WHY do authors do this? I hate this “technique” - it makes it almost impossible to read and make any sense out of it. It’s a horrible, horrible writing technique.
I just started reading “American Psycho” by Bret Easton Ellis. Starting on page 25 and continuing through page 29, the author has included five pages of a solid block of text, describing in mind-numbing detail how the main character decorates his apartment, what he does every minute of every day, etc. At least I think it does, because I DIDN’T READ IT! I don’t have time to make sense of your incoherent ramblings and I think you’re a bad writer for doing this.
I haven’t read that book in particular, but it’s not hard to see that the author feels that by reading and making sense of that text in that format, you are supposed to be ‘getting into the mind’ of that character, along with all of his obsessive habits and what details he focuses on. If you feel like skipping it then by all means, but the author probably wants you to try to get an idea of why he thinks like that in order to maybe understand his reasoning for doing things later in the book (its appearance early in the book only strengthens this idea).
Please explain. Are you complaining about content (long passages about trivial details) or formatting (too much text in the same paragraph)?
If the former, you’d like the Princess Bride, which pretends to have cut out (though it briefly mentions what you are ‘missing’) these parts and only included the “good parts”.
American Psycho is boring as hell. I got through about a third of it before I just gave up on it (and I’m sort of obsessive about finishing books). As far as I could tell, the entire book was going to be like that – an endless shopping list of mind-numbing minutiae. Flat characters, no plot. In the entire first third of the book, nothing happened, and there wasn’t a single character that I cared about. I don’t know what he thought would entice/compel anyone to keep reading.
I don’t think authors in general use this “technique,” just bad authors who can’t write to save their lives.
It’s an exceptional book, although I agree it takes some getting to grips with in the early stages. It can be frustrating trying to get in tune with what is a repetitive narrative at times. Reading is a skill just like writing, though, so calling Bret Easton Ellis a bad writer because you’ve stalled on p29 of American Psycho doesn’t hold water.
I am rather baffled, as any fiction I have is all text, no pictures at all … so I am looking at several hundred pages of solid text per book …though I will amend it that I have sf and fantasy that occasionally include maps or illustrations in the appendix of certain space ships…and I think my copy of Captain Blood has a spiffy pirate ship on the frontspiece.
Or do you mean it is 5 pages of no paragraphs or punctuation?
After I had read* American Psycho* I was really keen to find an online version that I could copy and edit by taking out all the pointless references to brands and products and inanimate objects generally. I have no idea what I would have done with the resulting pamphlet.
ROFL! Now THAT’S a new one…someone trying to claim “no, the book wasn’t bad, you just don’t know HOW to read it…”
I’ve never read American Psycho so I don’t know if it’s a classic or a piece of shit, but I doubt I would ever try to tell someone that they didn’t enjoy a book because they didn’t know “how to read it.” What a joke.
If you’re skipping the passages describing the minutia of his apartment, morning ablutions and Huey Lewis & The News, then later on you’ll probably skip the passages where he describes in detail his sadistic sexual practices and grisly torture scenes. However, I think it’s written that way to allow you to get a look into his thought pattern. It helps you understand what a sick f*ck he really is.
Someone not enjoying a book is fine – it’s when they start generalizing that to say the author is a bad writer – that’s the problem. Think of the silent film thread currently going – I can find thousands of people who don’t like some of the most well-regarded classics of silent films, but that doesn’t mean they are bad movies or the filmmakers are bad. Similarly, I bet I could find thousands of people who don’t enjoy books by your favourite author, but that doesn’t mean he’s a bad writer.
“‘and what is the use of a book,’ thought Alice, ‘without pictures or conversations?’”
Why? I can easily imagine not liking a book because I didn’t know how to read it, or enjoying it more once I figured out how to read it. (The only good example I can think of from personal experience is Walt Whitman’s poetry: at first I didn’t really “get” it, but at some point I figured out how to read it and started getting into it more.)
Yeah, I’m not sure what the exact problem is here - I assume there are few to no paragraph breaks and endless description, which (though I haven’t read the book), analyses of it back up the comments here that this is an obsessive character and so it’s a reflection of what he is like.
Similar - if taken to extremes - techniques are used in House of Leaves, where the layout of the text is often directly tied to what is going on in the book and/or the authors’ lives/minds. This includes footnotes taking up most of the page and not obviously tied to the action, strikeouts of text, numerous references that may or may not be of dubious accuracy, text that breaks out of the usual page format and starts running down the side of the page or around in a spiral or maze, and so on. It’s done quite intentionally.
5 pages? Piffle. How about the KING of unreadable text - John Galt’s speech in Atlas Shrugged? 90 pages (I think) - a 3 HOUR speech transcribed directly into the middle of the novel. - What’s the old joke? You can read the book, but skip the speech, or read the speech and skip the book.
However, after a careful survey of American Psycho, Rules of Attraction, and The Informers, it’s quite safe to declare that he has a dreadfully dull prose style, without any ideas more interesting than Jackie Collins’ to mitigate that.
