We have covered the best novels since 1945, but one bloggy topic I have never seen is worst books in the history of the universe.
This is an important topic partly because I take the written word very seriously and partly because I am still galled and appalled that no publisher took up the chance to handle my own novel Weed (name check). Too late now: Weed is being published under my own Psipook Press imprint. Publishers, begin eating your livers now.
It seems to me that the criteria applied by publishing houses have pretty much nothing to do with the quality of literature. Publishing choices sometimes seem quite inept, even from a commercial point of view.
JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected by five (5) publishers before Bloomsbury took it on, and then it was a close call, with the boss’s niece’s enthusiasm for the sample that made them think twice about rejecting it.
On the other hand, Jeffrey Archer wrote and published his risible first novel Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less with the sole purpose of getting himself out of debt, which makes writing and publishing sound as complicated as deciding to have a cup of tea. I wrote Weed to make a difference to the world, to create something tangible, because I enjoy mucking around with words and ideas, because I wanted to write something that people might enjoy reading. Silly bloody me. If I had written it because I had Nick Spiv polishing his razor on my jugular cos I owed him a monkey, then perhaps Pete Wylie ‘Coyote’ would have picked it up.
When I wrote Weed, I was under the naive impression that publishers would put out books regardless of commercial worth if they had literary value or a meaningful message. (Belly laughs all round.)
Having dealt with numerous agents and publishers, I have come to the conclusion that they wouldn’t know either commercial or literary value if it came attached to klaxons and flashing lights.
I always submitted my Weed sample in a smart plastic cover. The sample always came back without the cover. Perhaps these agents and publishers have a second business dealing used plastic document jackets. Perhaps publishing is just a front for a massive and sinister cartel that steals and re-sells clear plastic bindings.
It also seems important to these binder baggers that their handwriting and grammar is bordering on illiterate. Weed came back from one very well known London agent with an address near Buck Palace — sans cover, of course — with a comment scrawled in biro on the top sheet: “It’s not boring but I suppose you have placed it by now.”
Well, no, I hadn’t placed it, but I was not going to write back to these people to say so, not after that stellar display of professionalism.
Weed is a satire in the vein of Hasek or Heller or Vonnegut but one agent wrote back a testy little note exclaiming that he didn’t handle fantasy. Did they even look at the manuscript?
I am reminded of David Lassman who submitted the opening chapters of some of Jane Austen’s most famous stories to publishers and agents as if they were original works. Very few noticed they were being pranked and rejected the submissions. You can read that story here.
I would like to exclude from these remarks the publishers Flame Books and Serpent’s Tail, both of whom wrote me cogent and legible notes saying how much they liked the story, had thought about it, but for their own good reasons were not into handling Weed. I do not mind in the least having my work rejected by people like that.
So, back to the naming and shaming.
The books I am going to mention here are ones that I have read or attempted to read. These are not books I hear are bad, to earn a mention on this page, I have read or attempted to read the guilty tome. Therefore, Dean Koontz, Maeve Binchy, Jackie Collins and Brian Horrick are not featured because I have so far escaped them. Nor do I mention books I have read that were simply not my taste. I have, for example, a great problem reading Gunther Grass, which is odd given my tastes, but when I read his stuff my mind wanders and I crave some drying paint to stare at. This is no reflection on Grass, just on my tastes. The books listed below are not mere antipathies based on preferences, they are all in some way, because of the prose or the story or or the characterisation, or the underlying ideologies, crap; objectively shit. George Orwell’s rules of style end with the advice, break all the rules of good writing rather than say anything barbaric. Well, we’ve got the barbarians here too.
Beserker (Something), Fred Saberhagen
I have Wiki-ed this and found there is no single book of the title Beserker by Saberhagen but I definitely read it, whatever it was. There is a whole Beserker series, each titled Beserker something, so I am not sure which I read. Beserker Wars, perhaps. I Wiki-ed the title because I was wondering whether there was some excuse for this book. Perhaps it was an underground cult classic steeped in irony, a cunning allegory, a masked satire. No. It really seems to be what I thought it was: dire and futile SF, and published by Penguin of all people. I hesitate to list this Beserker book in my worst books in the history of the universe list because Saberhagen is not evil. He is clearly a well meaning and humane person who enjoys writing SF, but this thing was awful. I could see no excuse for it at all. The cat could do better by falling asleep on the computer’s keyboard. Beserker Whatever is a space war epic about robotic ships called, er, beserkers that are intent on destroying all sentient life in the universe for no better reason than that’s what they do. The book has the span of an epic, covering hundreds of years and most of the galaxy and all crammed into just 200 pages or so. The effect is of a rough doodle for a much larger idea. Characters come and go by the chapter so you have no idea whose story you are following or why, and the characters have no character — they are all insubstantial blurs that sit at starship consoles and posture in earnest, mock heroic tones. Worse, the book attempts humour when the beserkers mistakenly create giant custard pies to hurl at Earth’s battleships. Why did I read it and finish it? I was unemployed in London many years ago and it was either read this hand-me-down or eat the mould growing on the skirting board. Tough choice, and in the end the wrong one. I no longer speak to the man who loaned me Beserker.
Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, and one other whose title I forget, Jeffrey Archer
I would rather be on a strict diet of Saberhagen than read another story in the vein of any of the following. These Archers I picked these up cheap at a Kinokuniya sale about 15 years ago. I was pondering at the time writing parodies of best selling fiction, but reading these I realised that Archer had already done it. These stories were not so much bad as utterly backward. The stories involve money or rich people. That’s it. In the whole world of human experience, the Tory makes fiction out of the acquisitive urge. If you are Jonathan Swift and you are taking the piss, then fair enough, but here’s a guy who can think of nothing else. Characters have dialogues (I can’t say his style resembles normal speech) at Wimbledon while the writer recreates the blow by blow and the score line of actual matches, which in the minds of the people who read this probably constitutes historical authenticity. Archer refers in the first novel to women as ‘creatures’ and in the second begins with a woman giving birth on a river bank and she screamed and screamed and screamed until she stopped, which is what I did trying to read it.
Avenger, Frederick Forsyth
Writing book reviews for a magazine is a mixed blessing. You are effectively paid for curling up with a glass of wine and having a read. Unfortunately, you don’t get much choice in the reading matter. I have read some super things that I would not have thought to pick up and I have read some stuff that you would normally only pick up with a poop scoop. Avenger is one of the latter. Forsyth is the literary equivalent of a prosthetic chest, an inflatable one. This is the man who puts the pomp in pomposity. Or perhaps he just puts the omp in the word. As with Archer, he laces his books with faux history as a substitute for authenticity or interest. He also evinces a deep desire to insert his tongue in the bottom of the President of United States of America. This could be because he is a Yankophile and a conservative. It could be because he likes the taste of poo. It could be because he knows the US market is very big compared to the UK market. Whatever, we learn from the big F’s revisionist fantasies that the during the Balkan wars of the 1990s, the US watched while the whole of Europe and its institutions failed to deal with this conflict and eventually, for no other reason than exasperation, stepped in and solved all our problems for us. Bowel movements are a matter of military consideration too. We are told that as our elderly but superhuman hero is about to go out and kill lots of people (it’s just something he does) he eats up the last of his special survivalist rations (nuts and raisins but no beer) and the big F points out that he does this despite the fact that it will render him pooing small droppings. Well, I’m just glad FF has given us a fictional hero that will defend our lives and liberty even at the cost of pooping like a rabbit. An inspiration to all the troops in Iraq, I’ll bet.
Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Sydney Sheldon
I think I suggested obliquely in my KS review that this novel was a golden turd. It is just a turd.
Dead Funny, Tom Holt/Laptop of the Gods, Peter Chippindale
When growing up, we all receive advice for a happy and safe life from our parents: don’t accept sweets from strangers; keep your legs crossed; don’t fart in public; change your underpants and wash your teeth; don’t chase cars; be polite and say thank you; always carry a bucket; don’t make jokes if you are not funny. This last piece of advice was apparently not imparted to either Tom Holt or Peter Chippindale. Both are talented only in nicking ideas from better writers (mostly Douglas Adams) and in straining for effect. It says much about publishing and the world we live in that the utter banality of these two guys passes for rib-tickling humour. Holt used to be a solicitor and has an obsession with accountants that suggests he has learned the word ‘accountant’ is funny and should be used in comedy as often as possible, but secretly would quite like to be one.
Almost everything by Martin Amis
Objectively, Amis’s output is not in the worst in the history of the universe. Money and London Fields are among my favourite reads and I have done both twice. Moreover, I have read almost all the novels Amis has published. My problem with the fellow is that clearly he lost the plot about 15 years ago. Imagine Woody Allen on a strict diet of stupid pills, ego elixir, and nasty juice. That’s Amis now. Koba the Dread is the longest non sequitur in British literature and his style has turned into pure affectation (porno sun, porno clouds, porno iced tea, porno prose).
Intellectually he has thrown a rod. Terry Eagleton famously commented on Amis’s recent anti-Muslim statements that this view is “[n]ot the ramblings of a British National Party thug, […] but the reflections of Martin Amis, leading luminary of the English metropolitan literary world,” who has learnt more from his father, “a racist, anti-Semitic boor, a drink-sodden, self-hating reviler of women, gays and liberals”, than “how to turn a shapely phrase”.
Here’s something I am copying from Wikipedia: In 2003, Yellow Dog, Amis’s first novel in six years, was denounced by Tibor Fischer, whose comments were widely reported in the media: “Yellow Dog isn’t bad as in not very good or slightly disappointing. It’s not-knowing-where-to-look bad. I was reading my copy on the Tube and I was terrified someone would look over my shoulder . . . It’s like your favourite uncle being caught in a school playground, masturbating”.
So how about you? What are your nominations for worst novels in the history of the universe?
Mood: unfathomable. Music: too good.