That is a Fault Indeed, but I Cannot Laugh At It

I don't know why I remember this out of all the hundreds of movies I've seen and books I've read, but 25 years ago, Chevy Chase starred in a movie about a sportswriter from New York City who moves to the country to fulfill his dream of writing a novel. Wacky hijinks ensue. I have no memory at all of the wacky hijinks. What I do remember is the scene where he has finally finished his novel, and he gives the manuscript to his wife. She sits down to start reading it, him watching expectantly, and as she reads her shoulders slump, her head bows low, and in a few minutes she is weeping, the manuscript drooping from her hands as she sobs, "It's teh-eh-eh-eh-errible."

I had a similar experience recently. At the Festival of Faith & Writing, I got chatting with a woman who had a booth in the exhibition area. We had a tremendous amount in common--she was even a Quaker for most of her life, which makes her the first other Quaker I've run into at the Festival who wasn't Parker Palmer or Brent Bill. We chatted away so comfortably that I might have met my new best friend.

She had written a novel, one of a handful of books recently published by a new small press. Of course I bought a copy. I am a sucker for the personal touch. I can't bond with someone like that, and not buy her book.

It's a beautiful book, with a lovely cover that fulfills all four of the principals of good design: Contrast, Alignment, Repetition, and Proximity. The illustration and coloring evoke a mood very appropriate to the book's story and setting.

The paper is high quality, and the typography avoids most (though not quite all) of the errors usually made by small presses and the self-published. The drop-caps are crisp and well done, never impinging on the neighboring text; the printer's ornaments are graceful; the font is well-chosen and laid out with appropriate leading; widows and orphans are rare.

Alas, the book itself--the 450-page book--is terrible. It is terrible from the first line; by the end of the first page my shoulders were slumping. Apparently the press spent all its money on designers and typographers and had nothing left for any kind of editor, either to correct the ubiquitous problems of comma usage or to suggest the many large and small cuts that cry out to be made in the text. The book is a perfect fractal; every part of it, every sentence on every page I have looked at, is just as bad as the whole thing. It reads like the essays my freshman composition students used to turn in, stretched to a thousand times their natural length.

I don't know what allows a bad writer to finish a book this ambitious. It can't be the love of language or the thrill of a well-turned phrase, because there are no well-turned phrases here, there is no language to love. It does not seem that she could motivated by a love of good books, because surely anyone who had read some sufficient number of them would have developed at least enough of a natural ear to avoid perhaps one, or even two, of this writer's many errors of style and usage.

The author of this book is a nice person, warm, personable, caring. This, of course, does not excuse bad writing. She cares very much about the story she has to tell; she is earnestly convinced that it is important that this story be told, and just as important that it be read. She expects that it will bring readers "healing, inspiration, and blessing." This is also not an excuse.

And yet I do not just excuse this writer. I admire her. I admire her book, which is her vision made manifest. Like that vocal ministry that can seem so excruciating, so terribly beside the point in worship but which speaks to someone in the room, I expect this book will find its readers. That is what a writer hopes for, and the terrible ones, perhaps, deserve it just as much as the good ones.