The Life and Times of a Navy Husband

My last post may seem a bit harsh. After all, as NY Times book critic Janet Maslin points out, while Calamity Physics starts out on shakey ground, she gets her story into the clouds and dazzles the reader well enough. And the reader eventually gets over some of her more obnoxious writerly tics, like ending every other sentence with a faux citation.

My point in criticizing the book is to ask this: when did writing became such a minor part of the books we read?

Over and over I’ve seen highly regarded American books (Da Vinci Code, anyone?) that are written poorly, even badly. Is this because we’re not breeding good writers in America? Certainly not. Is it because we’re not breeding good editors in America? Possibly.

I know I’m at risk of being written off as yet another blogger bemoaning the bygone days of Max Perkins. Those days will never return. But that doesn’t mean acquisitions editors shouldn’t be paying more attention to the writing that gets dumped onto their desks.

As it is, the task of editing a work has been passed down the line to agents and writers. There’s even a school of thought that says a writer ought to hire an editor before submitting his work.

It almost makes you wonder why so damn many of us want to write books.