Delia Summers: All Comments

My comment on Maddison Smartt Bell's story has been removed by the moderators - presumably because they considered it abusive or offensive. It was neither of these things. It was a critical post about a story I thought was a rambling, poorly punctuated piece of work. Am I not allowed to dissent from the Editors point of view ?

Out of the Tombs: Madison Smartt Bell

This tedious story is garbled in its narrative and incompetent in its execution. The writer has no sure grasp of punctuation. He uses commas as breathing marks, without any regard for their purpose.

Behind him, x he could hear the leaves of trees in the park,x shifting in the moving air.

A metal portcullis,x of almost medieval aspect…

One hand held a long staff,x with a tiny brass bell springing from the top it. (?)

He uses commas in front of conjunctions - and, or, but etc – although the point of conjunctions is to join two sentences:

The baking heat of the day had lifted,x and a pleasant breeze came from the north.
A woman was coming from the same direction, walking very carefully,x as if on eggshells,x or the rolling deck of a ship…

Paul sometimes practiced tai chi there,x in early mornings when the city breathed quietly,x or at other times,(?) waiting for a call from the courts, he might play Chinese chess at one of the picnic tables…

This last sentence is nonsense.

It’s difficult to see the virtues in this story for which the editors selected it. Madison Smartt Bell’s writing exhibits all the faults of the creative writing student: a reliance on simple sentences and a reluctance to make complex sentences or relative clauses; obvious, uninteresting language. Cliché is close to the surface of the writing. (… as if on eggshells…). The narration of events if lumberingly filtered through the point of view character’s perception of them, so that whether or not they are clear to him, they are indistinct to the reader:

The restaurant was closed and dark, so it must be very late…( surely must have been…)

The woman moved the point of her chin,x and looked as if she might have curtseyed…

The vagueness of the language does not establish an hallucinogenic or hypnogogic effect. Quite the reverse.

Out of the Tombs is an example of Granta’s tendency to prefer the voguish second-rate US writer to anything startling home grown.