Oh, the Irony
Jun. 10th, 2013 06:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stoutfellowI am, for some reason, finishing up a reread of Harry Turtledove's alt-history series that begins with How Few Remain. (Almost through the next-to-last book.) I just encountered the following paragraph:
Turtledove is capable (with the right editor, I suppose) of writing reasonably taut prose; his short stories, and the earlier novels The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump and The Guns of the South, prove this. (The novels have flaws, some of them serious, but prolixity isn't one of them.) But his two extended series - Worldwar and this one - are terribly bloated. And they're bloated at the micro level; there are far too many passages in which the first sentence or two says all that needs to be said, but HT insists on extending with three or four more.
Also? If I never have to read of a character saying or thinking some variation on "I can't say you're wrong, because you're not.", I think I'll be a much happier man. If it were a verbal tic of one character, I'd buy it, but HT puts it into the mind or mouth of one character after another. Lazy, lazy writing.
Turtledove comes up with interesting timelines, but - at least at present - he just isn't that good a writer.
Oderint dum metuant. An ancient Roman playwright had put that into three words. Let them hate as long as they fear. English was a less compact language than Latin. O'Doull didn't suppose he could expect a truck driver to match a poet's concision.Okay, Harry; instead of a truck driver, how about a published author with an arm-long list of books to his credit, who also has a degree in history?
Turtledove is capable (with the right editor, I suppose) of writing reasonably taut prose; his short stories, and the earlier novels The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump and The Guns of the South, prove this. (The novels have flaws, some of them serious, but prolixity isn't one of them.) But his two extended series - Worldwar and this one - are terribly bloated. And they're bloated at the micro level; there are far too many passages in which the first sentence or two says all that needs to be said, but HT insists on extending with three or four more.
Also? If I never have to read of a character saying or thinking some variation on "I can't say you're wrong, because you're not.", I think I'll be a much happier man. If it were a verbal tic of one character, I'd buy it, but HT puts it into the mind or mouth of one character after another. Lazy, lazy writing.
Turtledove comes up with interesting timelines, but - at least at present - he just isn't that good a writer.
