# Worst novel ever published **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 13, 2009, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-ever-published/481097 "2009-01-13T14:44:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Stan\_Shmenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/94ad74/32.png) [@Stan\_Shmenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stan_Shmenge)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2009, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-ever-published/481097/1 "2009-01-13T14:44:27Z")
No, not asking, telling. I humbly submit “The Ski People”, by Burton Hersh I ran across this hideous gem one night in a hotel with one of those library like rooms for the businessman. One of those ones that puts junkola books on the shelf to make the place look cozy. In a fit of insomnia, I grabbed this one off the shelf. Opening paragraph: \*\*The important mistake Felicia Opfer Kutz made was in letting herself be upset to the point where she would even mention such a thing as underwear. This Felicia realized afterward, once she had the opportunity to compose herself in the privacy of her room in the Holy Troll Lodge, take a warm standing sponge bath, squirm into her one-piece tank suit and think about starting for the solarium. It had taken that long, at least an hour, before Felicia felt that she might even _want to confront other human beings again, ever, truthfully._ Oy. After that I wondered, could it really be that bad? You know how sometimes when you are considering reading a book, you flip through, and read a few random paragraphs, just to get a taste? I tried that. Oh yeah, it can be that bad, and worse. When I am depressed, I flip to a random paragraph. I always wind up with the giggles. Great mood lifter. Published by no less a house than McGraw/Hill in 1968, I have to wonder what kind of drugs the editor was using when he greenlighted this one. Aside from the blindingly obvious missing comma in the second sentence, and flawed construction of the first paragraph as a whole, the florid prose in this pile of shit is beyond belief. Check this thread for more choice, random paragraphs in the next few days. I promise hilarity! ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2009, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-ever-published/481097/2 "2009-01-13T15:23:22Z")
Frankly your book sounds a lot better than [The Fifth Sorceress](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=195967), by Robert Newcomb. ---
**Author:** ![tim-n-va](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim-n-va/32/3001_2.png) [@tim-n-va](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tim-n-va)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2009, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-ever-published/481097/3 "2009-01-13T15:34:26Z")
I’ll nominate _Anything For Billy_ by Larry McMurtry. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2009, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-ever-published/481097/4 "2009-01-13T15:41:32Z")
I’m hoping to have it published next year. ---
**Author:** ![WF\_Tomba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d9b06d/32.png) [@WF\_Tomba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WF_Tomba)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2009, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-ever-published/481097/5 "2009-01-13T15:43:51Z")
That first paragraph alone could just be meant to sound silly, as a sort of teaser. I’m not yet convinced that this book is worse than _Eragon_. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2009, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-ever-published/481097/6 "2009-01-13T15:56:37Z")
I think it’s got a long, long way to go before it’s as bad as Lionel Fanthgorpe, he of tyhe zillion nicknames, whose writing style can best be described as “The word-count’s short? Where’s my thesaurus?” > **[A Prose By Any Other Pseudonym - Lionel Fanthorpe Appreciation Page](http://www.peltorro.com/)** > > A Prose By Any Other Pseudonym - Lionel Fanthorpe Appreciation Page > **[Lionel Fanthorpe Text Library](http://www.peltorro.com/examples.htm)** > > Lionel Fanthorpe Appreciation Page > **[Lionel Fanthorpe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lionel_Fanthorpe)** > > Robert Lionel Fanthorpe (born 9 February 1935) is a retired British priest and entertainer. Fanthorpe also worked as a dental technician, journalist, teacher, television presenter, author and lecturer. Born in Dereham in Norfolk, he lives in Cardiff in South Wales, where he served as Director of Media Studies and tutor/lecturer in Religious Studies at the Cardiff Academy Sixth form college. > Lionel Fanthorpe was educated at Barnard Castle School and Hamond's Grammar School in Swaffham. He lef... Here’s a gripping description of the heroine brushing her teeth from **Dark Continuum** > [@](#): > > She screwed up the securing diagram and was overwhelmed by a sudden desire to clean her teeth. It became the be all and end all of existence for a few seconds. The desire to clean her teeth grew absolutely compulsive, she could have no more resisted it than she could have flown unaided between two planets. > Moving quickly from the radio to her living quarters, she squeezed a little water into a plastic container and put a few dabs of toothpaste on her brush. She slipped the