Seymore Butts :: Putting the Anal in Banal

About a month ago I received an interesting email, apropos of nothing, from a lady at Penguin – the publishers, not the wacky dildo people. She said she wanted to share a book with you, my discerning readers. She said she knew you’d love it. It was about sex. Everybody loves sex. So she sent it to me, hoping I’d devour it with alacrity and urge you all, with all of my heart, to rush out and buy it for Christmas. And I tried. Believe me, I spent hours trying to write a glowing review with a none-too subtle sardonic undertone, but it didn’t work. The fact is, this book is such a rancid, horrible mess that I couldn’t even pretend to like it. In actual fact, if I’m completely honest, I think Rock Her World by Seymore Butts is probably the worst book I’ve ever read - and remember, I’ve read both Jeffrey Archer and Dan Brown. So, with apologies to Jenny Chun of Penguin, who I’m sure was just doing her job and is actually unutterably lovely, I forbid you, my discerning readers, I forbid you to buy this odious mound of literary effluent. Really. The man makes Chris Moyles look like Vladimir Nabokov. (Don’t buy Chris Moyles either. VERBOTEN!) Now, it’s safe to say that certain groups of people have a poor reputation for intellectual prowess. Models, for example. Football players, for another. Toilet attendants, boxers, BNP voters, people who work in Argos. And, of course, porn stars. Now I don’t know if Seymore Butts is considered a cerebral giant in the world of porn, but let me tell you, when he isn’t ball-deep in stretched rectum, or else pointing a camera at someone who is, Seymore Butts is a moron. And I neither use this term lightly, nor mean it as an insult. What I mean is that, having studied Butts and the language he uses to convey his ideas, I have concluded that he has the mental age of someone aged between 8 and 12 years old, and therefore, according to the original medical classification, he is, unequivocally, a moron. And that is nothing to be ashamed of. At least he’s not an imbecile. But should Penguin really be paying him good money to write horrible, rancid books? I’m not so sure. ‘This isn’t your ordinary book,’ says Butts at the offset. Of course, he’s flattering himself. This is barely a book at all. It’s more like a soiled bib around the neck of a retarded sex pest.

For the rest of this remarkable review, Stan recommends you go here and purchase a copy of The Little Book of Shame. Not only does it contain the article you're currently reading, it also contains around 50 others, and all for the incredible price of whatever price it happens to be at the moment. You lucky thing you. 

Feedback Friday :: Shit Floats

bicycle rides :: 5
hours of Wii Fit :: 6
new writing regimes :: 1
days remaining till return to London :: 30

I've been reading a lot about writing recently, with a view to finding out how to make a living out of it. The answer seems to be this: write a bestseller, or better still, a series of bestsellers, like, for example, Stephenie Meyer, the Mormon lady who writes about abstinence disguised as teen vampire lust, and currently occupies seven out of the first 25 places on the Amazon bestseller list. This is particularly impressive as she’s only written five books. She gets around that by cleverly publishing her books twice, once with ordinary white pages, once with red ink along the edges. Some would say that this is a sickening and cynical money-grubbing piece of marketing chicanery, but some people are just jealous. Anyway, the little girls, they love it.

Or of course like Jeffrey Archer, the thief, who can’t write for shit yet still manages to churn out bestsellers like a sump pump in a word-sewer.

I’m sorry for going on about Jeffrey Archer, but having finally read one of his books, I’m just staggered that his is the kind of writing that millions and millions of people seem to adore. I know they’re fucking idiots, but... actually, I don’t. That’s what worries me. Maybe these people who eulogise over the super-resilient sociopathic plagiarist are actually right. Maybe he is brilliant. And maybe I’m wrong. Am I wrong? You’d tell me, wouldn’t you? OK, let’s do a little experiment.

While I was reading Shall We Tell the President? - which in the end I did find to be absolutely the worst novel I can ever remember having finished - I turned the corner of the page every time I flushed with embarrassment or cringed into my coccyx. Now I’d like to share the worst bits with you, and I want you to tell me, honestly now, if they really are as poor as I think they are or if, on the other hand, I am blinded by bitterness and envy and a deeply rooted but massively disguised desire to actually be Jeffrey Archer.

Some of these extracts bug me because I feel that they contain one of the following: unrealistic or embarrassing dialogue, horrible clichés, clunking collocation, senseless imagery or merely the inability to use the right word. Oh, and the thing about ‘cocaine smoke’ - I’m guessing he must mean crack, but even if that is the case, it just doesn’t sit right. Does it?























