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JUST CALL THEM LOUSY WRITERS
By JARED PAUL STERN with PAULA FROELICH and CHRIS WILSON

RICK Moody, Toni Morrison, Don DeLillo, Annie Proulx, Cormac McCarthy and most of the other sacred cows of contemporary American letters are boring hacks who use complicated writing to conceal the fact that they have nothing to say, a controversial new book charges.

In "A Reader's Manifesto: An Attack on the Growing Pretentiousness in American Literary Prose" (Melville House), one-time Atlantic Monthly writer B.R. Myers claims that a vast conspiracy between corporate publishing houses, mediocre writers and mindless reviewers has robbed the nation of good, meaningful books.

Morrison's Nobel Prize in literature, for instance, doesn't impress Myers, who relates an incident in which Oprah Winfrey called Morrison "to say she had had to puzzle repeatedly over many of the latter's sentences. According to Oprah, Morrison's reply was, ‘That, my dear, is called reading.' (bwhahahaha, oh that's rich!) Sorry, my dear Toni," Myers declares, "but it's actually called bad writing." [snip] Link

MORE LIZ SMITH

WENT TO a swell lunch for Tina Brown at the Fifth Avenue apartment of Reba White Williams. It's always nice to go somewhere where someone is giving something for - no reason! Just fun and friendship.

Tina was celebrated by a clutch of handsome "girls in their summer dresses," including Diane Sawyer, Erica Jong, Karenna Gore Schiff, Joan Ganz Cooney, Marla Prather, Marie Brenner, Manuela Hoelterhoff, Jeanine Pirro (What no Chelsea and Hilly?!) and other charmers and fans.

The guest of honor looks like a new woman (She does? Looks to me like she's morphed into Hillary! Let's hope that's an old pic.) since she shook off the shackles of editing Talk, a magazine that the all-knowing, all-smirking publishing world never gave a chance. [snip] Link

Warning! Warning! Barf Alert!

Separated at birth? I report, you decide!

Good morning everyone - playing catchup here, but had to give props to the "lousy writing" post by BWB.

Having forced myself to slog my way through, with many sentence re-reads, the verbal catastrophe that was Beloved, I am happy to know that someone is willing to call awful writing - awful writing. Way to go.

Praying for a good day in court tomorrow, JL