No Follower of King

Read a wonderfully negative review of Rick Moody's The Four Fingers of Death in the WSJ today. As Anton Ego says in Ratatoille, bad reviews are fun to read and more fun to write. This one is definitely fun to read. Favorite lines from the review: "There's not one original thing in "The Four Fingers of Death,"" and "and other recycled diversions that, by this point, the beleaguered reader will be skimming past too rapidly to notice."

What caught my eye though was the contradiction between how the author describes Moody's prose what Stephen King says in his book, On Writing. King states, often, never use two words when one will do. He is a disciple of Strunk and White and quotes them throughout the second half of the book. Mr. Sack's says of Moody, "He never uses one word when five or six will do" then he offers some examples.

Tears to Mr. Moody are "non-cybernetic tear duct effluent"

A sunset is "aubergine tonalities of the post- technological evening"

A character's lies are stated as "English-language transmission was in the category of the patently untrue"

Now, I don't know if I agree with King. There are times when I feel the simple, one word, descriptor isn't quite as descriptive as needed. But good lord there has to be a middle ground. Moody seems to be mocking the reader or poking fun at himself with his prose. Although, it does kinda make me want to read his book just to see what other nuggets there are.