Summary: "Wretched writing is the lowest of the low; it is a felonious assault on the English language. Exuberantly excessive, it is a sin committed often by amateurs and all-too-frequently by gifted writers having an off day. In short, it's very bad writing. Truly bad. Appallingly bad. It's also very funny. A celebration of the worst writing imaginable, Wretched Writing includes inadvertently filthy book titles, ridiculously overwrought passages from novels, bombastic and confusing speeches, moronic oxymorons, hyperactive hyperbole, horribly inappropriate imagery in ostensibly hot sex scenes, mangled cliche muddled metaphors, and unintended double entendres. Sit back and enjoy these deliciously dreadful samples, and try not to cringe too much"-- Provided by publisher.
Publishers Weekly Reviews
The Petrases (Unusually Stupid Americans), a brother-and-sister team, dig deep in this entertaining and cringe-inducing collection of overwrought passages taken from various sources published from the 19th century to the present. The book is arranged by alleged literary crime ("colorful language, excessive," "food imagery, bad," "metaphors, confusing"), and the authors mercilessly skewer bad writing and offer plenty of examples. Some cases are simply confusing ("She sat huddled in a chair, covering her ears with crossed legs") while others more readily appall ("He smiles down at her nipple, which is brown as a bar of Belgian chocolate"). There are the pathetic sex scenes ("He held her breasts in his hands. Oddly, he thought, the lower one might be larger"—written by Scooter Libby), awful book titles (Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers), and embarrassingly bad attempts at dialect ("Yassuh, A spose we caint keep dese ressavations," from Ian Fleming's Live and Let Die). Readers may be surprised to see authors like Danielle Steel, Glenn Beck, and Michael Crichton among the offenders, proving the authors' point that no one is above making the occasional error. It all adds up to a terrifically guilty pleasure for readers (and writers). (Aug.)
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