Beginning as a rock critic explains a lot about James Wolcott’s overwrought prose—that old air guitar—which he slathers lavishly on all subjects. “Being facile is harder than it looks,” he writes. To which I would reply that finding a paragraph in his memoir free of heavy injections of false energy and sloppy phrasing isn’t any easier. Wolcott will strike off a straight arresting sentence, then follow it up with two or three clotted ones, usually larded with sexual metaphors, similes, and allusions: “I had too much altar boy in me to seize the bitch goddess of success by her ponytail and bugger the Zeitgeist with my throbbing baguette” is but one example among scores. In writing about punk rock, he alerts us that this was a time before “the gold medallions and furry testicles of disco descended” (get that metaphor to a urologist!). “A date movie for the damned, Looking for Mr. Goodbar looked as if it had been coated from floor to ceiling with contraceptive jelly.” “Niche journalism hadn’t yet whittled too many writers into specialty artists, dildos for rent.”
Such prose is beyond mere editing; it requires Drano.
Saturday, March 3, 2012
A gross miscarriage of justice
Why hasn’t James Wolcott received a Bulwer-Lytton award? I know, it’s for fiction, but surely there should be a category for non-fiction that is this bad.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Why hasn't James Wolcott been institutionalized? There's a clear case for that as well.
ReplyDeleteI'd say his writing is compensation on a massive scale.
ReplyDeletePerhaps I meant "compensating for something". Just to make my meaning clear.
ReplyDeleteJust for reference:
ReplyDeletehttp://americandigest.org/mt-archives/enemies_foreign_domestic/hint_to_james_w.php
Cheers
The problem with suggesting a Bulwer-Lytton for Master James is that the Baron was an accomplished writer and thinker, while young Jimmie is neither accomplished nor thoughtful and writes excrescently.
ReplyDeleteCheers
Paco
ReplyDeleteif that is literature, then you are twice overdue for a lit. Nobel prize.
Make it 5
Martin
Thankee, Martin. Those Nobels include cash, right?
ReplyDeletePaco Last I heard it was around a million $US
ReplyDeleteAnd without being facetious or trite, having read some of Noble winning "products" I'd say you are long overdue at least for consideration.
But such is life, if someone can receive a NP in anticipation, then it seems it's all arranged even before the presses roll.
Martin