Just in case you haven't figured it out by the way, Simon, in the last extract, is black. We know he's black because a) he talks jive, and b) just about every time he appears, the fact that he's black is mentioned somewhere in the description.

If I am wrong by the way, and the above extracts say nothing to you except that Jeffrey Archer is a good, solid, no-frills thriller writer, then you might enjoy watching this very revealing talk-cum-Q&A, in which the lying lord is self-importance personified and mentions in passing that he's brilliant and amazing and better than Graham Greene and Somerset Maugham and so on and so forth and puke puke puke puke puke puke murder.

OK, OK, enough. Now I have to stop being a jive-ass bastard, put my money where my mouth is and see if I can actually do better. Right. Here I go.

Have a super weekend by the way. Doing anything nice?

What’s the Worst Book You’ve Ever Read?

I’ve always despised Jeffrey Archer, probably for exactly the same reasons that other people who despise him despise him: because he’s an odious smug liar and thuggish whore-mongering thief who parades his character flaws as if they’re virtues. Wonderfully vocal Archer-hater Ian Hislop once described him as having ‘a supreme vanity that meant he believed he should take centre stage in the country, and he wouldn’t be put off by the fact that he had no talent, ability or moral character’. I’m not sure it’s entirely reasonable to suggest that he has no ability, considering the amount of times he’s crawled out of the gutter of his own turpitude and slithered his way into a position of considerable influence, but still – an awful, repugnant human being all the same.

Perhaps unsurprisingly then, I’ve never read any of his books. Until now. I’m currently about 30 pages into Shall We Tell the President? and I must say, it is absolutely bloody awful. I’m reading it because I’m looking for tips on how to write thrillers, and because someone whose opinion I respect (I won’t embarrass him by naming names) mentioned this book to me, and said that he’d enjoyed it as a teenager. Plus, I thought, one can’t really go through life slagging off someone’s writing (as I have done) without having actually read one of their books. So I intend to finish it, even though it’s some of the most leaden, inauthentic tosh I’ve ever had the displeasure to tolerate.

Really it is. Here’s a little example. This is the passage on which I assume the rest of the book hinges, a passage in which a corrupt Senator and a gaggle of would-be assassins discuss their plans to murder the president, in a restaurant kitchen, in earshot of a Greek waiter. Unbelievable enough in itself, obviously, but what’s really infuriating is the inconsistency in the Greek's speech patterns, the way in which his knowledge of English grammar comes and goes, like a tide of bullshit...

Ugh. It's like the writing of a retarded child. Could Jeffrey Archer really be one of the most popular writers on the planet? How can that be? Stephen King summed it up in this interview here when he said, 'There'll always be a market for shit, of course. Just look at Jeffrey Archer! He writes like old people fuck, doesn't he?'

I think it’s fair to say that this is the worst book I’ve read since I forced my way through The Difficult Second Book by Chris Moyles earlier this year.

Actually, I’m not sure I can think of any book I’ve actually finished which is worse than Moyles. I’ve started a few which would have given it a run for its money, including Learning to Fly by Victoria P Spice, but I couldn’t finish them.

Speaking of bad books written by WAGs, this five-star Amazon review of Welcome To My World by Coleen McLoughlin is perhaps my favourite ever review…

‘I really really liked this book. You get to know Coleen so well. There is a chapter on all the things that she may or may not have for breakfast and sometimes the writing is done in real handwriting instead of boring typing. Also, my favourite colour is pink which is good because I have never seen so much pink in one book. I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in someone who is married to a celebrity.’

Ahh, Jim Nixon, the doyen of toothbrush reviews.

Speaking of bad writers, I was reminded of my hatred of Carla Lane on Saturday by an appalling television programme about appalling television programmes, and I came across her website, which features a selection of her poetry. Here is an example. It is called Thoughts…

Think of the plight of the fox in flight,
The beasts in the slaughter house.
Hear their call as the hunted fall,
And the cry of the scientist's mouse.

The scientist's mouse! Squeeeeeak! I wish Carla had written a book. Oh, wait - she has! Great title too.

Anyway, I seem to have meandered. My thrust is this: Jeffrey Archer may be about to replace Chris Moyles as the writer of the worst book I've ever read. So. What’s the worst book you’ve ever read?