Tom Robbins

[Alice]

I started reading my first book by him last night. 

He is irritating the hell out of me.  He won't stop using similes and metaphors - I mean, they're great literary tools and all but KNOCK IT THE FUCK OFF.  Why does he need 4 similes in every paragraph?  Does he get any better?  Is his plot and character development worth wading through his masturbatory style?

[Beefy]

Which are you reading?

[SockmonkeyHolocaust]

I started reading my first book by him last night. 

He is irritating the hell out of me.  He won't stop using similes and metaphors - I mean, they're great literary tools and all but KNOCK IT THE FUCK OFF.  Why does he need 4 similes in every paragraph?  Does he get any better?  Is his plot and character development worth wading through his masturbatory style?

I really, really like you.

I can't stand his writing style. It makes me wish that I could cut his heart out with a wooden spoon.

[Alice]

Which are you reading?

Still Life With Woodpecker.

[Beefy]

Which are you reading?

Still Life With Woodpecker.

Stop reading now.  Your frustration will just grow.

[Alice]

Which are you reading?

Still Life With Woodpecker.

Stop reading now.  Your frustration will just grow.

Okay - thank you.

I will toss it on the shelf and start reading one of the other many books I got at the Great American Yard Sale for $.25. 

[Alice]

I started reading my first book by him last night. 

He is irritating the hell out of me.  He won't stop using similes and metaphors - I mean, they're great literary tools and all but KNOCK IT THE FUCK OFF.  Why does he need 4 similes in every paragraph?  Does he get any better?  Is his plot and character development worth wading through his masturbatory style?

I really, really like you.

I can't stand his writing style. It makes me wish that I could cut his heart out with a wooden spoon.

Lets go find out where he lives.

[SockmonkeyHolocaust]

I tried to read 'Jitterbug Perfume' and had to give up when he used the line "cum-slicked lips"

[Beefy]

I tried to read 'Jitterbug Perfume' and had to give up when he used the line "cum-slicked lips"

Too close to home?   

[Alice]

I tried to read 'Jitterbug Perfume' and had to give up when he used the line "cum-slicked lips"

I put it down last night when he said that some guys pace-maker sounded like the sleighbells on Mrs. Claus' dildo.

[SockmonkeyHolocaust]

I think he also did another one that was a super-secret spy who was suave, self-confident AND a computer whiz.

Got ten pages in and was like, "Well now...that was certainly tacked on."

[SockmonkeyHolocaust]

It's like the man's writing is the Siegfried Line of bad prose.

[Listener]

Stuff like this generally happens when a writer has a passable plot that the editor thinks will sell, and it goes back to the writer with a note akin to "flesh it out some more".  Extra descriptions get tacked on.  Either that, or the writer adds a subplot that really means nothing to the story and only obliquely ties in at the end, like in Ilsa J Bick's "Well of Souls".

[SockmonkeyHolocaust]

Stuff like this generally happens when a writer has a passable plot that the editor thinks will sell, and it goes back to the writer with a note akin to "flesh it out some more".  Extra descriptions get tacked on.  Either that, or the writer adds a subplot that really means nothing to the story and only obliquely ties in at the end, like in Ilsa J Bick's "Well of Souls".

I could swallow that if I hadn't read other books by him and realized that he isn't a very good writer. Dickens used to get paid by the word and he wasn't as horribly verbose.

[Jessie]

He's a writer?