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Can someone be a literary genius and suck at writing? I guess so. Prescient? Inventive? Sure. But good lord his prose is turgid. A while back, I tried to read h
by ctrlp 5y ago
Can someone be a literary genius and suck at writing? I guess so. Prescient? Inventive? Sure. But good lord his prose is turgid. A while back, I tried to read his 'best' books and all I could reason about their popularity is that here was an author for adult adolescents. The excerpts from this article seem almost chosen on purpose to illustrate how bad it is.
- germinalphrase 5y agoWhat do you like more?
- ctrlp 5y agoSF is a tough genre to swallow. If that's the question I can't offer you much without qualification. Gibson is a particularly egregious desecrator of English but only one. The genre gravitates to pulp. These are fantasy novels not just in their imaginary worlds, but in their imaginary psychology. Pulp fetishizes thin, simplified inner lives and relationships. That's as much part of the escapism as the tech. Enjoy it if you can but if you don't know what good prose is already, you won't learn it from Gibson.
- sphynxie 5y agoWhat authors do you recommend for good prose? Genuinely interested.. I love prose (and Gibson, generally) but am always looking to expand my horizons.
- ctrlp 5y agoIf you love Gibson's prose I'm not sure what to recommend. Maybe you'd enjoy James Joyce, or Kerouac or Burroughs maybe. If you love fiction generally there are all the great novels to read.