brush into her mouth and pressed the small button in the end which activated its electric motor. The bristles-soft, gentle bristles, guaranteed not to damage the enamel or the gum-moved swiftly against the teeth. She began with the top left molars, worked round to the bicuspids, and came round again from them to the incisors, the canines, the laterals and the centrals. Once she had reached the front of her mouth, she-changed her grip on the brush so that it moved round to the top right, travelling over the bicuspids and molars as it moved. Coming down the sides of her teeth, she paused and took a deep breath, placed a little more paste upon the brush and moved it round again this time beginning with the actual chewing surface of the upper right molars, coming round and cleaning again between the crevices until she had worked round to the left-hand molars. > Once more she put paste on the brush in this same elaborate ritual and concentrated her attention now upon the inside of the upper left molars, the inside of the upper left bicuspids, round across the incisors and so back to the right-hand masticators. She rinsed the brush, reapplied the paste and repeated the whole ritualistic process with the lower teeth. She cleaned the brush very carefully and then, in a set way, put it back and moved back towards the radio set. > She had taken barely a dozen paces when she was assailed by a horrible thought that she had not cleaned the top left inside molars. She stood in an agony of uncertainty for five minutes, then went back to the bathroom area of her living quarters, recharged the brush and carefully cleaned again the top left molars on their inside surfaces. She looked at her reflection in the mirror; it foamed back at her like a rabid dog. > “This time I have done them all,” she said. “What about the bottom inside molars?” asked her reflection. “I have done them all,” said Marian firmly. “If you have forgotten them the bacteria responsible for dental caries will get in,” said the voice in her mind. “It is no good being clean on the outside if you have forgotten the inside. Are you sure you have done the left inside?” “Yes, I have, I have.” Marian picked up her toothbrush and flung it savagely across the dome; it bounced from the thick plastic glass and broke on the floor. ---
**Author:** ![Stan\_Shmenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/94ad74/32.png) [@Stan\_Shmenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stan_Shmenge)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2009, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-ever-published/481097/7 "2009-01-13T16:08:44Z")
Flipping, flipping, finger THERE: **Othmar wondered after that what could be in back of so much commitment. For Vivian, who was reaching the irresponsible period for women, something very young and even to her a little bit succulent was worthy of so many lies, probably. But what could Russell mean to screwbally little Monseigneur? Twice that Othmar remembered Parturio Voluvo himself-at least whatever of him there was was under so many scarves and fleece-lined overcoats-twice Monseigneur was there to watch Othmar training the boy. Of course as mysteries about Parturio Voluvo went this interest in the ski development of Russell Ornum was absolutely minor. One of the unim_port_ant mysteries.** ---
**Author:** ![Hampshire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hampshire/32/4887_2.png) [@Hampshire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hampshire)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2009, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-ever-published/481097/8 "2009-01-13T16:14:09Z")
Never read it myself but for all the controversy it created **Salaman Rushdie’s** _The Satanic Verses_ was known to be a crappy read. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2009, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-ever-published/481097/9 "2009-01-13T16:14:11Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Here’s a gripping description of the heroine brushing her teeth from **Dark Continuum** :eek: That can’t possibly be meant seriously! ---
**Author:** ![WF\_Tomba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d9b06d/32.png) [@WF\_Tomba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WF_Tomba)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2009, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-ever-published/481097/10 "2009-01-13T16:14:52Z")
Well, the narrative style is impressively muddled and confusing. Let’s hear some dialogue! ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2009, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-ever-published/481097/11 "2009-01-13T16:16:48Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Here’s a gripping description of the heroine brushing her teeth from **Dark Continuum** Is she supposed to be obsessive compulsive? ---
**Author:** ![AngelSoft](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/angelsoft/32/440_2.png) [@AngelSoft](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AngelSoft)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2009, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-ever-published/481097/12 "2009-01-13T16:17:40Z")
> [@Stan\_Shmenge](#): > > . Aside from the blindingly obvious missing comma in the second sentence, and flawed construction of the first paragraph as a whole, the florid prose in this pile of shit is beyond belief. Actually, I think the lack of a comma after ‘This’ is correct for the sentence, as horribly written as it is. That’s the comma I’m assuming you’re talking about. ---
