Barbara Walters’s ‘Audition’ – A Delete Key Awards Candidate?

Kyle Smith wrote in the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal that Barbara Walters is “a journalist who cannot write.” The sentence he offered as evidence? “Just before the ax fell, lightning struck and my life changed, never to be the same again.” I haven’t seen Walters’s Audition, in which the sentence appears. But the line sounds like a possible candidate for one of the Delete Key Awards, which this site gives annually to writers who haven’t used their delete keys enough. What do you think? Read the full review by Smith, a film critic for the New York Post, here: online.wsj.com/article/SB121038380585382137.html?mod=todays_us_weekend_journal.

© 2008 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.

And a 2008 Delete Key Awards Honorable Mention to Steve Martin and Roz Chast’s ‘The Alphabet From A to Y: With Bonus Letter Z!”

And a 2008 Delete Key Awards honorable mention to …

To Steve Martin for:
“Henrietta the hare wore a habit in heaven, / Her hairdo hid hunchbacks: one hundred and seven.”

And to Roz Chast for a drawing that may leave thousands of children with the idea that the plural of “Inca” is “Incans”

From The Alphabet From At to Y: With Bonus Letter Z! by Steve Martin and Roz Chast (Doubleday)

At their best Steve Martin and Roz Chast are two of the funnier people in America. But the actor and cartoonist bring out the worst in each other in an alphabet book – a category typically aimed at 2-to-4-year-olds — that makes fun of, among others, people with disabilities.

Martin and Chast didn’t win the top prize partly because the Delete Key Awards recognize the year’s worst writing in books. And the couplet quoted here, if tasteless, is better written than the grand prize winner and runners-up. Martin’s jaunty anapestic lines are clear, metrically sound and (unlike Chast’s reference to those “Incans”) grammatically correct. This book would raise fewer objections if billed as a book for teenagers or adults (which it is) instead of for 2-year-olds (which it isn’t).

© 2008 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.
www.janiceharayda

Grand Prize Winner in the 2008 Delete Key Awards: Eckhart Tolle’s ‘A New Earth’

And the grand prize winner in the 2008 Delete Key Awards contest is …

“A new species is arising on the planet. It is arising now, and you are it!”

“We are in the midst of a momentous event in the evolution of human consciousness. But they won’t be talking about it in the news tonight. On our planet, and perhaps simultaneously in many parts of our galaxy and beyond, consciousness is awakening from the dream of form. This does not mean all forms (the world) are going to dissolve, although quite a few almost certainly will. It means consciousness can now begin to create form without losing itself in it. It can remain conscious of itself, even while it creates and experiences form.”
– Both from Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (Plume)

What was Oprah thinking when she chose this New Age mumbo-jumbo as her new book club selection? Other writing on the shortlist for the 2008 Delete Key Awards might have been bad, but at least you could figure out what it meant. Does anybody know what Tolle means when he says that consciousness may be “awakening from the dream of form” not just on Earth but “in many parts of our galaxy and beyond”? For sheer incomprehensibility, these passages surpass anything on the shortlist and have earned this self-help book the grand prize in this year’s contest for authors who aren’t using their delete keys enough.

The Secret may try to support its gospel of materialistic acquisition with pages of quotes from self-help gurus, but A New Earth looks to higher authorities to pave its path to to personal fulfillment: Tolle attempts to give credibility to his claim that “consciousness” may be awakening in other parts of “our galaxy and beyond” by drawing repeatedly on the Bible and other sacred texts.

For a while, it looked as though Oprah’s Book Club had made a welcome turn toward classics. But the winning entries from this book are classics of hokum. Goodbye, Love in the Time of Cholera. Hello, Psychobabble in the Time of Ratings Wars.

© 2008 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.
www.janiceharayda.com

First Runner-Up in the 2008 Delete Key Awards: Alice Sebold’s ‘The Almost Moon’

And the first-runner up in the 2008 Delete Key Awards contest is …

“And there it was, the hole that had given birth to me.…This was not the first time I’d been face-to-face with my mother’s genitalia.”
– From Alice Sebold’s The Almost Moon (Little, Brown)

Is it overkill to recognize bad writing in novel that’s already been named one of the five worst books of 2007 by Entertainment Weekly www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20167009_3,00.html and that received a “Stinker of the Year” tag from New York magazine
nymag.com/arts/cultureawards/2007/41801/index2.html?
Not when the book has a lot more like writing like this. (“Face-to-face” isn’t quite the right phrase for those body parts, does it?) And the novel set itself apart from the other finalists with more than what a visitor to this site called “the ‘ick’ factor.”

