Oh, Internet. I’m sorry I ever doubted you.
Dan Brown (enormous piles of ill-gotten money not pictured)
If you’ve ever felt, even once, that you were losing faith in the Internet, you need never feel that way again. Because today the Internet earned its keep. Forever. How? By widely disseminating the single most valuable piece of service journalism ever written: Dan Brown’s 20 Worst Sentences, as published on the web site of the UK’s Daily Telegraph.
I’m not naive enough to believe that this stellar piece of work will have the slightest effect on Brown’s sales (the New York Daily News reported that Brown’s latest, The Lost Symbol, sold a million copies yesterday). But it does do one very valuable thing, at least for me: It convinces me I’m not insane for thinking that Brown is the worst writer who ever lived.
Oh, and my favorite selection from the list? This beauty, from chapter 4 of The Da Vinci Code.
Captain Bezu Fache carried himself like an angry ox, with his wide shoulders thrown back and his chin tucked hard into his chest. His dark hair was slicked back with oil, accentuating an arrow-like widow’s peak that divided his jutting brow and preceded him like the prow of a battleship. As he advanced, his dark eyes seemed to scorch the earth before him, radiating a fiery clarity that forecast his reputation for unblinking severity in all matters.
Q.E.D., and you’re welcome.
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How on earth did this make it past the editors? I must have glossed over all the awful writing, just to power through the story, and get it over with. The Slate Political Gabfest crew had a short discussion on why people hate Dan Brown. It was actually pretty interesting. He has his good moments, and his bad moments, and his awful moments.