Mar 18, 2009

Um.

Now, I just read a book where the author felt it necessary to give an exhaustive physical description of every character in her book, no matter how minor. This was particularly funny when juxtaposed with the way in which major components of the plot (time elapsed between chapters, whether people were aliens or not, etc.) were left to be inferred, if not just omitted altogether.

My opinion of what constitutes an "exhaustive physical description," however, has just been shot out of the water by a friend who directed me to this unholy monstrosity (original post here)

Click to read.
Warning: The pain. Oh god, the pain.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I only made it as far as Graph 3. I stopped when ... I mean, really ... does the author know what colour a leopard's tongue is?

George LaCas said...

The author is using metaphors that are maybe intended to sound Biblical, or like something from the Koran. Overdone and odd, that's for sure. Romance sub-genre?

Kristen said...

You know, I've seen this excerpt a few times, now, and I can't help but think (having not read the rest of the book) the author did that very intentionally. And I don't mean the "Of course he did, he wrote the words" form of intentionally, but stylistically intentionally. To say something about the narrator, the woman, and the narrator's over-the-top perception of the woman.

E said...

I quite expect that it's intentional...the book is recent enough that nobody could possibly be thinking like that in their head. One hopes.

Intentional or no, though, some things are just too silly.