Last year’s first runner-up, Mitch Albom’s For One More Day, is written at a third-grade reading level (Grade 3.4) according to the readability statistics that come with the spell-checker on Microsoft Word. The Almost Moon barely rises above it with a level of Grade 4.7 and exemplifies the bizarre trend toward writing about adult subjects in prose fit for the Island Princess Barbie set. What’s next: My First Book of the Kama Sutra? Or Let’s Read and Find Out About S&M?

© 2008 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.
www.janiceharayda.com

Second Runner-Up in the 2008 Delete Key Awards: Rhonda Byrne’s ‘The Secret’

And the second runner-up in the 2008 Delete Key Awards contest is …

“The most common thought that people hold [about fat], and I held it too, is that food was responsible for my weight gain. That is a belief that does not serve you, and in my mind now it is complete balderdash! Food is not responsible for putting on weight. It is your thought that food is responsible for putting on weight that actually has food put on weight.”

Byrne suggests that if you want to lose weight, you should stop looking at fat people:

“If you see people who are overweight, do not observe them, but immediately switch your mind to the picture of you in your perfect body and feel it.”
Both from Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret (Atria)

Rhoda Byrne’s The Secret once looked like the favorite to win the grand prize in this year’s Delete Key Awards contest. Early in 2007, Jerry Adler had a brilliant five-page evisceration of this self-help book in Newsweek that rightly called some of its claims scientifically “preposterous.” Much of the book is just bizarre: Your thinking about food “has food put on weight”? (Does your thinking demagnetize the scale?) But with its fake red-wax seal and parchmentlike paper, The Secret tips you off right away to the possibility that it’s goop. Some of its rivals made weirder claims but were packaged to look like more than than they were.

© 2008 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.

www.janiceharayda.com

The Year’s Worst Writing in Books — Delete Key Awards Winners — Tomorrow at 10 a.m.

The 2007 Delete Key Award winners were Danielle Steel’s Toxic Bachelors, Mitch Albom’s For One More Day and Claire Messud’s The Emperor’s Children. Which books will win tomorrow?

The winners of the second annual Delete Key Awards for the year’s worst writing in books will be announced on this site tomorrow at 10 a.m. Eastern Time. The complete list will appear by noon.

Questions and answers about the Delete Key Awards appeared on Feb. 24 www.oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/2008/02/24/. The list of the 10 finalists and samples of their writing were posted on Feb. 29 www.oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/2008/02/29/.

Today is your last chance to try to save an author from doom by leaving a comment. Are you listening, Steve Martin fans? You need to write fast if you think he should be spared despite that alphabet book … Next week, or maybe sooner, I’ll be reviewing some of the wonderful books I’ve been reading to cheer myself up while judging the contest.

(c) 2008 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.

Democratic ‘Luv Guv’ James McGreevey Couldn’t Win a Delete Key Award in 2007, But Can Republican Newt Gingrich Do It in 2008?

James McGreevey, the former governor of New Jersey, made the shortlist for last year’s Delete Key Awards with a steamy gay-sex passage from his memoir, The Confession. But the Democrat known as the “Luv Guv” lost to Danielle Steel, Mitch Albom and Claire Messud. Can the former Republican Speaker of the House do better when the 2008 winners are announced on Friday?

Newt Gingrich and co-author William Forstchen made the shortlist with this passage from Pearl Harbor: A Novel of December 8th (St. Martin’s/Thomas Dunne):

“James nodded his thanks, opened the wax paper and looked at bit suspiciously at the offering, it looked to be a day or two old and suddenly he had a real longing for the faculty dining room on campus, always a good selection of Western and Asian food to choose from, darn good conversation to be found, and here he now sat with a disheveled captain who, with the added realization, due to the direction of the wind, was in serious need of a good shower.”

