The Anti-book

Archvillain

I'm interested in composing a collection of ideas absolutely contrary to what makes up most books, in order to understand what makes a good book. Things that never turn up in the books you read to make the perfect anti-book.
TO get the ball rolling I'll offer a few examples...

1)Horrendous spelling and punctuation.
2)Only ugly, shy, ignorant and contemptible characters.
3)Vast, pointless, chapter long digressions composed of vitriolic rants of groundless personal opinion
4) long meandering sentences the only point of which is the alliteration, which continues for lines and lines.
5) sudden appearances of key relatives and best friends never before mentioned, a la soap operas...

pork99

I can think of a couple of examples

Originally posted by Archvillain

1)Horrendous spelling and punctuation.

Trainspotting?

2)Only ugly, shy, ignorant and contemptible characters.

Novels & short stories of Will Self?

3)Vast, pointless, chapter long digressions composed of vitriolic rants of groundless personal opinion
4) long meandering sentences

Ever read Thomas Bernhard?

simu

1000 blank pages

carpocrates

Cambridge in jokes

romance in all forms

sudden twists at the end

stories of Victorian/Edwardian and any previous period of British sexual repression where people in tight bodices decide againsy 4ucking each other like animals and we're all supposed to cry

phoenetic spelling

All period pieces in fact

Stories of Britsh Sexual repression where people do 4uck each other like animals and we're all supposed to be impressed (Mr. Lawrence, you know who you are)

The grim, rainy, advert soaked near future ruled by corporations

3 women fighting to make it at big business/design/journalism/in a city of flaccid men.

Stories where anything is learned, or with sudden epiphanies regarding the splendour of nature or how bad society is or how your friends/roots/parents are important

(is this all adding up to something incidentally arch?)

Books which decry how fundamentally bad men are while lauding women (Mr. Twain)

Books about people with jobs like the police and scientists where they actually care about their jobs and think about them constantly

Single tragic character flaws which bring down a character in the end.

Everything to do with serial killers....

pork99

Originally posted by pork99
I can think of a couple of examples


Trainspotting?



Novels & short stories of Will Self?



Ever read Thomas Bernhard?

I have to admit I enjoyed Trainspotting and that Will Self and Thomas Bernhard (his best imho are "Extinction" and "Old Masters") are among my favourite authors.

nesf

I don't think what you propose will work. It all depends on the genre, or to a lesser extent, autor of a piece. You need to narrow the type of book you want to emulate/whatever.

For example,
Good spelling and punctuation are necessary for the most part, but the lack of such can be used by a skilled author as another form of expression or as a medium with which to convey a character dialogue where one or more of the character's is unable to speak properly or has a very strong accent.

Anyone could dump out a dozen or so facets of writing that don't seem to belong in any good book, and then someone else will point out that either a) the facet picked was just something that the person didn't like, and that others may appreciate it, or that b) the facet used could be, in the hands of a more gifted author, be crafted into a good book with excellent artistic or creative success.

Even that 100 blank pages idea could *probably* be passed off as some form of abstract minimalist piece on how the maxim of quality over quantity is not obeyed in modern forms of popular writing.

Then again i'm just a cynic.

Archvillain

I feel I need to clarify myself.
The point of the anti-book is more or less what you've outlined as why it won't work. I'm by no means saying that these techniques can't be used to very positive created effect. Simply that they all p1ss me off in one way or another (or the other people who have posted, trillions that there are...)
If all these were combined in an 'anti-book' it would hopefully all add up to something interesting and worthwhile, simply by confronting all the worst aspects of books we hate, the can provide a way they acn work to the good.

martarg

My favourites usually have to do with dialogue.... subtle summaries of a character's background one would never recite in a real conversation ("hello, X, good to see you, how are your engineer husband and your two teenage kids, with whom you still live in a beautiful house in the suburbs, although you were on the verge of divorce last year?")

I agree that most "anti-book" features can be used for artistic effect by a good writer, but you only have to dissect the work of a bad one to come up with a long list... in general, an anti-book for me is one where you can literally feel the author dragging you by the nose... "now I am going to make you sad", "now I am going to make you hate this character" "now I am going to use this figure of speech to impress you with my poetic style" .....


Pd. About period pieces, I happen to be a Jane Austen fan....

karma kabbage

Unless your lead character sports a blue frock and is called Alice, then having your book end with your hero/ine waking up to realise it was all a dream will usually ruin the best of books!

Otherwise adhere to all of Prince George's advice (Hugh Laurie in blackadder).

sceptre

Originally posted by karma kabbage
Otherwise adhere to all of Prince George's advice (Hugh Laurie in blackadder).

Where he found out that it was the zebra who killed the aardvark using a small sausage called Baldrick?

karma kabbage

Where he found out that it was the zebra who killed the aardvark using a small sausage called Baldrick?

um.... close enough

Sarky

I mentioned it in the scifi/fantasy forum before, but it deserves mention here too.

You want an anti-book? Sear thine eyeballs upon the detestable lump of literary excrement that is The Eye of Argon!

It's so terrible that it really is worth a read. And the author thought it was publish-worthy, making it even better somehow. It's got everything- Bad grammer, bad characters, bad dialogue, terrible plot, terrible ending...

pork99

Originally posted by Sarky
I mentioned it in the scifi/fantasy forum before, but it deserves mention here too.

You want an anti-book? Sear thine eyeballs upon the detestable lump of literary excrement that is The Eye of Argon!

probably the same guy

http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4025&n=3