With apologies to commenters who hated the word “unputdownable” in my post last week about the worst words ever, I will now point you in the direction of Elizabeth Bachner’s brilliant essay on that terrible phrase.
“There are … great books that are hard to read or slow-going, and also bad, waste-of-time books that are a slog. There are brilliant books that are unputdownable, but also piece-of-shit, brain-rotting books that are unputdownable. How do we tell which is which? … (H)ow do we isolate those key ingredients that enhance flavor, and find them in wholesome forms?”
Her answer is justifiably a bit messy, and I encourage you to read the whole article. But I will leave you with this:
“(Juan) Goytisolo’s novel (Juan the Landless) … demands to be read as it was written, in his unique voice. …(S)omebody — some publisher — thought that this unique voice was worth something, and understood that someday, on a beach somewhere during the summer of 2009, you or I would want to read his staccato expositions on King Kong and czarinas with sweaty necks and the architecture of God.”