Read the full 2008 shortlist here www.oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/2008/02/29/. You’ll find the shortlisted 2007 passage by former New Jersey “Luv Guv” Jim McGreevey (”He greeted me in his briefs …”) here www.oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/2007/03/14/. The winners will be announced on Friday, March 14, starting at 10 a.m. Eastern Time, so you need to leave a comment today if you want to try to rig the jury.

The annual Delete Key Awards recognize authors who aren’t using their delete keys enough. They don’t honor the “worst books” but instead call attention to the worst passages in books, such as individual sentences or paragraphs.

(c) 2008 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.

Who Wrote Worse in 2007 – Alice Sebold or Holly Peterson? Should Either Novelist Win a Delete Key Award on Friday?

Critics have not been kind to Alice Sebold’s The Almost Moon (Little, Brown), which Entertainment Weekly and New York magazine ranked among the worst books of 2007.

But is its prose worse than that of Holly Peterson’s The Manny? Both novels have made the shortlist for the 2008 Delete Key Awards for the year’s worst writing in books. Which – if any – of the lines below deserves to become one of the winners?

From Alice Sebold’s The Almost Moon:

“And there it was, the hole that had given birth to me.… This was not the first time I’d been face-to-face with my mother’s genitalia.”

From Holly Peterson’s The Manny:

“We’re in the modern era, baby, you spoiled, Jurassic, archaic, Waspy piece of petrified wood!”

“He was munching furiously on his prey, like an African lion with a freshly caught zebra.”

(Guess which part of the body the “prey” is.)

One-Minute Book Reviews welcomes — and may be influenced by — brilliant arguments for either book. The winners will be announced starting at 10 a.m. Eastern Time on Friday. To avoid missing these posts, please bookmark this site or subscribe to the RSS feed. Thanks for visiting One-Minute Book Reviews, a site for people who like to read but dislike hype and review inflation.

To read the complete list of finalists, click here www.oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/2008/02/29/.

© 2008 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.

Has Ian McEwan Suffered Enough? Or Should He Still Get a 2008 Delete Key Award for This Writing From ‘On Chesil Beach’?

First On Chesil Beach got longlisted for a Bad Sex in Fiction Award from the Literary Review www.oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/2007/11/23/. Then it lost the Man Booker Prize to Anne Enright’s The Gathering. And last month Atonement came up empty at the Oscars.

Has Ian McEwan suffered enough? Or should he still get a Delete Key Award on Friday? The following passages qualified him for the shorlist, announced on Feb. 29 www.oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/2008/02/29/:

“Like most young men of his time, or any time, without an easy manner, or means to sexual expression, he indulged constantly in what one enlightened authority was now calling ‘self-pleasuring’ … How extraordinary it was, that a self-made spoonful, leaping clear of his body, should instantly free his mind to confront afresh Nelson’s decisiveness at Aboukir Bay.”

“Because the instrument was a cello rather than her violin, the interrogator was not herself but a detached observer, mildly incredulous, but insistent too, for after a brief silence and lingering, unconvincing reply from the other instruments, the cello put the question again, in different terms, on a different chord, and then again, and again, and each time received a doubtful answer.”

If you’d like to try to influence the outcome of the Delete Key Awards, you have until 9 p.m. Wednesday to leave a comment. Mercy or no mercy?

© 2008 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.

Which Has Worse Writing – ‘The Secret’ or ‘A New Earth’? You Be the Delete Key Awards Judge

Which has worse writing: Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret (Atria) and Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (Plume)?

Both are among the finalists for 2008 Delete Key Awards, the winners of which will be announced on Friday. And One-Minute Book Reviews welcomes comments that could help with this difficult choice. Here are some of the passages from The Secret and A New Earth that qualified them for the shortlist:

From The Secret:

“The most common thought that people hold [about fat], and I held it too, is that food was responsible for my weight gain. That is a belief that does not serve you, and in my mind now it is complete balderdash! Food is not responsible for putting on weight. It is your thought that food is responsible for putting on weight that actually has food put on weight.”

From A New Earth:

“We are in the midst of a momentous event in the evolution of human consciousness. But they won’t be talking about it in the news tonight. On our planet, and perhaps simultaneously in many parts of our galaxy and beyond, consciousness is awakening from the dream of form. This does not mean all forms (the world) are going to dissolve, although quite a few almost certainly will. It means consciousness can now begin to create form without losing itself in it. It can remain conscious of itself, even while it creates and experiences form.”

