The Code

Being a musing about an 
amusingly museless author
and his non-amusing success

(And if it weren't enough, it all takes place in a museum!)

Renowned bestseller writer Bram Down staggered through the vaulted archway of the mysterious building.

It was apparent that nobody had visited the building in a very long time.

He opened a door: behind it lay a great hall lined with shelves, each with big, fat books on it. A ray of sunlight mysteriously filtered through one of the windows through which the outside could be observed.

Warily, he approached a shelf and took out one of the books: it was written in code. He opened another one: it was also written in code.

But then, as he examined book after book, a pattern started to emerge before the appealingly world-weary eyes of the respected playboy: the first book in the row had an A imprinted on it; and the one next to it, a B.

A rush of excitement flushed through the synapses of the brilliant tennis player; hastily, he examined the positions of the rest of the books on the shelf. They matched perfectly. The order of the books aligned perfectly with the exact succession of letters of the English alphabet!

Want to read further?
You know where you can go... :)

Fear not: this is not about a certain writer's countless fiction-disguised-as-fact-parading-as-fiction tit-bits and other tits - sorry, bits - of "theory".
In this case, exposing the litany of factual errors would be like beating a dead horse. (The man could not get the title artist's name right, for crying out loud - what do you expect?)


No: it's about how badly it is written.
And that is relevant. Because anyone can dream up an improbable phantasmagory - or even just plunder other people's theories - and anyone can demonstrate ignorance. It is human - it is to be forgiven.


But bad writing really is unforgivable. It lowers the standards of culture at large. It demeans not only literature itself but the very people who, in their ignorance, praise it.

But where to start...?
Where he started: right at the beginning, with the opening two words (now that is a feat - that's almost like screwing a person's life a minute or so after s/he is born).

Rule # 1 of writing is that, save for certain specific exceptions, you do not describe your characters' attributes or reflected status directly, i.e. by plainly saying what or how they are, especially in the eyes of the other characters in your fictional world: you indicate it, indirectly, through the character's words, gestures, other characters' reactions, the circumstances, etc.

But at least he didn't waste anyone's time with false impressions about the quality of the writing ahead - I'll give him that. Time is money; especially mine.

However, what really got me was this: a monogram consisting of no less than 14 (fourteen) letters. 
If you are going to introduce an oxy-moronic "monogram" like that, at least make it worth the reader's while or money. For example, place the hero(ine) in a whimsically charming inn in the Viennese Woods and in a jacquard bathrobe with a "monogram" saying: Am Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän Gasthaus.
Now that would be a a bathrobe worth reading!

Why am I writing about this now?
Well, I am tempted to retort: because.

But the reality is, I am writing about his now because our illustrious writer's masterpiece made it to nro. 1 of a certain short- (very short) list:

THE FIVE WORST BOOKS OF THE DECADE
(presumably, in English)

Oh, I can almost hear you:

"Well, ha ha, say what you will, he is laughing all the way to the bank!"

Maybe so.
But if money is all you've got... it ain't much, my friend.

Moreover, the money he is laughingly collecting is yours.
And he is laughing at you.



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