Favourite Author Who You Know is Actually Quite Bad

[The Killer Snark]

With me it's HP Lovecraft. Every once in a while I have to reread the guy, because he had great storylines and visions and occasionally is an exquisitely talented technical writer. But I don't know whether that is a fluke or if he actually was more talented at writing than he seems, but most of the time couldn't be bothered. Because let's make no mistake about it; the majority of Lovecraft's output is that of the man who can't write his way out a paper bag.

One of the cardinal rules of good writing is to be aware of the intelligence of your reader. Show, don't tell. It's not your fault if no-one picks up on given hints. Well, Lovecraft overtelegraphs everything. You guess the ending within a few pages, and then eventually it comes in a flood of overwriting, in italics, as if a grand revelation's taken place. His notion of creating atmosphere is to rely on the same vague descriptors all the time and to keep pounding them into the head of the reader as if they'll fall under the atmospheric spell of his own cliches. Here's a pastiche of Lovecraftian writing anyone could do:

'As Iain James Robb, walking under the cyclopean tenements of Glasgow, pondered on the illimitable horrors that lie outside of the sane borders of Time and Space, became aware on an unnamable immensity of unspeakable nightmare, he wondered at the cyclopean madness presaged in the abominable Book of Qoddoth by the mad Assyrian prophet Farqan Hel Azar. Here indeed in its eldritch pages was hinted a nameless horror too illimitable to be compassed by the sanity of man.'

And on and on he goes, until you fall about groaning. And it's worse when the great revelation comes, and it turns out to be something stupid. Sometimes he spoils a moment of actual visionary brilliance by actually describing something, though, you can't believe in. For all of it's iconic status, the physical appearance of Cthulhu is frankly a bit silly after the genuine atmosphere of weirdness he creates describing R'lyeh. His monster creations are best at their vaguest (giving just enough to make your own picture), and he knows it, so most of the time he doesn't bother and makes them too vague to have effect.

His narrators are all the same person, basically himself. And then there's his constant racism, which unlike RE Howard's is not so much offensive as a source of derision against the author, the product of a man who was scared of everything, including sex, cold temperatures and seafood. I genuinely love Lovecraft, though. He actually does tell a good story. He has great ideas but doesn't usually know how to use them. But he has to be one of the least technically talented writers who is always going to be read.

PS - The Dunwich Horror and At the Mountains of Madness are a few exceptions to the rule.

Oh, and there's his patronising rural dialect transcriptions also. Here's an example from one of his best stories, in fact, The Color Out of Space. Does anyone know anyone who talks in such a manner?-

Nothin'... nothin'... the colour... it burns... cold an' wet, but it burns... it lived in the well... I seen it... a kind of smoke... jest like the flowers last spring... the well shone at night... Thad an' Merwin an' Zenas... everything alive... suckin' the life out of everything... in that stone... it must a' come in that stone pizened the whole place... dun't know what it wants... that round thing them men from the college dug outen the stone... they smashed it... it was the same colour... jest the same, like the flowers an' plants... must a' ben more of 'em... seeds... seeds... they growed... I seen it the fust time this week... must a' got strong on Zenas... he was a big boy, full o' life... it beats down your mind an' then gets ye... burns ye up... in the well water... you was right about that... evil water... Zenas never come back from the well... can't git away... draws ye... ye know summ'at's comin' but tain't no use... I seen it time an' agin senct Zenas was took... whar's Nabby, Ammi?... my head's no good... dun't know how long sense I fed her... it'll git her ef we ain't keerful... jest a colour... her face is gittin' to hev that colour sometimes towards night... an' it burns an' sucks... it come from some place whar things ain't as they is here... one o' them professors said so... he was right... look out, Ammi, it'll do suthin' more... sucks the life out..."

Though to be fair, it's a well-crafted story where he restrains himself a tad.

[Derfel Cadarn]

David Eddings.

[The Killer Snark]

Not familiar with David Eddings. I'll have to check him up. I forgot to add the word 'blasphemous' as another Lovecraft seems to use on every page. I mean, some really good and great writers have their foibles. Frank Herbert's characters all at some stage 'try to swallow in a dry throat'. GRRM keeps using 'little and less' and 'much and more' and I lost track of the times that Tyrion 'waddled' in ADwD. But these are pretty forgivable. Well, actually, GRRM's 'much and more' tic is getting a bit annoying now. He's much too good a writer to keep bringing up that phrase.

[Zoë Sumra]

The use of patronising rural dialect transcriptions was, I believe, the accepted convention at Lovecraft's time. Certainly it was extremely common in books written in those days. The fact that we regard it badly now doesn't mean it was unacceptable when Lovecraft was writing - just as heavy use of adverbs in books written prior to, say, 1995 stands out now because of the reaction against them.

My favourite bad author is Mercedes Lackey. She cannot structure an ending to save her life - the one or two counterexamples must be down to someone else's influence, given that so many of her books end poorly - among other indications of not-brilliant. I buy a lot of her books because I know exactly what I'm going to get and that I'm going to enjoy it in a popcorn-film way despite it not being very good.

