Friday, August 15, 2008

Quickie

Megan sez

The problem is, the writing is dreadful. The Left Behind series reads like it was written by a fourteen year old B student with a HUGE crush on Jesus Christ.
...
There's no reason this should be so; religious faith is one of the great human dramas. Nor is it that they are pitched to a general audience; there are a lot of great mass-market storytellers. So why haven't better writers emerged in this genre?
Megan, why do you have a job? Maybe it's because success does not equal talent?
People want easy, glib answers, not nuanced explorations of the depths of the human experience. You should understand this, you're shallow and glib yourself.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Look in the mirror, Megan. You're calling someone else's writing dreadful while typing in ALL CAPS like some pubescent dork on LiveJournal.

Anonymous said...

As Fred Clark of slacktivist keeps pointing out, they're books that assure their target audience that every single person who doesn't share all of their beliefs and doesn't live the exact way they do will someday suffer for it.

In that light, I'm kind of surprised Megan doesn't see the appeal.

M. Bouffant said...

My favorite part: "I've read a fair sample of the big names--Frank Peretti and of course, a few of the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad Left Behind novels."

"Of course?" A few? Is she really that dense? How long did it take to realize just how awful they were? UPenn English B. A.s have been so devalued they should sue Megan every time she mentions anything about lit.

Anonymous said...

How ironic is it that she'd be criticizing someone else's writing while typing a sentence like "a few of the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad Left Behind novels"?

Yeah, that's bleeding Wordsworth, Megs.

spencer said...

You guys do realize that the "terrible, horrible, etc." is a reference to a classic children's book called "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day," right?

It's one of the handful of unforgettable books from my own childhood, including "The Five Chinese Brothers," "More Spaghetti, I say!," "Be Nice to Spiders" and "My Cat Likes to Hide in Boxes."

Jeebus. Please don't ever make me defend McMoron again. I feel all dirty now.