bad book: go sit in the corner ~

[lookingland]

need to catch up on a bunch of book reviews for the 50bookchallenge:

no. 24 ~ George W. Alexander and Castle Thunder: a Confederate prison and its commandant by frances h. casstevens.

i really needed this book to be good, but sadly, its just about the worst i've ever encountered. this bizarre ambiguously tentative defense of one of the more obscure villains of the Confederacy is schlocked together so haphazardly, it's actually dizzying to read more than a few pages in one sitting. it's repetitious, randomly structured, poorly organized, and wanders into constant irrelevancies. what few "facts" are assembled here are better found in other texts, and the rest is a thin string of biographical incidentals cobbled from grocery lists and taxi receipts (i'm not exaggerating, though my examples are off).

the fact is, we don't know anything about this guy or what his dog's name was (and the author vascillates all through the book calling the dog one thing or the other and something both ~ gads!). we only know he was despised by everyone under him, that his abuses of the prisoners were so awful that the Confederate Congress brought him up on charges and had him removed from the prison, and that his life thereafter dissolved into ignominious obscurity (if that's not too much of an oxymoron). definitely very good subject matter for research, but you can't write a book about someone who has left no real legacy to trace!

i can't imagine why the publisher agreed to print this horrendous trash without assigning an editor to burn it to ashes and rewrite it from page one ~ if for no other reason than simple coherence.

but i will take away (from a completely randomly inserted chapter about Alexander's frustrated literary pursuits ~ well no wonder he was a monster!), these two priceless reviews from the critics who suffered through his play, The Virginia Cavalier:

"The play contained nothing strikingly new or original...As the plot began to unfold itself, some of the literary gentlemen groaned inadvertantly, and despondingly moved towards the door...there is not a character in the entire dramatis personae of the play that might not have had its origin in the veriest dunce of the country school. The dialogue is stupid, the incident are stale, and the plot ridiculous."

"an abominable play, with absolutely nothing to recommend it."

much of the same can be said of this book.

: o p

Castle Thunder in about 1863
this prison plays a huge role in my novel
and for good or for ill, not too many concrete
details about its operations have survived.

Comments

[sparowe]

I can relate. I've run across books so bad that I scrimp through the index, find and note what I need, but never actually read the thing--which is not my style, but sometimes all you can do.

[lookingland.livejournal.com]

if i hadn't had to get this special through interliberry loan, i'd have never finished reading it. i photocopied the bibliography, so at least there's that ~ may be able to find a copper's worth or two in that.

sometimes i'm just stunned at what someone will think is passable writing!

[bachsoprano.livejournal.com]

some of the literary gentlemen groaned inadvertantly, and despondingly moved towards the door...

Hee hee hee! I've had the same reaction to slush from time to time, except I never thought to move despondingly...:D

[ryan-howse.livejournal.com]

But you reject it despondingly, right?

[bachsoprano.livejournal.com]

Hee hee! Yeah, something like that.....;)

[utter-scoundrel.livejournal.com]

Never be afraid to use words like "ignominious".

[lookingland.livejournal.com]

some words should just be mandatory in everyday speech, i think.

like "filbert".

: D