In short, this description serves no purpose save to portray the cartoonish ideas of the main characters about the seemingly equally cartoonish secondary characters. The tale does not benefit one iota from the knowledge of the man with the smoke, the state of the man’s hair, nor the color nor shape of the stain on the man’s shirt. While this, if it were the only instance of such a pointless digression, would not be a problem, in and of itself, the fact is that the tale, and the other seventeen tales that follow it in the book, consist mainly of such lackluster and pointless detailing substituting for any depth or insight into the characters.
In fact, I’d estimate each tale could be whittled by anywhere from 30-70% with the elimination of such pointless descriptions, and the actual tales would all improve. And, as if to illustrate my above point, only half a page later, Pollock goes on even a longer and more pointless digression:
Suddenly, a man wearing black-framed glasses stepped from his place in line at the urinal and tapped my old man on the shoulder. He was the biggest sonofabitch I’d ever seen; his fat head nearly touched the ceiling. His arms were the size of fence posts. A boy my size stood behind him, wearing a pair of brightly colored swimming trunks and a T-shirt that had a faded picture of Davy Crockett on the front of it. He had a waxy crew cut and orange pop stains on his chin. Every time he took a breath, a Bazooka bubble bloomed from his mouth like a round pink flower. He looked happy, and I hated him instantly.
Now, is this atrocious writing, in and of itself? No - it’s merely generic, but, again, it’s the aggregation of dozens and dozens of superfluous passages like this which make Pollock’s prose such a slog. After all, if one is chewing Bazooka bubble gum, and you say it blooms and looks like a flower, need the color pink be mentioned? No.
And, furthermore, there is not a detailed thing within this passage that serves any further point in the narrative. This tale, and all of Pollock’s tales in this book, are not Hitchcock films where such details play any significant role (i.e., real clue or MacGuffin). And, the point of all of this is that this sort of writing is such standard issue writing program tripe that its utter triteness totally belies the claims that Pollock is somehow a writer of originality or power. In fact, he is wholly generic, and indistinguishable from the thousands of poor deluded souls that apply for MFA programs.
Article comments
1 - Doghouse Reilly
You make a few good points. A fat guy sinking into his seat "like a setting sun" doesn'tv make a whole lot of sense (although it's technically a simile, not a cliche). And a lot of the stories do have those typical "non-ending" endings that so many short stories seem to have, that leave the reader somewhat less than satisfied.
I enjoyed the book, personally, and thought your assessments were off on several of the "tales," as you call them in about every every other sentence. For example, the whole point of "Hair's Fate" is that the reader can spot the mounting danger signs as Daniel hithces along with Cowboy Roy, but Daniel, a naive small-town runaway, can't spot them himself. "Fish Sticks" isn'tv so much about a crazy girl "carrying fish sticks about" (if you're not British, don'tv say "about" when you mean "around", it's like wearing a sign: POMPOUS!). It's more about Del, one of the few who actually do make it out of Knockemstiff, along with his cousin Randy, whose funeral is tomorrow, and it turns out Del has a hand in Randy's death. "Assailants" is about still having a few shreds of pride: even though Del has nothing to be proud of, he doesn'tv like the girl in the convenience store mocking Geraldine, not knowing Del is married to her. And did you miss the sinister undertones in "Rainy Sunday?" And why wouldn'tv a reader want to find out why Aunt Joan just has to go to town at 1:00 in the morning. You complain how the characters don't discuss issues or have internal dialogue, but there are few things I hate more than a writer who has to have his characters, no matter how ignorant they are, quote Socrates, listen to classical music or have a secret passion for Shakespeare, when the reader knows damn well they wouldn't do those things.
Speaking of bad writing though, you seriously need to shorten up those sentences. You're the king of the meandering run-on. Look at the very first paragraph. You're also highly repetitive. THis review was nine pages that could'tve been whittled down to three. You make a huge deal about "padded upholstery" and "pink bubblegum," andj then go on to talk about a brother and sister "nakedly and incestuously copulating." And in the same catagory as the aforementioned "around/about," are the words "screamt" and j"alack." They make you sound like a pretentious dick, which is how you come off anyway. I get the distinct impression you don't want so-called regular people to write. You want "working-cllass losers" to stay that way, and leave the scribbling to enlightened intellectuals such as yourself.
2 - Dan Schneider
A) Jack likes Jill.
B) Jill likes Bill.
C) Jack likes Jill Jill likes Bill.
D) One of the most reliable tipoffs to the fact of a writer’s not being of high quality is when he is overpraised, and overpraised in a way that stresses nothing of a literary nature, usually by a published writer who lacks any skills of his own.
Sentence C is a run-on. Sentence D is a complex sentence.
When one cannot even get beyond criticism of the first sentence of a piece w/o showing one does not even understand basic grammar, nor sentence structure, all the rest becomes an odorless fart.
Keep scarfing onions, though.
3 - Doghouse Reilly
"One of the most reliable indicators of a writer being of low quality is when he is overpraised, especially when that praise stresses nothing of a literary nature, or when it comes from another subpar writer." Isn't that better?
Your first line is only an example of the sort of thing you do throughout the entire review. You string as many dependent clauses together as you can, throw in a bunch of useless phrases like "the fact of," and calling it "complex." That key underneath the L? It's called a period. You don't get charged a buck every time you use it, so feel free.