I’ve read 3 or 4 of his books; usually they come from friends with a big recommendation.
I think his books are awful. I’m apparently missing the great writing?
His first few Alex Cross books were pretty good mystery thrillers. They gained him a big audience. He then began cranking them out, writing other stuff, taking on co-authors, he really became a hack. But the books sell like crazy.
Try Along Came A Spider, the first Alex Cross book, if you feel like seeing what originally made his reputation.
I read one book by this guy about ten years ago. The writing was terrible, but the plot was at least vaguely interesting and the pacing wasn’t too bad. It read like a precocious high schooler wrote it. It was an easy read, and kept my attention, so I finished it. I think he is the epitome of those paperbacks people buy in airports to avoid thinking for 8 hours and that’s probably why he’s popular. Not because he’s the next Dickens.
He is not famous for his great writing. He is famous for taking a new approach to writing - JP is a brand at this point, nothing more. He and a team of folks pick a category, think through the main characters and their arcs, then hired writers translate those to books that fit that genre. Thrillers, Kids books, inspirational books - whatever.
It’s like buying Wolfgang Puck frozen pizzas, not going to one of his $$$ restaurants…
In the late 90s, I started reading some of his books. I was fascinated by them. I can’t remember much about them, tho. I do remember that after the first 4 or 5 that I read, the quality turned to shit. Co-authors? Dunno.
I thought that “Pop Goes the Weasel” was awesome, tho.
You got it. He is FUCKING awful.
I took ALONG CAME A SPIDER with me to the DMV years ago, when it was new, and only finished reading it because I had nothing else with me. Otherwise I would have trashed it early on.
I SPIT on James Patterson. Ptui. Ptui.
I support this post. I can’t think of a less talented writer, much less one that has published the way he is. He is an embarrassment to the craft.
[QUOTE=WordMan;18110477JP is a brand at this point, nothing more.[/QUOTE]
The brand-izing of authors is one of the more deplorable trends in recent decades. Out of genre fiction (the Clarke explosion in sf, for example), I think Tom Clancy started it.
But then, books as marketable commodities first, and all else (including readability and quality) second or lower isn’t all that new.
He’s useful as a living proof that “quality” is NOT what the mass of buyers are looking for. A predictable compilation of favorite memes is what’s important. Only a minority of readers value freshness of plot, characterization, and expression.
The V.C. Andrews “brand” pre-dated Clancy. Virginia Andrews was a successful author who died in 1986. When she died, she left several partially completed books behind. Her family hired another writer, Andrew Neiderman, to complete these books and they were published under V.C. Andrews’ name. When these were successful, everyone involved decided to keep on going. Neiderman has kept writing new books which are released as V.C. Andrews books.
He does his own commercials…
They are amazing.
And of course, decades before that, Franklin W. Dixon and Carolyn Keene wrote dozens of books without ever existing.
I’d consider V.C. Andrews a genre writer - upper end of the romance genre, which has been a boiler room, pen-name industry for many decades. And JB nailed it by mentioning two house names that are among hundreds in the juvenile (now YA) publishing market. “Victor Appleton Jr.,” my ass.
These are different, IMHO, than an author who gets so successful they can “piss on paper and have a publisher lick it up,” then essentially license out their name while still alive and nominally productive. So you have a line of Clive Cussler-brand novels, a line of Tom Clancy-brand novels, James Patterson-brand, etc. that is overtly distinct from ghostwritten and continuation work, or a house name in the traditional sense.
It all stinks. I got out of the fiction writing game decades back when it was evident that only a massive fluke would ever get a new or lesser writer into the top 100 bestsellers, unless that writer’s name was King, Clancy, Crichton, Cussler, Patterson, Patterson, Patterson or such. This brand-izing just makes it worse.
[quote=“Push_You_Down, post:11, topic:711892”]
He does his own commercials…
They are amazing.
[/QUOTE] :eek:Y’know, I can’t remain totally mad at someone who’ll do ads like that…
Yes, this “branding” thing is more than just cashing in on the “legacy” or house-branding within-genre, and more like the author h(er/im)self being turned into a self-contained genre. So for example a few of the “Tom Clancy’s _____” series in his lifetime were under others’ byline entirely (often themselves pseudonymously) from the start and Clancy was never credited as writer.
Patterson is self-admittedly “more proficient at dreaming up plots than crafting sentence after sentence”. I can dig that, and that if the market’s buying it would be stupid to not sell. But it must be aggravating for the folk who are toiling away crafting sentence after sentence.
You said it. Patchy’s costume on SpongeBob looks less like his mom threw it together in 20 minutes.
At least he a’int Patricia Cornwell. But saying that,I imagine hell to be a library filled with nothing but the works of these two.
I’ve read one book by Patterson. I think it was called Big Bad Wolf. Among the worst I’ve ever read. None of the characters have anything remotely resembling a personality. None of the dialogue comes anywhere close to believable. Plot events are crammed in at about two to a page. Plot holes and absurdities are everywhere. Cliches taken to ridiculous degrees. (Ordinary kid can hack past the world’s best computer security systems.)
I don’t know the full details, but I’ve read that Patterson offers incredibly favorable contracts for his co-authors. And being a co-author on a Patterson book is an almost guarantee that your next book will be picked up by a publisher.
Patterson might be taking over more and more bookshelves at Barnes and Noble, but he definitely makes sure untested writers get their shot.
But Andrews, like Clancy, started out as a real person. And then the name just became big enough that it was expanded out to include other writers and outlived the original person.