I have a confession to make: I almost forgot our anniversary.
Not a wedding or romantic anniversary, oh no. Being dumped for someone half my age the day after returning from a romantic vacation commemorating fourteen years of marital bliss has left me somewhat jaundiced toward such occasions, at least for myself. But there are other events that deserve a red letter day in the calendar, if not necessarily a week billing and cooing in Vermont. That includes four years of expeditions into the wilds of that singular corner of the Republic of Letters that I like to call Badbookistan.
That's right, boys, girls, and all the ships at sea. I've been writing these diaries for four whole years. Even worse, you've been reading them.
What this says about you, me, or the fact that a major political website has willingly - nay, joyfully - hosted approximately 200 essays on terrible poetry, wretched novels, unrealistic romances, poorly written adventures, badly characterized Gothics, and the occasional rotten film is for others to say. Most of what I could learn about fourth anniversaries concerned gifts for married couples, which range from the ephemeral (fruit and flowers if you're a traditionalist) to the practical (home appliances) to the romantic (blue zircon jewelry) to the risque (lingerie). All of these are good things - fruit is tasty, jewelry is pretty, and I sure could use a new over the stove microwave since the old one died several years ago - but none are truly appropriate for a diary about crummy books.
This is why this evening's exploration of Badbookistan and its environs is just a little bit different.
Tonight, in commemoration of four years writing these diaries, I bring you not just books, but other offerings from the souks and bazaars and overly bloated malls spotting the landscape of Badbookistan and its neighbor/trading partner Badstuffistan. Below find four lists, each with four carefully selected examples of terrible entertainment culled from my wide and vast experience with the dregs of popular culture. Four books, four authors, four movies, four songs...all are guaranteed to be lousy, and all are guaranteed to be about as fragrant and culturally relevant as a gigantic pile of GTPOD poop on a hot summer day:
Bad Books:
English As She Is Spoke, by Pedro Carolino- this unintentionally hilarious book began with an attempt to produce a Portuguese-to-English phrasebook and dictionary, and spiraled out of control because the author could not, in fact, speak, read, or write English. The results, which are so deliciously weird that Mark Twaijn proclaimed it "perfect" in between howls of laughter, include beauties like "to craunch a marmoset," "sing an area," and "these apricots and these peaches make me and to come water in mouth." It will change your view of language in ways you could never have imagined, particularly if you've consumed several alcoholic beverages prior to clicking on the link.
Irene Iddlesleigh, by Amanda McKittrick Ros - this self-published novelist might have sunk without a trace into the inky black waters of the wine dark Sea of Suckitude that encompasses Badbookistan if a humorist hadn't proclaimed it "the book of the century" in a highly sarcastic review. Curious readers bought it and laughed till they almost ceased breathing, Ros fired back by calling the reviewer a "clay crab of corruption" even as the royalties poured in, and JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, and their fellow Inklings read the book aloud when they got sick of hearing about Mordor and Narnia. "Adventurously ungrammatical" is putting it mildly.
Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell - Mitchell, who lasted one year at Smith College before the Spanish 'Flu drove her home for good, was a better than average writer with a flair for interesting characters, a strong sense of plot, and a rare ability to evoke a time and place. Unfortunately, she was also a dyed in the wool Southern belle whose Pulitzer-Prize winning classic is larded with race prejudice, apologiae for the Ku Klux Klan, and a view of Reconstruction that is about as accurate a David Barton treatise on Thomas Jefferson's devout Christian observance. That doesn't even touch on beauties like "Rhett rapes Scarlett and she likes it." So flawed it should come with annotations.
Worlds in Collision, by Immanuel Velikovsky - what happens when a respected doctor and translator with no training in archaeology, physics, mythology, or geology decides to reinterpret ancient texts to prove that his religious beliefs are literally true? You get a bestseller positing that most of the miraculous events in the Hebrew Scriptures were caused by "Comet Venus" swooping overhead, dropping manna in its wake, that's what. This surprisingly well written, plausible, and 100% wrong book was a smash hit among the New York literati in the 1950's and paved the way for later "scholars" like Zechariah Setchin and Erich von Daniken. So bad, and did so much damage to scientific discourse, that Carl Sagan devoted a whole chapter of Broca's Brain to teeing off on the whole mess.
