Good lit, bad lit

Good lit: Fear of Flying, Erica Jong

I bought Fear of Flying at a uni sale a while ago, along with a glut of books of similar theme and intent. I've been wary of reading it for a while, partly because so many consider it a seminal work, and partly because some of her later writing really approaches unreadability (Sappho's Leap was turgid, uninsightful and weirdly phallocentric... at least the half I read before abandoning it completely). But Fear of Flying skirts the lethargy that her later work falls into, and I guess following on the heels of the just-released Miller novels, its publication would have been a statement of intent, a ruthless and salty counterpoint to the high "erotic" misogyny of those works. Thirty years on, it feels a bit pointless to review it, rendering this entire paragraph a bit pointless really, but witty, neurotic, slightly desperate (the way every girl after Plath secretly envisages herself?) and it did precipitate this dinner table conversation at my parents' tonight:

Me: So I finally got around to reading Fear of Flying...
Mum: Oh yes! The zipless fuck! You know, your father actually gave that to me to read, years ago - remember, Stephen?
Dad: Yes, I think we had just started dating...
My younger sister: Please pass the salt.



Bad lit: assorted student creative writing projects.

Speaking of unreadable... We've recently been judging entries for the union's creative writing anthology. On the upside, there were a few beautifully-crafted poems and passages of prose, which renewed my faith in the ability of students to produce moving and effective creative work. On the downside/ backside, the lure of sponsored prizes always brings the termites out of the woodwork, and while I tried to scrutinize and consider each piece with equal gravitas, after a while I just deducted points from any piece featuring any of the following:

looming horizons, dewy grass, purple sunsets (really), "her heart sank", "her heart skipped a beat", inability to distinguish between "its" and "it's", any entry in blue/purple/green ink, any entry in Comic Sans/"groovy" font, the smell of spice in a bazaar, staring at the unforgiving horizon, dappled sunlight, grey morning light, cold night sky, gratuitous sex scenes (so edgy!), gratuitous scatological references (so edgy!), unreadable formatting (so edgy!), his strong hand gripped hers, "love had us in its grip", he was my first love and the twist is... he was a cat!, he was my first love, and the twist is... he's dead!, huddling naked beneath thin sheets, our hearts were entwined, totally unconvincing and patronizing use of dialect (it's gritty!), single mothers despairing at their suburban lives, stories written "through the eyes of a child" eschewing basic style and grammar, "consumed by love", "my palms were sweaty".

And so forth. To protect the anonymity and privacy of entrants, a few of these examples are made up, these examples may not correspond to any particular piece, and those which do I did not read aloud to my colleagues in fits of laughter/ silly voices, as this would be unprofessional.

We're thinking of running a Bad Poetry Competition at the magazine, just to have an outlet for some of this stuff. Also, if any of you can find an example of my using any of these phrases previously in this blog, I will eat my hat and also send you a prize of some sort. Umm... bad metaphor? Poor phrasing? Used volume of Erica Jong?