A Reader's Manifesto: An Attack on the Growing Pretentiousness in American Literary Prose

This is what all aspiring writers are told by their writing instructors. Basically, that if you're brilliant, you don't have to follow the rules of good form, grammar and common sense like the rest of the world. However, geniuses can do whatever they like. Mr. Myers blows that assumption away by showing countless excerpts of highly acclaimed literature that are perfect examples of what not to write. As a matter of fact, when I teach writing next, I may just use several of the examples to show what not to do. I have felt this way for a long time about modern literature. Most of the current word choice and usage is selected just so that the phrase will be unique, not because it is good writing. Good writers are out there, they just don't win Pulitzers. I was forced to read Toni Morrison in college and have felt this way ever since. This is a great book, although I would have love to see some passages and examples of good writing as well. There are authors out there that are worthy... but maybe Mr. Myers will have a sequel, especially considering all the bad press around this book.

Brilliant little book. I would have loved to see Myers rip into some other bloated cows of contemporary lit, but he obviously loves good books, so why should he have to submit himself to the pain of actually reading all that bovine excrement? One thing I'm still puzzling over is why these sacred cows became so sacred in the first place. The log-rolling theory holds up to a certain point (pretentious novelist A gives a rave to precious novelist B, and B slaps a slobbery blurb on the back of A's next book), but why are all the non-novelist reviewers and critics praising the precious pretentious poop? Haven't they read the great writers? Is it that these poor ink-stained wretches are discouraged from writing scathing pans by editors who don't want to rock the literary boat? I've spent the last couple of years reading a lot of James Boswell, Thomas Wolfe, Henry Green, Henry de Montherlant, Proust, Kingsley (not Martin) Amis, Knut Hamsun, Patricia Highsmith (a "genre" writer). Try reading these people, and then pick up the new Franzen or Moody. Then try not to toss the new F or M across the room. I'm too lazy to look it up, but Charles Bukowski once said something to this effect, "It wasn't that what I was writing was so good. It was just that what everyone else was writing was so bad."