[End of Disc One]

george r r martin

[sologdin]

favorite bad author = ayn rand.

[Nearly Headless Ned]

Going by The Hunger Games I'd have to say Suzanne Collins. Not particularly well written and the third book was a mess but I found them completely enthralling.

MockingJay for me personally was a book I loved and found very moving yet objectively I knew was deeply flawed.

[Datepalm]

I'm starting to suspect mine is Kate Griffin. Not bad, by any stretch of the imagination, but I think less brilliant than is justified by my buying her books as soon as they come out, each time. It's just become the same repetitive mess of people running around London and getting beaten up, but i'm still totally going to read her next book the moment it's out.

[deleted01]

Going by The Hunger Games I'd have to say Suzanne Collins. Not particularly well written and the third book was a mess but I found them completely enthralling.

MockingJay for me personally was a book I loved and found very moving yet objectively I knew was deeply flawed.

I have to agree. I'm currently reading the trilogy, halfway through Mockingjay, and though I'm enjoying them I can see why people criticise her style of writing.

[SkynJay]

Christopher Moore. He just can not write an ending.

Dougles Preston/Lincoln Child - Used to devour these things, but have not read them for a while. Having read both in their solo works, I think Preston is the weak link. Plus they name drop their other books into their works, which drives me nuts.

[UndergroundMan]

I don't read him any more, but I'm a bit embarrassed by how many RA Salvatore books I have read. Probably somewhere around 20.

I'm also embarrassed to admit how much I enjoy Jim Butcher's Dresden Files sometimes. The prose, particularly in the first few books, is pretty awful.

[Larry of the Lawn]

Tom Clancy, Robert Ludlum, John Grisham. Wouldn't want to be seen reading one in public, but I've enjoyed books by all three of them. I've even reread Without Remorse. In a tin hat moment I also checked out books by all three post-Patriot Act to cover my tracks at the library.

[The Killer Snark]

I'll go one better than any of you. I read and enjoyed all four Twilight books. I knew that they were teen pulp, of course, but they had some decent characters and were actually a lot of fun.

[Myshkin]

I'm also embarrassed to admit how much I enjoy Jim Butcher's Dresden Files sometimes. The prose, particularly in the first few books, is pretty awful.

Yeah, Butcher is not a very good writer, but I still enjoy the Dresden Files.

[Galleymac]

I can't un-have the fond teenhood memories I have of Terry Brooks. I'm afraid to reread him and possibly depress myself.

[mcb]

David Weber. The man is bad. His style leaves lots to be desired (and it looks as if nobody edited his books, so that's not gonna change), insanely repetitive... But for some unfathomable reason I still read his works.

[The Killer Snark]

I read a James Pattison book once called The Jester, which I liked as a straight romp with a decent storyline, though the characters were flat and the prose banal, the battle scenes improbable. But it was one of two books my Dad gave me (I don't normally read popular fiction), and I'd read it off the back of Atlantis by David Gibbins, without question the worst book in every way I've ever read.

[williamjm]

David Eddings.

Agreed, although at the time I read most of his books I didn't think they were bad. In retrospect, there were a lot of problems that I either didn't notice when I read them as a teenager or chose to ignore.

[ljkeane]

I'm starting to suspect mine is Kate Griffin. Not bad, by any stretch of the imagination, but I think less brilliant than is justified by my buying her books as soon as they come out, each time. It's just become the same repetitive mess of people running around London and getting beaten up, but i'm still totally going to read her next book the moment it's out.

I wouldn't say bad, more that the series as a whole seems to be becoming somewhat directionless.

[Opisthokont]

The use of patronising rural dialect transcriptions was, I believe, the accepted convention at Lovecraft's time. Certainly it was extremely common in books written in those days. The fact that we regard it badly now doesn't mean it was unacceptable when Lovecraft was writing - just as heavy use of adverbs in books written prior to, say, 1995 stands out now because of the reaction against them.

I think so to. Reading that Lovecraft quote made me think of M R James, who was roughly contemporary with Lovecraft - he was born a couple of decades earlier, but on the other hand he lived longer. I don't think he was nearly as condescending towards other races, classes, or other people in general as the good Howard Phillips, but there's a bit in one of his early stories that I read recently where the only character who isn't either posh or an academic talks in a way that looks just as bad as the Lovecraft excerpt.

My favourite bad author is Mercedes Lackey. She cannot structure an ending to save her life - the one or two counterexamples must be down to someone else's influence, given that so many of her books end poorly - among other indications of not-brilliant. I buy a lot of her books because I know exactly what I'm going to get and that I'm going to enjoy it in a popcorn-film way despite it not being very good.

If we are talking about authors who aren't very good at endings, Stephenson needs to be mentioned. He is a great writer in many ways, but a lot of his novels end in what can best be described as an anticlimax.