Thursday, May 13, 2004

File Under Stupid Novelist Tricks

Nice piece in the Telegraph today about the first novel written entirely without verbs; without the possibility of action, the book seems predominantly filled with "florid adjectives in a series of vitriolic portraits of dislikeable passengers on a train."

Unsurprisingly, critics have "commented unfavourably on the lack of action in ... The Train from Nowhere." A review in one respected magazine "describes his book as "disagreeable" and said its scathing descriptions of women travellers displayed "a rare misogyny"."

The article refers several times to pseudonymic author Michel Thaler as "eccentric," which may be the understatement of the year; Thaler, a doctor of literature, says his new work is "to literature what the great Dada and Surrealist movements were to art," and claims that it was liberating to write without verbs, which he describes as "invaders, dictators, and usurpers of our literature."

Today's alternate blogtitle: When Novelists Sniff Glue

posted by boyhowdy | 11:32 PM |

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