Mrs. solost tried to download a book from an online lending library to her Kindle, but to do this you use Amazon, and she was accidentally logged into my Amazon account, so it showed up on my Kindle. So she says eh, go ahead and read it and tell me if it’s any good- it’s on Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club list! It’s a mystery / thriller called ‘The Last Thing He Told Me’ by Laura Dave, who I’d never heard of.
I didn’t think it was very good, and the author had this habit of using the phrase “not wrong”, as in “he’s not wrong”, “she’s not wrong”, “you’re not wrong”…I counted 8 or 9 instances throughout the book. It got really annoying, and took me out of the story every time it got used.
Seems like I’ve noticed this before. I’d say it’s a product of a middling author who doesn’t realize they’re overusing or misusing a particular word or phrase, combined with lazy editing. But I couldn’t think of another ready example off the top of my head.
I do remember reading a review of an early David Baldacci novel that ridiculed the bad writing, noting a particular sentence describing how an overweight character “extrapolated himself from his chair”. I read the book and agreed that the critic was not wrong.
I used to notice this in comic books a lot. Some time in the early months of the Marvel Universe, Stan Lee must have picked “distaff” (highfalutin adjective for “female”) as his word for the day. He used it all over the place for a few years. Another one I noticed was Man-Thing writer Steve Gerber’s over use of the exclamation, “Oh, spit!”. It’s a cute way to get around the comics code, but it’s such an odd phrase that it might serve as an individual character’s catch phrase, but how come everybody in the story is saying it?
Louis Lamour would say things twice. “He liked to keep his coffee hot. Squinting into the desert sunlight, he place the pot on the fire to keep his coffee hot” from The Haunted Mesa comes to mind. It was a best seller when I worked at the library, and his saying things twice was mentioned in a book review.
I tend to notice words or phrases that (in my view at least) are wrong. One such is “general consensus”. I know it’s not actually bad grammar, but it grates so I notice it.
I guess this is a kind of confirmation bias, like seeing a lot of red cars after you buy one.
I’ve read numerous books by John D. MacDonald, and it’s interesting to see how certain memes get recycled and re-used.
For instance, aggrieved male characters use a story about spiders to characterize a type of “man-eating” woman. The male spider brings a tasty bug when he goes a-courtin’, so that the much larger female spider will be distracted by her treat, allowing the male to mate without himself being eaten. This anecdote is used in two separate Travis McGee novels and at least one of his other mysteries.
So remember now, if you’re going to get involved with her, make sure you bring her a big, juicy bug.
I recognize that, although I only recall it once in Travis books.
MacDonald also had a thing about the Florida environment being ruined by business interests.
I recall he is also fond of the metaphor “Knight in rusty (dented?) armor on a spavined steed”.
When I got my first Kindle maybe twelve years ago, I downloaded the complete stories by H. P. Lovecraft and read them cover to cover. It became obvious that his favorite adjective seems to have been “blasphemous”, he uses it all the time, not in instances where someone (or some monster/eldritch horror) actually blasphemes, but as a general qualifier for the look or the character of some entity.
Harry Turtledove has a few phrases he re-uses quite a bit. Since he’s writing alternative history stories, a lot of the characters are pretty racist, and often times use a comment like, “The next person of a particular ethnicity he met who was personality trait would be the first!”
I recall Stephen R. Donaldson having a few words that I never remembered encountering anywhere else but that he liked to use the hell out of, like “puissance” and “brisance.”
If this was a specific character uttering the words in various situations, that becomes part of the character’s persona. They might be a character with a grating persona, but at least it’s a consistent persona.
But if several characters, or worse yet the omniscient narrator, is using that phrase repeatedly, yeah. That’s a weak author letting their personal voice intrude into the story they’re writing. And a weak editor letting that voice leak through.
Marguerite Henry was rather fond of the unusual phrase “sharp ecstasy”. It shows up twice in Misty of Chincoteague and also in some of her other books, most of which are aimed at young readers. Other children in other books are joyful or feel happy or even on occasion may be ecstatic, but only in Marguerite Henry’s world are they likely to “feel a sharp ecstasy”.