**Author:** ![Stan\_Shmenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/94ad74/32.png) [@Stan\_Shmenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stan_Shmenge)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2009, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-ever-published/481097/13 "2009-01-13T16:18:15Z")
Flipping pages, flipping, finger there, STOP! **Are you the same Vivian I know years and years ago, in Florida one summer, where it was hot and so many coconut-palm trees all the time down there, where we got very close right away with each other and copulate constantly like a couple of moonstruck baboons?** Top THAT. Mind you, I am randomly picking paragraphs here. ---
**Author:** ![Stan\_Shmenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/94ad74/32.png) [@Stan\_Shmenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stan_Shmenge)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2009, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-ever-published/481097/14 "2009-01-13T16:23:04Z")
> [@Hampshire](#): > > Never read it myself but for all the controversy it created **Salaman Rushdie’s** _The Satanic Verses_ was known to be a crappy read. I had heard that Rushdie was the shiat. One of he world’s greatest novelists, etc. Well, you know what they say about he emperor and his wardrobe… ---
**Author:** ![Stan\_Shmenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/94ad74/32.png) [@Stan\_Shmenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stan_Shmenge)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2009, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-ever-published/481097/15 "2009-01-13T16:26:24Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Here’s a gripping description of the heroine brushing her teeth from **Dark Continuum** Meh. The guy was just into dental porn. At least the thing is properly constructed. Brush those molars, baby, yeah, that’s it, ooh baby! ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2009, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-ever-published/481097/16 "2009-01-13T16:34:20Z")
> [@](#): > > Meh. The guy was just into dental porn. That’s just one aspect of his awfulness. It doesn’t characterize him. Read **Galaxy 666** (written under the _nom de plume_ “Pel Torro”)some time with its thesauric passages (“It was a wanton planet, a negligible planet, a wasteful, pointless…”) and you’ll realize that your pitifil Hersh examples can’t compare in awfulness to Fanthorpe. Look at the websites I cited. There’s no way I’m going to dig out my copies now. ---
**Author:** ![koeeoaddi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/koeeoaddi/32/408_2.png) [@koeeoaddi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/koeeoaddi)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2009, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-ever-published/481097/17 "2009-01-13T16:34:39Z")
I nominate _Greyfax Grimwald (Circle of Light, Book 1)_, by Niel Hancock. Truly, irredeemably wretched. [Cite](http://www.amazon.ca/gp/reader/0446314307/ref=sib_fs_bod/183-4678863-7028619?ie=UTF8&p=S00D&checkSum=qPF70wFDsb2EwPfU5nmpgK2p6GRpYhBHjUVvNZcc0IE%3D#reader-page). Or, as **jayjay** so eloqently put it in the [_Books you just couldn’t finish_ thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=10675383&postcount=81): > [@](#): > > like literary meatloaf…it’s full of bits you don’t really want to recognize, dense as a brick, and seems to never get close to the end no matter how much you shovel in just to attempt to get rid of it. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2009, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-ever-published/481097/18 "2009-01-13T16:38:43Z")
**Here’s** an example of Fanthorpian thesauric awfulness. You brought this on yourself: > [@](#): > > BIG and round, like a great silver full moon it came out of the sky. First as big as a sixpence, then the size of half a crown. Then the size of a saucer; the size of a dinner plate, and still growing as it descended. Huge . . . vast . . . and somehow terrifying. > > ``` > It seemed to blot out the stars and to blot out the blue velvet of their canopy. It seemed to be an alien thing of the night, and yet for all that there was a strange, terrifying, alien beauty about its gleaming symmetry. > > The great disc ship . . . the unearthly thing, skimming slowly down, like a coin tossed by a careless god, into the abyss of nothingness. A silver coin skimming across a universe; spinning across a galaxy. Down, down . . . down . . . a great silver spinning thing. A ship, an alien ship, a strange unearthly thing, something that was cold and hard and terrible. Something that was beyond man ... that was different from man . . . that seemed to have neither part nor parcel with the ordinary human world. Something frightening, frightening because it was strange; strange because it was frightening. > > It came through the sky, a round, spinning plate of a ship, a flying saucer out of the sky, down through the blue vault of air; down through the dark forests of night; down to the sleeping, unsuspecting countryside below, then it was no longer a thing apart. It