As any good Cleveland Browns fan can tell you, the official team colors (dreadful as they are) are Seal Brown and Orange. I think she is spot on.
Dennis
So we could say, “long lashes of that brownish tint, which only the Cleveland Browns exhibits”?
Before you do that, why not take a shot at rewriting the wretched-example of a sentence that the OP posted.
[QUOTE= Amanda McKittrick Ros]
Her superbly-formed eyes of grey-blue, with lightly-arched eyebrows and long lashes of that brownish tint, which only the lightly-tinted skin of an Arctic seal exhibits, looked divine.
[/QUOTE]
Keep the meaning of the sentence but change it so it flows better and the awkward adjectives are jettisoned.
This suggestion is not just limited to ivylass. I’m inviting any Doper who thinks he or she can improve Ros’ sentence.
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sea;
The sea is far more grey-blue than those eyes
If laurel arch, why then her brows are straight;
If Arctic seal is brown, her lashes fail.
“She had pretty eyes.”
I’d be tempted to say Denis Wheatley. His stuff was very popular in its day, but it’s hard to read now (especially the jaw-dropping racism)
I came into this thread to say that Lionel Fanthorpe wins by miles. He wrote dozens of novels at night after working a full-time job, even though his career lasted only a decade. All his publisher cared about was word count, so he would pad out manscripts by literally transcribing his thesaurus along with other tricks with word repetition.
I learned about him at my very first sf convention in 1969. Fred Lerner had a copy of one of his books and would start reading from it at the drop of a hat. People were awed, confounded, and hysterical with laughter.
I don’t know if he had great ideas or fantastic plots. I can’t imagine anyone finishing a book to tell. Truly he is the worst oft-published writer I’ve ever encountered.
Good lord. I’ve never read that deconstruction before. Now, I’m no stranger to rolling my eyes and muttering obscenities while reading Dan Brown, although I didn’t mind The Da Vinci Code especially, but that…?! Hell’s teeth, I’ve seldom read anything so utterly impressed with itself. I really want to re-read The Da Vinci Code again now, and enjoy it, just out of spite.
That sounds like Homecoming by Cynthia Voigt. It sounds like The Incredible Journey with kids instead of animals. I never read the novel but I have a vague memory of watching part of the made-for-TV movie adaptation.
Possibly Homecoming?
Robert Newcomb will never be equaled. Period.
I will suggest Elaine Shepard, author of the notorious, often dope referenced The Doom Pussy. If you have to ask, you don’t get to participate. Yes I have read it. Got it from the library. Sort of Nam-Porn. She had a thing for helicopter pilots and got to ride their birds, writing about their heroic exploits. That’s the book.
Sorry everyone, but the worst novelist ever was my father. Not that he was published, but I got his manuscripts when he died. He would start with an excellent central point and then destroy it with terrible characterization, plodding pacing, high-school essay prose, and cardboard subplots.
One of his efforts had a female protagonist. My wife read the first chapter and said, “Honestly, I am offended by this.”
To be honest, though, if I had ever tried to write a novel, I would have been worse.
I think honorable mention has to go to Lester Dent, who under the publishing house name Keith Robeson, wrote over 150 Doc Savage pulp novels in the 1930’s/40’s. At least in his case he knew he was "“churning out reams and reams of sellable crap” on a monthly basis. But it paid well enough that he could buy a yacht and sail to the Caribbean in the midst of the Great Depression.
Yes, that’s Cynthia Voigt’s Homecoming. And if that’s the most painfully bad novel you ever read, grasshopper, you’ve been very very lucky in your literary adventures.
Any Mickey Spillane hardboiled novel contains at least one cliche per sentence (and as most were written in the '50s, they were cliches even then). You’d think he’d run out after 5, 10 or even 20 pages, but no. They just keep coming: “I turned up the collar of my trenchcoat and walked out into the rain.” (remembered from Kiss Me, Deadly, 1952)
As bad as Spillane was, Cornell Woolrich was even worse. I don’t think I was ever able to make it all the way through any of his novels. I have repressed whatever made them so unreadable.
Myron Brinig was a gay, Jewish novelist most of whose oeuvre concerned Montana. He made a trip out to California in the early 1930s and the resulting work of “fiction” was The Flutter of an Eyelid (1933). I read an excerpt - a mass baptism turned orgy and death ritual - and it sounded awesome. A friend found a copy for me. She couldn’t finish it and declared it was one of the worst books she had ever tried to read. I was barely able to complete it and agreed it was truly dreadful… except for the one scene I had previously read. I have not read any other Brinig book - and don’t anticipate doing so in this lifetime - so one book (even if it should count as three because it was so bad) may not be enough to call the author “the worst novelist ever.”
Punchline to famous joke – “What? And leave Show Business???”
If you’re published, it’s all good.
I’m sure Theiss’ Eye of Argon was published because it was an established joke*. What scares me is that I don’t think Fanthorpe was.
*But I hasten to add, not completely bad. There is some skill in Theiss’ writing, say what you will. A lot of the jokes are really due to the bad job of typing the damned thing for its original publication, and probably not Theiss’ fault.
And the REALLY scary thing is that he’s still alive.
He could publish another book tomorrow.
L Ron Hubbard’s* Mission Earth* dekalogy is pretty fucking terrible, unless you’re on meth. To be fair to Mr Hubbard though, in his mind this was a documentary, not fiction.
I am not familiar. What has Mr. Shrugged written?
mmm