The art of bad writing

LITTLE ROCK — Dear Fan,

It was wholly a pleasure to hear you enjoyed the column about whether a bad thinker could be a good writer. You’re welcome. It took no great effort. It’s so much easier to write about writing than to write.

But for real relief from actually having to think while writing, there’s nothing like coming home and settling back with an unabashed bad writer. The kind who reduces you, however unintentionally, to uncontrollable laughter after only a few lines. Beats a cocktail any time.

No matter how tiring the day has been, it is always an unmitigated refreshment to open the selected works of William Topaz McGonagall, who is justly celebrated as the worst poet in the English language, or perhaps any other.

The immortal McGonagall’s best, that is, worst work is typified by his ode to The Tay Bridge Disaster, written after a railway bridge near Dundee collapsed. That epic work, something of a great disaster itself, begins:

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay!

Alas! I am very sorry to say

That ninety lives have been taken away

On the last Sabbath day of 1879,

Which will be remember’d for a very long time . . .

This opus goes on-from one solemn hilarity to another till it concludes with lines sure to please the tinniest ear:

I must now conclude my lay

By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay

That your central girders would not have given way,

At least many sensible men do say,

Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,

At least many sensible men confesses,

For the stronger we our houses do build,

The less chance we have of being killed.

There. Can’t argue with that.

The esteemed Mr. McGonagall, as void of irony as he was of shame, had earlier written a celebration of the bridge, The Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay-“With your numerous arches and pillars in so grand array.” Unembarrassed by their collapse, or that of his own poesy, he would write a celebration of its replacement, An Address to the New Tay Bridge-“Strong enough all windy storms to defy.”

Let’s just say that the works of William Topaz McGonagall, a name that could be a bad poem itself, will be remembered long after Shakespeare’s plays are forgotten, though perhaps not before then.

I am indebted to David Bentley Hart, who writes the back-of-the book column for First Things, for introducing me to the McGonagall of English prose, Amanda McKittrick Ros (1860-1939), who was a great favorite of writers as diverse as Mark Twain, Anthony Powell and C.S. Lewis. And not just they. At one time the literati of London would hold Amanda McKittrick Ros parties at which all the guests would be required to read her works till they broke down in laughter.

To quote Mr. Hart’s conclusion, “her incompetence was so sui generis that it constituted a kind of genius.” She proved writing could be so bad it was not just good but a source of endless delight.

Here is how Chapter IV of her debut novel, Irene Iddlesleigh, begins:

“When on the eve of glory, whilst brooding over the prospects of a bright and happy future, whilst meditating upon the risky right of justice, there we remain, wanderers on the cloudy surface of mental woe, disappointment and danger, inhabitants of the grim sphere of anticipated imagery, partakers of the poisonous dregs of concocted injustice. Yet such is life.”

And such is bad writing. If you can distinguish any point at all in that cloud of prosaic murk, you’re ahead of me. Miss Amanda is scarcely unique in that regard.

I’ve read whole newspaper columns that sound like that, and my worst fear is that I may even have written some.

Douglas Bentley Hart, a scholar and gentleman, confesses that he feels a little guilty about his fondness for Ms. Ros’ awful prose: “I fear there has always been a hint of cruelty in the devotion she excites in her admirers.”

Me, I don’t feel a bit of guilt at enjoying her work, feeling that I have done my penance-since I’ve had to edit stuff like that for years.

Unfortunately, none of it is as entertaining as the select works of McGonagall & Ros. If that sounds like the name of a vaudeville act, the resemblance may not be entirely coincidental.

Inky Wretch

Paul Greenberg is editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. E-mail him at: [email protected]