What makes a bad book bad?

American academics have been grappling with this question and rounding up some unusual suspects


DH Lawrence

A Mills & Boon Nietzsche? ... DH Lawrence. Photograph: © Bettmann/Corbis

Laying into Ian Fleming because his Bond books "consist entirely of clichés" is hardly revolutionary, but the 007's creator is not the only author to come under attack from a group of US academics asked to describe what constitutes a bad book for the latest issue of the American Book Review.

The Great Gatsby is, apparently, "incredibly smug about its relationship to the traditional realistic novel". Women in Love reads "like someone put a gun to Nietzsche's head and made him write a Harlequin romance". Revolutionary Road fares little better: "I am as illuminated as I am by a college essay decrying drunk driving," says its selector, while All the Pretty Horses gets Cormac McCarthy compared to Jackie Collins. He "wraps his characters in half-truths and idealised anecdotes, much like Jackie Collins does, only his are about the Lone Star state, the border, and its cowboy myths," says Christine Granados from Texas A&M University, adding that "McCarthy uses clichés and derivative characters to sell millions of copies".

This is all a bit say-something-controversial-for-the-hell-of-it for my taste. There's such bad writing out there (do I have the energy to bring up Dan Brown and Stephenie Meyer? No, not really) that it feels mean-spirited, even arrogant, to pick on the classics. I tend to believe McCarthy when he told Oprah, in a rare interview, that he didn't care how many people read his books. "You would like for the people that would appreciate the book to read it, but as far as many, many people reading it, so what?" he said. And anyway, it was only with 1992's All the Pretty Horses that he did actually hit the bestseller lists: his previous books – The Orchard Keeper, Outer Dark, Blood Meridian – only sold a couple View complete article

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