A few years ago I was watching the 1966 film The Chase. At one point in the story, an elderly woman played by Jocelyn Brando goes berserk with anger and starts raging and howling around the town square. To call it overacting would be an understatement. Chewing the scenery came more to mind. (Readers of a certain age might get a good idea if I mention Tod Slaughter. Times 2.) Yet the person sitting next to me sighed with admiration and said, ‘Wow! That’s good acting!’
The reason I’m writing about a film in a book blog is this. Over the past few months, I’ve bought three novels – two Middle Grade, one adult – whose back and inside covers were thick with gushingly admiring quotes from a host of respectable critics and writers. I managed to make it through one of the MG books, but the other two I put aside after fifty pages because I simply couldn’t get past the style.
One writer described mud that ‘sucked like fingers’. Another wrote of men whose ‘shoes leaked toes’. I’ve lived long enough to know my fingers and shoes pretty well and I’ve never yet seen the fingers suck or the shoes leak body parts. Then there’s this sentence: ‘The roar of applause hit them like a solid wave. It was architectural.’ I’m still racking my brains trying to understand how a sound can be architectural.
How does all this tie into The Chase? It’s because Jocelyn Brando let you see her acting. She wasn’t being a woman consumed with rage; she was letting you see that she was acting a woman consumed with rage. She was making you aware of what she was doing, just as the writers of the three books were letting you know that they were writing. They were demonstrating how clever and inventive they could be with words, even if that cleverness meant coming up with wildly inappropriate metaphors and similes.
Some people like this. To them, it’s real writing, because it draws attention to itself. It shouts out, ‘Look, I’m writing!’ I find it an annoying distraction, one in which the author’s personality becomes more important than the story, an attitude I have to say I find a little insulting to the reader.
But - and here’s the rub – all three of the books I’ve taken the examples from were huge bestsellers. So what do I know? Perhaps it really is good writing.
7 comments:
I think those are the kind of games you can play in your first draft, when you're writing for speed and a giggle. But not in the final version!
I agree, Joan. And I'm really surprised the editors let them through.
I guess "best-selling" doesn't necessarily mean best written...
No, it's not good writing. Nor good editing. But I think it's not good because those poor similes and metaphors add nothing except a 'look at me' moment. There's nothing wrong with startling imagery if it adds something. For example, Mr Gum 'scowling like a fireplace' works, I think.
I imagine your shoes don't leak toes because you throw them away before the holes get that big. My slippers definitely leak toes :-) (But well written and best-selling go together too rarely.)
Those quotes on the backs of books mean nothing any more, it seems to me. (Especially any quote that says 'hilarious').
Moira: it's reached the point now that fulsome quotes actually make me hesitate to buy the book.
Lynne: When The Godfather became such a bestseller, Mario Puzo remarked that if he'd know HOW successful it was going to be, he'd have written it better.
SA: 'Scowling like a fireplace' does work, doesn't it?
When I saw the name of the actor you mentioned, I wondered if..., and yes, Jocelyn Brando was the big sister of Marlon Brando. And then I immediately thought of his overblown performance in the film 'Apocalypse Now'. And thought, "So that's where he got it from...".
Somewhat disgruntled to then read the critics view that 'Apocalypse Now' was the finest performance of his career.
Well, what do they know ?
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