© 2008 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.

The Delete Key Award Winners — Friday On One-Minute Book Reviews

Vote now on the question: Which authors aren’t using their delete keys enough?

One-Minute Book Reviews will announce the winners of the 2008 Delete Key Awards for the year’s worst writing in books on Friday, March 14, beginning at 10 a.m. Eastern Time. This is a date change. The winners are traditionally named on the Ides of March, the date of Julius Caesar’s assassination, because the winners assassinate the English language with their bad prose. But March 15 falls on a Saturday this year, and you might be out at Circuit City buying a new wireless router then.

The finalists were named on Feb. 29 www.oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/2008/02/29/. If you click on the link to that date, you’ll see a post that lists the titles of all the books on the shortlist. Below it, you’ll find 10 separate posts with samples from their writing.

Jan Harayda is the sole judge of the Delete Key Awards. But she realizes that many visitors to her blog are smarter than she is, which has become clear repeatedly in their brilliant comments on aspects of books she hadn’t noticed.

So in making her decision she will consider incisive and well-reasoned arguments on such questions as: Which is more deserving of an award — Rhonda Byrne’s advice in The Secret that if you want to lose weight, you should avoid looking at fat people, or Eckhart Tolle’s comment in A New Earth that consciousness may be “awakening from the dream of form” in “many parts of our galaxy and beyond”?

You can vote by leaving a comment on any post about the Delete Key Awards, including this one. The deadline for comments is 9 p.m. Eastern Time on March 12.

Please bookmark this site or subscribe to the RSS feed to avoid missing these posts. Thanks for visiting One-Minute Book Reviews.

(c) 2008 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.

www.janiceharayda.com

Long Live Powell’s Books! Fearless Portland Store Supports Free Speech and Helps Bad Writing Edge Past ‘Win a Date With Scarlett Johansson’ Contest on Yahoo

Just offhand, how many bookstores do you think would be brave enough to steer people to the Delete Key Awards, the only literary prizes in America that say, “Sometimes you need to take your anti-nausea medication before you head for the fiction aisle”? Not many, eh? And of those, how many might be really great world-class places? Right, we’re looking at negative numbers here.

Or so I thought until I noticed that One-Minute Book Reviews was getting a lot of traffic from the blog by Brockman for Powell’s, that Ferrari of bookstores in Portland, Oregon. I clicked on the incoming link www.powells.com/blog/?author=20
to its blog and read this:

“Arguably the second-best online literary award after the TOB’s Rooster [co-sponsored by Powell’s] is the 2008 Delete Key Awards for ‘the year’s worst writing in books,’ awarded by the One-Minute Book Reviews blog.

And the nominees are:”

This was followed, incredibly, by 11 links to One-Minute Book Reviews, one to the overall shortlist and one to each post that had a sample of a finalist’s bad writing.

Wow, do they believe in free speech at Powell’s.

Somebody there might have seen a mention of the awards Bookslut www.bookslut.com or Ceri Radford’s book blog for the Telegraph in the U.K. blogs.telegraph.co.uk/arts/ceriradford/feb08/dletekeyawardsfinalists.htm. So a big thank-you to them, too. And between all of them and others the Delete Key shortlist post ended up as the No. 1 Entertainment post on the Yahoo “Buzz” page for a while. (Alas, that “while” was so short, I can’t even seem to link to it now.) That meant that for at least 15 seconds on Yahoo Buzz, bad books ranked ahead of a contest called “Win a Date With Scarlett Johansson.”

What an amazing day.

Thank you, everybody.

(c) 2008 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.

www.janiceharayda.com

And the Honorable Mentions for the Delete Key Awards Shortlist Are …

Also-rans for the shortlist for the Delete Key Awards for the year’s worst writing in books that was posted Friday:

1. From Elizabeth’s Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia:

“A word about masturbation, if I may. Sometimes it can be a handy (forgive me) tool …”

Why I considered it: A bad pun isn’t less bad because you apologize for it, and the book has a lot of cute writing like this.

Why it didn’t make the cut: Gilbert might have eaten her way through Italy. But her book doesn’t suggest as The Secret does that if you want to lose weight, you should avoid looking at fat people.

2. From Dedication: A Novel by Emma McLaughin and Nicola Kraus:

“Movemovemove, I’ve gotta pee!”

