Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
I would contend that a popular novel, by definition, cannot be considered to be badly written.
Why? Because the purpose of writing is communication. If a novel is written well enough to reach and be enjoyed by many thousands of the intended audience, then describing such as badly written seems to be a contradiction in terms. The writing achieved its goal - in some cases much better than other apparently well written (and dare I say it, Literate) works.
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I have to disagree with you on this. One does not have to like a book to recognize it as well written. Nor does a good book necessarily have to be well written. And a bad book can be well written, at least in theory.
But there are devices and standards for writing that are objective and can be pointed out and recognized once they are. Parallel construction. Alliteration. Nuance, and connotation.
For example, the Harry Potter books have a limited vocabulary and repetitive descriptions. That's bad writing. The story itself is pretty good. And interestingly, the audio books transcend the writing - it might be that the talent of the reader makes up for the poor writing. But the writing is poor.
OTOH, Jane Austen's books are, at least on the surface, trivial (personally, I consider her a moralist almost on the level of Dr. Johnson, but a great moralist can seize on the trivial and elevate it.) Nevertheless, Austen uses words as well as anyone short of Shakespeare and outside of poetry. She could elevate the back of a cereal box with her writing.
The Potter books are good books despite their being poorly written. Actually, I wonder if they would be good books if they were well written - they are a kind of White Castle burger of bookdom. If you try to make them better, you just make them worse.
The purpose of writing is communication, but so is the purpose of speech. One can speak in grunts, and communicate well enough. I read a short story recently in which the female protagonist spent some time in interpreting male grunts - she called it "Martian." But there is speech, and there is the Gettysburg Address. There is writing, and there is Jane Austen.
There are times when I read something so well written that I stop and read it again, just for the sheer joy of a well written sentence or paragraph or page. The first chapter of Bleak House is a marvel. Anything Lincoln wrote after 1855 is damn good and sometimes transcendent. But any chapter of any Harry Potter book could have been written by an intelligent 13 year old, once he had the idea.
Raymond Chandler is better than Dashiell Hammett mainly because he writes better, not because his stories are better. Hammett is great because he had a new idea, not because he could write worth a damn.
Good writing is like good music. For most people, it takes a buildup of intellectual capital to recognize and enjoy it. But the Beatles fall far short of Beethoven, though they have more fans. And Bob Dylan is great not because of his music (it's all good) but because on occasion he uses words like Joyce or, indeed, Shakespeare.
Foie gras is not just liver.