Kathryn Petras - Wretched Writing: A Compendium of Crimes Against the English Language

A Compendium of Crimes
Against the English Language

ROSS PETRAS AND KATHRYN PETRAS

A PERIGEE BOOK

A PERIGEE BOOK

Published by the Penguin Group

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Copyright 2013 by Ross Petras and Kathryn Petras

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Petras, Kathryn.

Wretched writing : a compendium of crimes against the English language / Kathryn Petras and Ross Petras. First edition.

pages cm

Includes index.

ISBN: 978-1-101-62497-5

1. AuthorshipHumor. 2. English languageStyleHumor. 3. English languageTerms and phrasesHumor. 4. Style, LiteraryHumor. 5. Clichs. I. Petras, Ross. II. Title.

PN6231.A77P48 2013

808.020207dc23 2013009307

First edition: August 2013

Text design by Laura K. Corless

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We must give resounding praise and heartfelt thanks to the other connoisseurs and collectors of wretched writing, both those who came before us and those who are still active in the field. So let us doff our caps to the intrepid pioneers D. B. Wyndham-Lewis and Charles Lee (The Stuffed Owl) as well as puerile poetry pundit Nicholas T. Parsons (The Joy of Bad Verse); the estimable Nick Page (In Search of the Worlds Worst Writers), the prolifically profound Bill Pronzini (Gun in Cheek, Son of Gun in Cheek, and Six Gun in Cheek), Peter Haining and his wry Wrotten English, Richard Polt and his excellent Keeler Society, Janice Harayda and her witty Delete Key awards, the truly mighty Thog and his Masterclass in the SF newsletter Ansible, Don Watson and his wonderful website Weasel Words, the Literary Review and their annual Bad Sex in Fiction awards, Adam Cadre and his big-in-our-eyes Lyttle Lytton ContestFound division (not to be confused with the big Bulwer-Lytton contest, which features only made-up bad writing), Peter Harrington and his erudite Cataloguers Desk blog, as well as the many eagle-eyed people who, through the years, have sent us examples of wretched writing for our calendar, The 365 Stupidest Things Ever Said (well, written in this case). We couldnt have done this book without them.

And, of course, we couldnt have done it without our amazingly able agent, Andrea Somberg; our fabulously fantastic families, Sly, Alex, and Mom; and our exceptionally erudite editor, Meg Leder. And here let us stop, as were getting alarmingly alliterative(Such are the dangers of immersing ourselves in wretched writing!)

There is much written about writingor rather good writing. There are numerous books on how to write novels that sell, how to craft riveting dialogue, how to make an academic paper actually say something coherent, how to make advertising copy sizzle, how to develop realistic charactersin short, how to write well.

This book is not one of those books.

It is not about the kind of writing people in their right mind would want to write or read. Its about the other kind of writing, the kind of writing that makes one want to hurl an offending book (or ones lunch) across the room. This is the writing weve termed wretched.

Wretched writing is, to put it politely, a felonious assault on the English language. It is the lowest of the low. It plumbs the depths of literature and spelunks in the caves of nonfiction.

In other words, it stinks.

But what specifically makes writing wretched? Like its kissing cousin, pornography, wretched writing is difficult to precisely define. To paraphrase a Supreme Court justice, one knows it when one sees it. And just like pornography, wretched writing comes in numerous and quite varied forms and modesalthough, sadly, it is not as profitable. It can be rendered (or should we say performed?) by a good writer on a bad day, or more often, all the time by a dyed-in-the-wool wretched writer who can do no better. One finds wretched writing almost anywhere: in passages exhibiting a blatant ignorance of the constraints of grammar and in exuberantly and brazenly excessive prose. Wretched writing can be marked by overusage of literary tropes or underusage of good taste.

Wretched writing also knows no era. We can assume that it stretches back to the beginning of the written word, when some Sumerian scribe incised the wrong signs for oxen on a clay tablet. Sometimes writing is wretched in retrospect, as when we look back and laugh at some overly ornate piece of Victorian-era poetry or prose. But most wretched writing is timeless. It was wretched, it is wretched, and it shall be wretched forever.

In short, wretched writing is simply very bad writing. Very bad writing in all the glittering array of fascinating possibilities. And therein lies one of its fascinations: Rest assuredif there is a way of saying something well, there is also a way of saying the same thing badly. Horribly, terribly, clunkily, and very amusingly badly. With atrociously bad grammar, clanking syntax, wooden dialogue of oaken hardness, terrible transitions, dull imagery, clichd clichs. Wretched writers are intrepid; they boldly go where no writer has gone before and create creative and innovatively new categories of terribly awful prose and poetry.

Thus this book, an alphabetically organized celebration of the most wretched writing imaginable. In reading Wretched Writing, you will go on a tour of that which is the worst, the most awful, and of course, the funniest in crimes committed against the English languagefrom A (adjectives, excessive use of) to Z (zoological sexual encounters, politician-writers and). Along the way, youll stop at such diverse topics as body parts and bodily fluids, peripatetic, celebrity faux-thors, food imagery, bad, non sequiturs, redundancy, repetitive, and of course, hysterical historical dialogue.