Bad Authors:
Ayn Rand- born Alisa Rosenbaum, this Russian emigre/former scriptwriter/reactionary lunatic/serial adulterer has exerted an outsized influence on American life, thought, and politics. Her so-called philosophy elevated selfishness to a virtue, her disciple Alan Greenspan reshaped world finance, and her books are replete with tissue-thin characters, ludicrous plot twists, paeans to self-interest, women enjoying their own sexual abuse, railroads, weird metals, Soviet politics applied to American life, and implausibilities like an entire country sitting still for a three hour radio address by the maniac who wrecked the economic system and caused millions to starve. The films based on her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, were so unpopular that the backers had to resort to a Kickstarter to fund the minuscule advertising budget. Need I say more?
Lev Nussimbaum/Kurban Said/Essad Bey - born in Baku, exiled after the Russian Revolution, educated in Germany, Nussimbaum/Said/Bey changed identities, religions, and nationalities with the same speed and ease that lesser mortals devote to changing their underwear. His non-fiction, some of which was actually sorta kinda true, was popular enough to pass muster in Nazi Germany even though Said/Bey/Nussimbaum had been born Jewish and might or might not have converted to Islam during his student days. Lived a life that was more colorful than his novels (some of which may have been co-written with a German baroness, or was it an adventuress claiming to be a baroness or a German?) or any of his truthy non-novels/possibly somewhat non-fiction offerings.
Harry Stephen Keeler - Keeler, who had once been declared clinically insane and confined to an asylum, was one of the most prolific, and peculiar, pulp writers of the prewar years. Keeler created the so-called "webwork plot," which involved a) keeping a huge file of weird newspaper stories, b) taking a bunch at random, and c) forcing the long arm of coincidence to do the thirty-day shred workout to meld such elements as weird jade carvings, imaginary "Chinese wisdom," horrific racial stereotypes, unreadable ethnic dialects, weird wills, and people named things like "Scientifico Greenlimb" and "Ebenezer Squat-in-Thunderstorm" into an allegedly publishable manuscript. "I nearly busted my cerebellum making them up," Keeler once wrote of his works, and oh my friends, I believe him.
Julia A. Moore, the Sweet Singer of Michigan - "Worse than a Gatling gun," one critic wrote about this 19th century poetess, and given the sheer number of people who die in her books thanks to railway accidents, choking on food, disease, accident, or simply falling over ne'er to rise again, he wasn't far off. Moore, whose work gave Mark Twain nearly as much enjoyment as Pedro Carolino's language guide (see above), was a farm wife who started writing as a way to cope with the death of teenage friends. Her poetry achieves the rare feat of being both hilarious and horrifying, with the occasional unconscious innuendo that will leave the modern reader gasping.
Bad Movies:
The Scarlet Letter (1995)- Demi Moore's feminist reworking of Nathaniel Hawthorne's brooding classic about sin, repression, and redemption is pretty to look at, boasts Gary Oldman and Robert Duvall as cost-stars, has gorgeous if problematic costumes, and a lovely score by John Barry. It also has a terrible script that turns Roger Chillingworth into a crazed murderer, a completely warped version of King Philip's War, and a happy ending that sees Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, and their little darling Pearl heading off to the Carolinas as the Puritans who weren't massacred attempt to hush up the whole mess. How it ever got a 14% favorable rating on Rotten Tomatoes is beyond me.
Zombies of the Stratosphere - this 1952 serial from Republic Studios is one of the last, and worst, examples of the form. Commando Cody (cleverly renamed "Larry Martin" despite still having every bit of his Commando Cody gear) battles inept and badly costumed Martians who wish to disrupt Earth's orbit by setting off a hydrogen bomb. There's a robot, lots of stock footage from other Republic cheapies, and the sort of rich, highly detailed production details one gets from a seventeen day shooting schedule. The best part is seeing a very, very young Leonard Nimoy as "Narab," one of the Martians, and hearing what he sounded like before he managed to hire a good dialect coach and shed his Boston accent.
