Who Is The Worst Writer Ever?

[Ecurb]

It's a close race between prickly_pete and GL Wilson.

[cyberbob]

Actually, I think the first page got it right with Kenji Siratori.

[kiki1982]

My husband says Colin Forbes.

And we both agreed on Harold Robbins (for everyone who gets the joke )

[conartist]

pi 0

He's a contemporary poet who must have the most inane motives to create in the history of art. His work includes a book called 'Number Poetry', which is what it sounds like - pages and pages of numbers.

[dfloyd]

Seinfeld or Karl Marx of the Marx brothers.

[MarkBastable]

Archer is peerless as a bad writer. Utterly and relentlessly devoid of talent in every department.

[serhanbener]

stephen king

[Desolation]

Seinfeld or Karl Marx of the Marx brothers.

Really? I quite like Seinfeld...His "show about nothing" is fantastic post-modern television.

[Ecurb]

Here is Paul Fussell on Graham Greene:

: EXAMINATION: English 345, Expository writing

: The following passages have been written by Mr. Graham Greene in his book "Ways of Escape." They have been passed by his editors and approved by his publishers, who assert that Graham Greene is "the most distinguished living writer in the English language." Rewrite each passage as directed.

: 1. Correct the grammar:

: a. "I am not sure that I detect much promise in [Orient Express] except in the character of Colonel Hartep, the Chief of Police, whom I suspect survived into the world of Aunt Augusta and TRAVELS WITH MY AUNT."

: b. "In my hotel the Ofloffson..., there were three guests besides myself: the Italian manager of the casino and an old American artist and his wife -- a gentle couple whom I cannot deny bore some resemblance to Mr. and Mrs. Smith of [THE COMEDIANS]."

: c. "The day of the Lee-Enfield and the Maxim gun were more favorable to the European than those of the dive-bomber and the Bren."

: 2. Shift the misplaced modifier to the right position:

: "it is only since the Revolution that the Pole, I believe, has changed his habit of only communicating on certain major feast days."

: 3. Eliminate the jargon:

: "What the [Polish] authorities had not realized was the effectiveness of this play [Eliot's MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL], at this moment in time, in modern dress..."

: 4. Suggest alternative phrasing to eliminate the cliches:

: a. "The game...was not worth the candle."

: b. "These men [at Dien Bien Phu] were aware of what they resembled -- sitting ducks."

: c. "Resettlement was a turn of the screw of discomfort."

: d. "A Ghurka patrol worked by the compass and not by paths. It moved as the crow flies."

: e. "For me to describe Brighton was really a labor of love."

: f. "The sudden arrival in 1931 down a muddy Gloucestershire lane of a Norwegian poet whom I didn't know from Adam seemed uncomfortable."

: 5. Eliminate the awkwardness:

: "A writer's imagination, like the body, fights against all reason against death."

: 6. Eliminate the redundancy:

: "Next day [in Israel] I met a Burmese officer, a Frenchman, a Swede and a Finn (English was the common language they all spoke)."

: 7. Reconstruct the sentence to eliminate excessive prepositions:

: "Suicide was Scobie's inevitable end; the particular motive of his suicide, to save even God from himself, was the final twist of the screw of his inordinate pride."

: 8. Give the sentence a backbone and eliminate the awkwardness:

: "Some critics have found in [TRAVELS WITH MY AUNT] a kind of resume' of my literary career -- a scene in Brighton, the journey on the Orient Express -- and perhaps a hint of this did come to mind by the time Aunt Augusta arrived at the Pera Palace, but what struck me with some uneasiness, when I reread the book the other day, were the suggestions I found in it where the future was going to take me."

: "Be sure your name is on your paper."

[logophile]

If we can include poets, I would like to put forward Carol Anne Duffy. After several lengthy discussions on the subject with friends and lecturers, we have decided that the only possible reasons for her being given the position of Poet Lauriet are those two awful poems on the GCSE english syllabus (now one, after education for leisure was removed). I cannot think of a single redeeming feature of her work. It is awful.

[Emil Miller]

The question is pointless unless one has read all of the books ever printed, but if we restrict it to our own limited reading, in my case it would have to be L.Ron Hubbard of Scientology fame (infamy?) whose book Fear was appallingly bad (tautology?) as befits all those who seek to control the ingenuous. I read it at the behest of a bartender who had read one of my novels and who had an ultra diverse weltanschauung.

[MystyrMystyry]

Archer is peerless as a bad writer. Utterly and relentlessly devoid of talent in every department.

He's also a dreadful speaker if not person. He drops down to the Southern-most Hemisphere on occasion trying to promote his latest opus (I think it's in the contract) and hits the talkshow circuit. As a self-righteous pompous prig he's unmatched, with his self-heroic chivalric tales of his survival as an honoured guest of Her Majesty: how he talked junkies out of their addiction and convinced habitual murderers to not lose hope...

And of course not to seem to betray their trust he claims to only have written about them on tiny scraps of paper in pencils he kept up his arse in the dark after he was certain everyone was asleep

And then in an effort to seem blokey he tries on a joke about the cricket wars as though he's genuinely interested, and, worse, as though anyone is.

But the thing is, everyone with a full set of marbles despises him, and he just doesn't get it...



Okay, favorite bad writer of the week goes to - Robert G. Barret 'And De Fun Don't Done'

As an Australian butcher turning to butchering the language instead (apparently he's on continuous loan in the prison system) he's created an off beat hard boiled private eye who, in this one at least, winds up in Jamaica-

And de fun don't start...

[logophile]

The question is pointless unless one has read all of the books ever printed.

And also holds relevance only to our own biased opinions. Some people find lengthy metaphor intollerable. Others love it. At the end of the day, these sorts of discussions are really just for us to discuss our own little prejudices. At the end of the day, I think we all realise that there isn't going to be one answer to this sort of question, but it's fun to see what others think on the subject.

[Babak Movahed]

Personally, I believe Henry James is the worst author who is "considered literary." In my opinion James spends far to much time trying to create an identical replication of real life, which I understand considering he's part of the realist movement. However, his preoccupation in overly complicated diction, and obsession with exposition is unbearable. It seemed like James was under the idea that everyone who read his stuff was too dumb to understand the story. Some people may like him, but there are far more talented writers then Henry James.

[hanzklein]

pi 0

He's a contemporary poet who must have the most inane motives to create in the history of art. His work includes a book called 'Number Poetry', which is what it sounds like - pages and pages of numbers.

Sounds interesting. I want to know more about him