Writing and Stuff by Anthony Chatfield

Janice Harayda posted her winners of the Delete Key Awards today, a beautiful savage removal of three books’ gooey insides that don’t deserve the paper they’re printed on. It’s a good day when I read someone’s utter disdain for the prose of Mitch Albom, a good day indeed.

The Second Runner Up

The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud

How did this pretentious novel end up on so many best-of-the-year lists? Who knows? Every year there’s at least one book that earns praise far out of proportion to its merits. (Remember the great reviews Mitch Albom got when he started writing books? How hollow does some of the praise seem now?) The most overrated book of 2006 was The Emperor’s Children, a windy and cliché-infested novel full of repulsive characters who move in eddies around an aging New York journalist.

So why didn’t it win top honors in the Delete Key Awards competition for the year’s worst writing in books? Tedious as much of this novel is, The Emperor’s Children picks up steam in the last one hundred or so pages, when it borrows some drama from the events of Sept. 11, 2001. How many readers will stick with it until then?

The First Runner Up

For One More Day by Mitch Albom

Yes, it may seem unfair to give an award to a novel that’s already been named one of the five worst books of 2006 by Entertainment Weekly www.ew.com. Why not spread the embarrassment around? First, because most other bad books aren’t written at a third-grade level, according to the readability statistics on Microsoft Word. (You can learn how to find the grade level of Albom’s and other books, or your own writing, in the Nov. 16 review of For One More Day, “Does Mitch Albom Think He’s Jesus?”, archived with the Nov. 2006 posts.) Second, the bad writing in other books at least makes sense. For One More Day teems with inane lines like: “A funeral is no place for secrets.” At no time do secrets have a more respected – and needed – place than at funerals, where common decency requires us to withhold the truth to avoid causing further pain to the mourners. Bury this one with all those classics of pseudoprofundity like The Bridges of Madison County and Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

And the Grand Prize Winner…

Toxic Bachelors by Danielle Steel

C’mon, you’re probably saying, this one was too easy. Sure, Danielle Steel writes at a fourth-grade level (technically, grade 4. 8), according to the readability statistics that are part of the spell-checker on Microsoft Word. But don’t we all know how bad her writing is? Not if you haven’t read Toxic Bachelors. You may not be surprised to hear that this novel has plenty of unintentionally comic lines like: “‘Yes,’ he said succinctly.” But it’s worse than you think.

Nobody expects social realism from Steel, but it’s still shocking to find Jews portrayed as monsters in this novel. Toxic Bachelors is about three men single men, each of whom represents a spiritual as well as social type. Charlie is WASP-y, Gray makes a religion of art, and Adam is Jewish. Guess which one has a weak father, a mother who is “a nagging bitch” and a spoiled sister? That’s right, Adam. His parents are cruel enough to make the Portnoys look like candidates for a lifetime achievement award from Parents magazine. And he has a special contempt for a sister who committed the ultimate sin: “She had never done anything with her life except get married and have children.”

Steel gets away with this because most critics have written her off and no longer review her. Why review somebody, the thinking goes, who writes only mindless romances? Toxic Bachelors presents an answer: If nobody holds her accountable, she’ll keep serving up nasty stereotypes, masquerading as a fairy tale.

All I can say is bravo. I absolutely agree and hope to the highest literary powers in the library heavens that Mitch Albom’s fingers swell up and go numb whenever he comes within fifteen feet of a keyboard.

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