Hear, hear! Words are fun, but too many words are decidedly not. This article was exhaustively composed, with examples both enlightening and hilariously entertaining. It strengthened my resolve to never read Proulx (not that I needed any help), and I was super-psyched to see Paul Auster called on the carpet. I wished some of the contrasting examples had come earlier, though. It would have been nice to bounce back and forth between the simple, expressive prose and the hollow window dressing -- and it would have emphasized the gulf between.

I loved what he said about certain passages demanding to be read quickly. I notice that far too often with these sorts of books. It's as if there's a skeleton of meaning (this caused that to happen; he felt this response) varnished with a layer of gilding (flowery adverbs or contrapuntal metaphors). Sometimes the flourish enhances the meaning; often it merely celebrates the author's cleverness. Occasionally I'll catch myself skimming those sentences, and I'll go back to evaluate the metaphors more carefully. I seldom find the second pass rewarding.

This particular section of the Paul Auster critique had me nodding emphatically:

The flat, laborious wordiness signals that this is avant-garde stuff, to miss the point of which would put us on the level of the morons who booed Le Sacre du Printemps.

As Maeby said on Arrested Development, people won't admit they didn't like it out of fear of sounding stupid. Also, his description of the "sentence cult" was fantastic:

The critics' admiration for Proulx reflects a growing consensus that the best prose is that which yields the greatest number of standout sentences, regardless of whether or not they fit the context.

It makes me wonder if critics are taking Pierre Bayard's advice, pronouncing on books they haven't read. Worshipping the mighty sentence, there's little need to digest the whole story. (Though their instinct to avoid these books would be forgiven.)

I struggled with this all the way through Marisha Pessl's debut novel Special Topics in Calamity Physics, which EW heralded on multiple occasions. (The magazine stakes its claim firmly in "middlebrow" territory, which made this all the more confusing.) Were her countless fabricated citations and overwrought metaphors genuinely intended, or was she using them to skewer this very style of writing? (I gave Pessl the benefit of the doubt, of course, because she's ridiculously hot.)

Overall, this was a truly excellent piece. But you're right; it's a few years old. All our thinking changed on 9/11. Obscurity is vital to our security, and true patriots stopped thought in its tracks on that day and haven't looked back.

I liked the previous comment so much that I had to let it stand for a couple days before knocking it off the top of the list with this one. The "sentence cult" drives me nuts, too. Plus, I'll never forget when I had to read Anne Sexton poetry for a freshman year T.O. class and I realized that her metaphors simply made no sense. They sounded really inventive, but you couldn't think about them too carefully or the whole structure collapsed. I don't think I persuaded the teacher that Anne Sexton might not be super-duper-amazing, but it was a liberating realization for me, at least.

I wish I could think of something more witty in response to your very wise and solemn reminder that of course 9/11 changed everything, but it's extremely hot here and my brain is sluggish, so I'll stick with OMG LOL!

The Truth the Dead Know by Sexton. It's not the world's worst poem. But I'm not sure what "the sea swings in like an iron gate" exactly means. I'm even less sure what to take away from "the wind falls in like stones / from the whitehearted water." Is whitehearted like goodhearted, or is it empty-hearted, or pure-hearted, or blank-hearted, or what?

In the interests of fairness, and to perhaps hang a lantern on my own inconsistency, here's another poem on death -- A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London, by Dylan Thomas -- that I like, but that also has some infamously puzzling metaphors. What is the "round / Zion of the water bead," etc.? I wonder if I like this better because it isn't just telling me to find a way to make my brain equate X with Y ("ocean" with "iron gate") ... instead, it's suggesting some kind of odd sacred/natural temple, which fits what he's talking about, even though I have no idea exactly what he means. (A teardrop, as the "salt seed" seems to be later? Something else?)

Or maybe I'm just inconsistent and subjective. :-)

EDITED TO ADD: Just read it again and now I think that Zion and the "synagogue of the ear of corn" are both images of returning to a sort of womb or seed state... in other words, until he must return to wherever he came from before birth. See, I like this because it encourages me to think about it, whereas that iron gate thing for some reason just puzzles me without opening up a lot of interesting options.

I'll give poetry a pass; I think itgets to play by different rules. Outside of English class, I've avoided poetry like the plague (other than Ogden Nash, of course, and some Poe). If I were to read any, I'd accept responsibility for wading into dangerous territory. Of course there's good poetry out there (and I don't just mean dirty limericks), but that sandbox has been owned by the pompous windbags for a long time, so you're sort of on their turf.

(I have a very low tolerance for poetry. Sandburg's "the fog comes/ on little cat feet" makes me gag, even though the metaphor makes perfect sense.)

I remember NPR had the U.S. Poet Laureate on a few years ago, to read some new poem he'd written. It confirmed every negative stereotype most Americans have about public radio, poetry, liberals, and people who can read.

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