Tonight I need your help.
Alert readers will remember that tonight was supposed to be an evisceration examination of the novels/master’s theses that candidates for the MFA in Creative Writing produce after several years of learning to write elegant, carefully crafted, intellectually profound, and – alas, alack, and well-a-day! – all too often utterly bloodless prose. These books, which can spring as much from the need for a full employment packet as from the desire to tell an interesting story, have come in for much criticism of late from readers who like a compelling plot and fully fleshed-out characters as much as they like nicely shaped paragraphs. A voracious reader I know has been railing against them for years because as much as she wants to like them, as much as she appreciates the fine style and excellent workmanship behind MFA program novels, she simply doesn’t care enough about the characters to keep reading if she happens to put the book down.
I think you’ll agree that this is a real problem, both for readers and writers; what makes a book survive its author, or even its first printing, is whether its audience gives a toss about the people in it. The most meticulous prose, the best reviews from the literary elite in the world, are worthless if the reader yawns, chucks the book aside, and picks up the latest J.D. Robb or Lynn Flewelling or John Scalzi.
Oh, the diary was going to epic. Epic, I tell you. I had all the background material I needed, I was all juiced up and ready to go –
And then I couldn’t find the book that was going to be the main subject of tonight’s symposium.
I know it exists – I read it at Neilson Library over at Smith when I was returning some books I’d borrowed for a research project – and I remember that the reviews on the back cover were glowing. I remember certain features of the plot and characters, the tropes the author used, some of the chief incidents. I assuredly remember how I nearly blinded myself rolling my eyes when I realized how the author, trying for something fresh and deep and meaningful, had fallen into the trap of mistaking “quirky” for “fresh” and “ponderous” for “meaningful.
I just can’t remember the name of the book or the author.
As I’m sure you can imagine, I am less than pleased at this state of affairs; this book would have been perfect for a diary if only I could find the verdammt thing and reread it. I therefore appeal to you, o Kossack equivalents of the Toonerville Trolley that meets all the trains, in hopes that you can provide me with the name of a recent novel that includes the following elements:
- An embittered, lonely, disillusioned, middle-aged New England farmer who, thanks to a traumatic incident, no longer drives a car, but rides his tractor everywhere, including on the roads into town. Even better, he somehow avoids being run over by outraged leaf peepers who are stuck behind him as he trundles about the lush and beautiful countryside.
- His ex-wife, who has come back into his life from somewhere on the West Coast (California?) in hopes of rekindling their relationship.
- The Manic Pixie Dream Girl drifter who shows up at the protagonist’s farmhouse with a purseful of psychoactive drugs prescribed to keep her plentiful mental illnesses at bay as well as the traditional fresh, spirited outlook on life.
- The farmer’s cat, the disappearance of which nearly causes the MPDG to have the Mother of All Nervous Breakdowns that is only slightly alleviated when the cat comes back the very next day, they thought it was a goner but it just couldn’t stay away.
- The ending, in which the tractor-driving farmer, inspired by the MPDG’s freakout, a) drives a truck to the coast of New Hampshire (or Maine?) to collect the MPDG, b) tells his ex-wife that he doesn’t love her anymore, c) and then makes Magical Healing Love to the MPDG, who makes a show of chucking out her medications in case they make a Magical Healing Embryo.
I think you can see why I thought this book would be a good subject for a diary.
This is not the only time I’ve attempted to find a half-remembered Book So Bad It’s Good, only to be defeated by the lack of a title, author, or main character’s name. Usually I can find either that book or a substitute, but I’ve been trying to find this particular tome of delights for several years now with no luck. I’ve asked on message boards, I’ve Googled the plot elements, I’ve sweated blood and bayed the moon, I’ve sacrificed chickens in my back yard –
Well. I haven’t actually sacrificed a chicken. But I’ve used my entire vocabulary of swear words, many of them learned from my uncle Lou the steelworker, out of sheer frustration.
So – if any of you know this book, please, I beg you, for the love of God, Montresor! either leave the name and author in a comment below or message me privately. I promise to give it the attention it so richly deserves later this summer if I can only find it!
As should be crystal clear from the above, finding books for these diaries can be an exercise in frustration. I’m only one person, after all, and I can only do so much. There are hundreds, nay, thousands of lousy books out there that I haven’t read or even heard of, and wouldn’t it be a shame if they escaped my notice?
That is why tonight I'm asking you, my dear and faithful readers, for help.
What do you want to see me cover this summer and early fall? You've had to put up with my blather for the last several months, so it's only fair that I journey into some corners of Bad Bookistan that have heretofore been known only to you and your nearest and dearest.
So! The floor is now open to suggestions! I'll take any and all crappy books under advisement, but I'm particularly looking for books that fall into the following categories:
1. A type of bad book, such as bad romances about Vikings, space opera about Swiss architects, comic books about superheroic dust mites, etc. I try to write about these twice a month, with two to three books per diary, so the more titles, the merrier.
2. Authors that transcend the merely mediocre to the empyrean heights of "they put that in print?" Previous diaries have discussed the likes of William Topaz McGonagall, Amanda McKittrick Ros, Jeffrey Archer, and Judith Krantz, so anyone in that ballpark would be great.
3. Great literary hoaxes, eccentric authors, or literary curiosities. Forged or deliberately terrible books are always welcome, especially if they were created to trap a vanity press.
4. Books that might have begun as good but ended up terrible thanks to poor editing, bad rewrites, or retconning in a sequel. This includes books that were butchered on their way to becoming television series or films.
My thanks in advance for any and all suggestions. Who knows? Your favorite lousy book or author could end up in a future diary, and wouldn't that be great?
[and if anyone knows either the tractor-happy literary confection I described above, or an equally frustrating Lost Bad Book that involved motorcycle gangs riding the Great Plains in a dystopian mess that was equal parts Mad Max and Horseclans, I will arise and call thee blessed]
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