had touched down. Softly as a feather landing in a cushion of air. > > Gently as the kiss of a snowflake, and as silent. > > Quieter than a rain drop, just a drifting ghost of a ship. A thing that had arrived with such silence that not even the keenest ear, not the ear of a bat, or the ear of a bird, or the ear of a listening animal could have heard its approach. The disc ship had landed. > > Once it had landed the silence was gone-like an illusion that is destroyed when the curtains of a stage are pulled aside. The silence was broken by metallic noises. Harsh clanking, jarring, metallic noises. Things were stirring within the disc ship. Strange metallic things; things that were alien to the soft green grass of earth. > > Terrifying things, steel things; metal things; things with cylindrical bodies and multitudinous jointed limbs. Things wthout flesh and blood. Things that were made of metal and plastic and transistors and valves and relays, and wires. Metal things. Metal things that could think. Thinking metal things. Terrifying in their strangeness, in their peculiar metal efficiency. Things the like of which had never been seen on the earth before. Things that were sliding back panels . . . Robots! Robots were marching . . . Robots were marching, and were about to spread havoc and destruction across the earth, and as yet the sleeping earth knew nothing of their coming. As mysterious as anything in the great mysterious universe. > > The robots in their disc ship had arrived. . . . > > There were strange flickering lights all around the ship. Terrifying lights, weird lights, uncanny lights, awful lights, inhuman lights, alien lights, robot lights; and all around a great hemispherical glowing shield sprang up. A thing with a pale, greeny blue luminescence. An electronic thing, a mechanical thing. A thing that was part of the robot genius. A thing that was as strange as the ship and its occupants. A force field, a glowing greenish blue force field. . . . > > Within the ship great activity was taking place. The robots, like actors behind a greenish blue curtain, were preparing to present themselves to their audience-their unwitting audience! That audience of earth-men, and earthwomen and earth-children that lay innocently asleep just beyond the green sward. The green sward of earth on which the alien ship had landed. They were as alike as green peas in a pod, every one of those robots. A gleaming line of them began emerging from the disc ship. A gleaming metallic line moving industriously with calm, tireless mechanical efficiency. Clashing metal arms against metal sides. The clang of metal hawsers, moving machinery here, there, everywhere, each one with the strength of a hundred men! Pulling, pushing, lifting, twisting. Iron creatures, metal things, like cars coming off a factory assembly line, one after the other, every one of them identical. Not one possessing a separate identity. Metal entities. The ship was full of them, twenty-forty-sixty-a hundred-and still more . . . moving around industriously. Arranging their mechanical contrivances; setting up their apparatus; preparing . . . preparing . . . for what? > > Then the glowing, green-blue curtain, that shrouded the ship with its hemispherical protection, switched off and disappeared, and a long line of robots, like ants emerging from a colony-gigantic ants-began moving from the confines of the ship, from the confines of their original landing space, their spear head, their bridgehead, across the undulating green turf in the direction of the sleeping city. They had chosen their time well . . . It was typical of their efficiency, they had chosen their time very well indeed! The city slept. Men slept. Women slept. Children slept. Dogs and cats slept. > > ``` From **March of the Robots** (what else?) ---
**Author:** ![Stan\_Shmenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/94ad74/32.png) [@Stan\_Shmenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stan_Shmenge)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2009, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-ever-published/481097/19 "2009-01-13T16:45:06Z")
Dogs and cats slept, but at least they weren’t copulating like moonstruck baboons. 😃 And it wasn’t about a bunch of people with names like “Othmar” that hang out at a ski resort named the “Holy Troll Lodge”. ---
**Author:** ![stpauler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9d8465/32.png) [@stpauler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stpauler)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2009, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-ever-published/481097/20 "2009-01-13T16:48:00Z")
> [@Stan\_Shmenge](#): > > Flipping pages, flipping, finger there, STOP! > > **Are you the same Vivian I know years and years ago, in Florida one summer, where it was hot and so many coconut-palm trees all the time down there, where we got very close right away with each other and copulate constantly like a couple of moonstruck baboons?** > > Top THAT. Mind you, I am randomly picking paragraphs here. It reminds me of those random spam messages where I can understand all of the words but when strung together-they go-and I went-past each other to the davenport-which was copulated by fruit cakes sent by Grandma in the past I know where they were. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-ever-published/481097.md?page=2)