Books and authors I can't get into.

I'm not saying these books and authors suck. I'm just explaining why I can't get into them.

But some of them do suck, though.

In any event, please enjoy my first official blog rant.

A) Authors I won't give a fair chance.

I won't read John Grisham. I don't care about taut courtroom thrillers. I don't need to read insider lingo that could only be written by an ex-lawyer. He might be a good writer for all I know. I won't even spend two hours watching any of his movies.

Tom Clancy loves his military shit, but I don't. I can't even follow the plots in his movies. Was that the same guy from earlier who warned that other guy about the leak? I don't know, both were 50-ish white guys wearing navy baseball caps.

Michael Crichton. I'm probably not even spelling his name right, but I don't want to look it up. I started the book Timeline a while ago, but the writing was just so awful. Martin Amis pegged it: He's not writing books, he's writing book-length screenplays.

That chick that writes that stuff about relationships? I don't like her.

B) What was I thinking?

Stephen King can tell a story. He's good at plot. But that dialogue is some seriously stilted, phony shit. I didn't notice that when I was sixteen. If you once read and enjoyed The Shining, do yourself a favor and don't read it again. Just savor the memory.

I picked up Books of Blood, by Clive Barker, which I last read in 1993. I used to think it was great, literate horror. But now I think it's overwritten, cliched melodrama.

C) Postmodernists

Mason Dixon is a masterpiece. It says so right on the cover in a New York Times quote. I've tried to break the seal, but I can never get past the first thirty pages or so. And then there are like 700 pages after that! And there are only eleven periods in the whole book. Maybe I'm not smart enough for Pynchon. I think I can live with that.

David Foster Wallace can do the tangent like nobody's business. Broom of the System is supposedly more approachable than Infinite Jest, but I can't force myself to pick it up again. It's sitting on my bathroom floor. I'm at the part where a cockatiel starts speaking all this mixed up literate babble. I know it's a metaphor for something -- maybe DFW's writing. I tuned out after a chapter about a guy who wants to eat himself so fat that he takes up more and more of the universe, thereby making everyone else closer to him. This is his prescription for avoiding loneliness. If you find that sort of writing cerebral and cute, read Broom of the System and tell me how it ends.

James Joyce, the grandfather of the postmodernists, was a genius. Dubliners is perfect, written with a "scrupulous meanness." Not a single superfluous word in any of the stories. Then, he lost his Irish mind. Reading Ulysses is like trying to eat a hamper full of laundry. I shouldn't lump him in with guys like David Foster Wallace, though. That's wrong. Maybe I'll try Ulysses one more time.

D) Other heavyweights

The Wind Beneath Her Feet, by Salman Rushdie, rang false. He's writing about a pop star and you get the feeling he's out of his element. It's like a bookish, foreign exchange student explaining his take on Kurt Cobain to you at a party. All the terminology is a little off and his sense of humor edges toward corny nerdiness.

Has Philip Roth lost a little something on his fastball? Portnoy's Complaint was hilarious and dark, but The Human Stain is colorless, mannered and allegorical. I couldn't get into it.

E) New writers

Jonathan Safran Foer starts out Everything is Illuminated with a bang. The narrator is from the Ukraine and he writes in hilariously broken English. That lasts for four genius pages before the story lurches back in time to tell a whole lot of back story. That wouldn't be so bad, but the change in tone is annoying. It goes from being quirky and different to writing that is so self-consciously beautiful, you can almost hear it being applauded by writer's workshops across the country.

I was so excited to read Middlesex after having read the brilliant Virgin Suicides. But get to the point, Eugenides! Talk about back story: this guy presents a brilliant premise -- a hermaphroditic narrator -- then spends over a hundred pages on a romantic telling of his Greek grandparents coming to the new world. I'll try it again. I really want to get to the hermaphrodite's story.

A Million Little Pieces has one of the best cover designs ever. James Frey wants to be the next big thing. He famously dissed Dave Eggers. He boasts about how he got clean of drugs through sheer determination. His prose short, hard and repetitious. But his true story starts to sound bullshitty after a while. The supposedly real-life characters sound like they were heisted from a crime drama. And they all die in the end, meaning no one can contact them to verify Frey's harrowing time spent in a rehab clinic. I didn't buy his story. He sounds like a rich kid talking tough. A much, much better rehab book is "Dry," by Augusten Burroughs. It's funny, dark and truthful. This isn't any of those.


Well, that's my first official blog rant. Hope you enjoyed my bile. I might change my mind about some of these books tomorrow. Just try and stop me. We blog ranters are a fickle bunch, all angry one minute and rabidly fanboyish the next.

My girlfriend says I'm a curmudgeon. Maybe I am. But on the other hand, Bah!!