Captain America (1990) - the Sentinel of Liberty comes to something approximating life thanks to the mad thespian skillz of JD Salinger's son Matt, who plays the superhero with all the dash and charm of Seymour Glass at his own funeral. The ludicrous script, which makes the Red Skull an Italian, Steve Rogers a California polio victim rather than a New York asthmatic, and the President of the United States a bigger badass than the titular character, is only the least of the things wrong with this howler. Highlights (?) include a transformation scene where scrawny Steve becomes brawny Cap thanks to what appear to be plaster of Paris models of human limbs, a Cap costume with fake ears on the cowl, an environmental subplot that makes absolutely no sense, and Cap romancing the daughter of his old girlfriend. So bad there isn't even a Stan Lee cameo.
Modesty Blaise - ultra-cool superspy Modesty Blaise has been a legend ever since she first appeared in a British comic strip in the early 1960's, but you wouldn't know it from this film. Beautiful costumes, gorgeous locations, and wonderful cinematography do not excuse an awful script that reduces the title character to a delicate little flower in stiletto heels, a floaty chiffon dress, and a gold wrist cuff. Throw in a gratuitous and non-canonical romance between Modesty and her loyal sidekick Willie Garvin, a fantasy sequence where Modesty encounters her own collected comics, and Monica Vitti and Terence Stamp kissing in between shooting bad guys, and it's easy to see why author Peter O'Donnell refused to sell the movie rights again during his lifetime.
Bad Songs:
Loving You (Minnie Riperton) - Riperton, mother of actress Maya Rudolph, was a gentle, talented lady who died young and was much mourned by her family and devotees of folk-tinged 1970's pop. She's best known for this song, which is a perfectly pleasant example of quiet, somewhat spacy folk-pop until Riperton lets loose with an earsplitting "eee-eeee-eee-eee-aaaaaa!" that soars a good three octaves above the staff. Literally painful to listen to, at least if you have sensitive hearing, but highly useful at attracting the attention of random dogs, coyotes, cats, etc.
Shannon (Henry Gross) - Gross, who got his start with Sha Na Na and soloed at Woodstock when only seventeen, was a rising star when he recorded this ode to Beach Boy Carl Wilson's recently deceased Irish setter. Depressing, puerile, and blessed with a fine display of Gross's wince-inducing falsetto in the chorus, "Shannon" somehow made it all the way to #6 on the Billboard charts. Gross's career never recovered, although he's still actively recording with the likes of Jonathan Edwards (the singer, not the Puritan theologian).
MacArthur Park (Richard Harris and Donna Summer, though not at the same time) - long, inexplicably popular hit single that compares a lost love to frightened baby birds, striped trousers, and improperly stored pastries with unnaturally colored buttercream frosting. No one except songwriter Jimmy Webb knows what the hell any of this is supposed to mean, and the lyrics are so cryptic it's possible Webb isn't entirely sure. First charted in a tremulous version by Richard Harris, this all-time enigma was later remixed in a disco version by Donna Summer that became a surprise dance hit. Will end up as the subject of someone's doctoral dissertation if civilization survives more than another fifty years.
Wives and Lovers (Jack Jones) - what may be the single most misogynist song every written advises young wives to stay well groomed and sexually available so their husbands don't succumb to the rapacious young secretaries at the office. The terrible lyrics and Jack Jones' condescending performance didn't prevent it from winning a Grammy in 1964, or from being recorded by everyone from Frank Chacksfield to Dick van Dyck to the Boston Pops. Will make the average woman fling the radio out the window with enough force to shatter windows, walls, and possibly the sound barrier.
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So...have you enjoyed the last four years of diaries? Are you looking forward to more? Do you have suggestions for future installments? Join us as we venture further and further into Badbookistan....
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Readers & Book Lovers Series Schedule: