspect of sports. But when it comes to miraculously popular bad books, suddenly hundreds of thousands of readers rally together to either support or make fun of the bad book. For some reason, popular good books don’t seem to have quite the same effect.
Here’s a couple of my own:
1) A bad book can be great for an art(ish) project (see mine, here, though to be fair, The Stranger is an awesome book, but could have been any bound crap)
2) At least people are buying books, meaning in the world of capitalism, they still hold some importance.
Give me some more.
photo credit:
that is hysterical and rad.
One should, to the greatest extent of one’s ability, add every possible flourish to one’s writing so as to dazzle one’s reader with the brilliance of your lexicographic grasp of vocabulary and render said reader pretty much comatose by the time they reach the end of your first sentence.
Then repeat for all subsequent sentences.
In a word, excessive obfuscation. Which is two words. Just to make the point.