A Species of Sorryness

Like bad girlfriends (and boyfriends, too), there are so many categories of bad books that it'd be gruesome and pathetic to categorize the various species of that sorryness. Setting aside the intrinsically aggravating that the very coquetish author is actually stupid, or the editor who chose the manuscript is too dumb or lame or dazzled, or that the system which perpetuates both of them is as flawed as a university paying for a Glenn Beck lecture series, and omitting the writers who are really salespeople, as are their duped or complicit publishers hyping their so pretty product as though…. Wait a minute, that may be what I think is a major bad book or line of them even.

As admirable as any delusion which fuels grandeur, this kind of writing—more about the writer than the writing—not only fulfills that mirror, mirror on the wall writer, but, like political demagoguery, pumps mass appeal in (talking only literature here) skewed and depressing ways.