“OHMYGODWHERE’DYOUGETTHATBODY?”

Why I considered it: At times this novel from the authors of The Nanny Diaries reads as though it had been written on a computer with a space bar that got stuck.

Why it didn’t make the cut: At least I could understand what the lines meant. I can’t say that about this passage from Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth, which defeated them for a spot on the shortlist: “On our planet, and perhaps simultaneously in many parts of our galaxy and beyond, consciousness is awakening from the dream of form. This does not mean all forms (the world) are going to dissolve, although quite a few almost certainly will. It means consciousness can now begin to create form without losing itself in it. It can remain conscious of itself, even while it creates and experiences form.”

© 2008 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.

2008 Delete Key Awards Finalists — The Complete Shortlist

Here’s the complete list of 10 finalists for the 2008 Delete Key Awards for the year’s worst writing in books. The passages that qualified these books for the shortlist were posted in 10 separate posts on Feb. 29, 2008 www.oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/2008/02/29/.

1. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

2. The Secret by Rhonda Byrne

3. Pearl Harbor: A Novel of December 8th by Newt Gingrich and William Forstchen

4. The Intellectual Devotional: Revive Your Mind, Complete Your Education, and Roam Confidently With the Cultured Class by David S. Kidder and Noah D. Oppenheim.

5. On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

6. The Alphabet from A to Y … With Bonus Letter Z! by Steve Martin and Roz Chast

7. The Manny by Holly Peterson

8. The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold

9.  A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose by Eckhart Tolle

10. Unholy Grail by D. L. Wilson

The winners will be announced on March 15, 2008.

© 2008 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.

Delete Key Awards Finalist #1 – Steve Martin and Roz Chast’s ‘The Alphabet from A to Y: With Bonus Letter Z!’

Delete Key Awards Finalist #1 – From The Alphabet From At to Y: With Bonus Letter Z!’ by Steve Martin and Roz Chast:

“Henrietta the hare wore a habit in heaven, / Her hairdo hid hunchbacks: one hundred and seven.”

And special mention to Chast for a drawing that may leave thousands of children with the idea that the plural of “Inca” is “Incans”

Hey, kids! You’re never too young to make fun of people who are different from you! That’s an implicit message of the shortlisted lines from this demented bestseller by the actor and cartoonist. Yes, American publishers have brought out far too many dreary children’s books that are longer on ideological correctness than good writing. But do we really need books that encourage 2-to-4-year-olds – the usual audience for alphabet books – to laugh at people with disabilities? In this book the joke isn’t on fictional hunchbacks like Quasimodo but on those who look like your Uncle Ed. It doesn’t help that one of Chast’s drawings gives the plural of “Inca” as “Incans” instead of “Incas” or “Inca.”

© 2008 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.
www.janiceharayda

2008 Delete Key Awards #2 – The Intellectual Devotional: Revive Your Mind, Complete Your Education, and Roam Confidently With the Cultured Class

Delete Key Awards Finalist #2 – From The Intellectual Devotional: Revive Your Mind, Complete Your Education, and Roam Confidently With the Cultured Class by David S. Kidder and Noah D. Oppenheim:

On Moby-Dick:
“The novel’s narrator, Ishmael, decides to seek relief from a midlife crisis by joining the crew of a whaling ship.”

Honorable mentions to:

“Miguel de Cervantes [sic] Don Quixote (Part I, 1605; Part II, 1615] is arguably the most prominent cultural landmark of the Spanish-speaking world.”

“Pride and Prejudice (1813) is arguably the most popular work of the British novelist Jane Austen.”

“Though history has produced many great novelists, arguably none is held in higher esteem than Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910).”

“A midlife crisis”? Don’t we see enough of this modern cliché in novels about men who suddenly start using designer hair gel? Do we need to start applying it retroactively? How do we know that Ishmael didn’t just forget to take his Paxil?

There is arguably a place for “arguably” in the English language, particularly in academic books. But who, exactly, is going to “argue” with the statement that Don Quixote is the greatest book written in Spanish? Or that Pride and Prejudice is Austen’s most popular novel? In a book about how to “roam confidently with the cultured class,” these timid passages read like the work of intellectual wimps.

The 2008 Delete Key Awards finalists are being numbered but announced in random order from No. 10 to No. 1.

