Ever wonder why bestselling novels all read the same way? It's because they're written in the No-Style, a writing style designed for snappy, easily digestible McNovels for today's stim-hungry TV-conditioned audiences. Successful exemplars of the No-Style include the likes of Stephen King, Tom Clancy and Janet Evanovich. Are Strunk & White to blame?

Posted by: Colin | http://www.onepointzero.com/ | Wed Jan 23 01:28:02 2002

Coming soon: the 'no-style' plugin for Microsoft Word.

Posted by: Alexander | http://www.cafeina.org | Wed Jan 23 22:49:38 2002

Interesting. That explains why those books are so crap and other less-polished and harder-to-read books have much more value

Posted by: Jimbob | http://the-fix.org/ | Thu Jan 24 02:58:28 2002

Bah, elitest bullshit. People who come up with ideas like that are of the "if it's not difficult and challenging, it's not art" mindset. No-one ever said reading had to be difficult. Just because a novel isn't a post-modern critical analysis of the recontectualized metaphor for gender identity doesn't make it a "McNovel". Dissing Stephen King is like dissing Charles Dickens. It is very good writing; occasionally something good <i>does</i> deserve to hit the mainstream.

Posted by: acb | http://dev.null.org | Thu Jan 24 04:12:42 2002

Good point, Jimbob.

Though, IMHO, elitism gets a bad name. The world's so full of crap that if you don't swallow it, you are by definition elitist. Disapproval of "mass culture" like McDonalds and reality TV may be considered elitist.

Or, to quote Randall Graves, "I believe in the philosophy of a ruling class, because I rule".

Posted by: egg | http://egglog.tripod.com/ | Fri Jan 25 10:10:40 2002

Don't blame Strunk and White. I think it has to do with the law of diminishing returns.

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