© 2008 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.

2008 Delete Key Awards Finalist #3 – D. L. Wilson’s ‘Unholy Grail’

Delete Key Awards Finalist #3 – From D. L. Wilson’s Unholy Grail:

“’Believe me, I doubt if the Church has a secret agency that would go around killing people.’”

“’Here’s the kicker, Charlie.’ Carlota sank into her chair and let out a sigh. ‘Professor Hamar’s husband felt so much guilt over contributing to the disease that killed their son that he committed suicide.’ Charlie smacked his hands to his head so hard he knocked his cap off.”

“A uniformed task force had been sent to the Hotel Royal and, thank God, there was no dead priest in any of the rooms.”

Is it just a coincidence that The Da Vinci Code has inspired so many knock-offs? Or could it result from a conspiracy surpressed for thousands of years?

A hat tip to Bill Peschel at Reader’s Almanac www.planetpeschel.com, which has an extensive archive of reviews of mysteries and thrillers, for this one.

The 10 Delete Key Awards finalists are numbered but announced in random order. 

© 2008 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.
www.janiceharayda.com

2008 Delete Key Awards Finalist #4 – Eckhart Tolle’s ‘A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose’

Delete Key Awards Finalist #4 – From Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose:

“A new species is arising on the planet. It is arising now, and you are it!”

“We are in the midst of a momentous event in the evolution of human consciousness. But they won’t be talking about it in the news tonight. On our planet, and perhaps simultaneously in many parts of our galaxy and beyond, consciousness is awakening from the dream of form. This does not mean all forms (the world) are going to dissolve, although quite a few almost certainly will. It means consciousness can now begin to create form without losing itself in it. It can remain conscious of itself, even while it creates and experiences form.”

Consciousness may be “awakening” in “many parts of our galaxy”? Has anybody told the National Aeronautics and Space Administration about this? If not, NASA will find out soon enough, because A New Earth recently was named the 61st selection of Oprah’s Book Club. Goodbye, Love in the Time of Cholera. Hello, Psychobabble in the Time of Ratings Wars.

The ten Delete Key Awards finalists are numbered but announced in random order.

© 2008 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.
www.janiceharayda.com

Delete Key Awards Finalist #5 – Alice Sebold’s ‘The Almost Moon

Delete Key Awards Finalist #5 – From Alice Sebold’s The Almost Moon:

“And there it was, the hole that had given birth to me.… This was not the first time I’d been face-to-face with my mother’s genitalia.”

“Face-to-face” doesn’t seem quite the right phrase for those body parts, does it?

The Almost Moon might appear to be almost too easy a choice for the Delete Key shortlist, given that Entertainment Weekly and New York magazine have already ranked it among the year’s worst books. It makes the cut partly because it’s written fourth-grade reading level (Grade 4.7), according to the Flesch-Kincaid readability statistics on Microsoft Word, slightly higher than Mitch Albom’s For One More Day (Grade 3.4), first runner-up in the 2007 Delete Key Awards contest.

© 2008 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.
www.janiceharayda.com

Delete Key Awards Finalist #6 – Ian McEwan’s ‘On Chesil Beach’

Delete Key Awards Finalist #6 – From Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach:

“Like most young men of his time, or any time, without an easy manner, or means to sexual expression, he indulged constantly in what one enlightened authority was now calling ‘self-pleasuring’ … How extraordinary it was, that a self-made spoonful, leaping clear of his body, should instantly free his mind to confront afresh Nelson’s decisiveness at Aboukir Bay.”

“Because the instrument was a cello rather than her violin, the interrogator was not herself but a detached observer, mildly incredulous, but insistent too, for after a brief silence and lingering, unconvincing reply from the other instruments, the cello put the question again, in different terms, on a different chord, and then again, and again, and each time received a doubtful answer.”

Earlier this year, Ian McEwan made the longlist for the Bad Sex in Fiction award from the London-based Literary Review, possibly for passages such as the first. He lost that prize to Norman Mailer’s The Castle in the Forest. But the problems with On Chesil Beach go beyond than sex: The second passage quoted above sounds like McEwan is channeling the worst of the later work of Henry James.

The finalists for the 2008 Delete Key Awards are being numbered but announced in random order.

© 2008 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.
www.janiceharayda.com