Reminds Me Why I Like Good Writing
Between a conference I had to attend and a pretty serious bout of strep throat, I got a little behind in my posts. I wish I could have written a nice, short post about The Sculptor, but I had far too much to say about it. None of it good. This is an extra long post, and late to boot, but I hope someone reads it.
The novel, The Sculptor, by Gregory Funaro, gives me hope as an author. If this book can get published, so can mine. While the plot of The Sculptor was satisfactory, and the research involved was commendable, everything else about the book made it one of the most painful reading experiences I have had to endure in recent memory.
Some of my objections to this novel were, largely, personal preferences. These are things that I could have excused—could have overlooked and maybe even still enjoyed the novel anyway. First of all, the beginning of the book did not grab my attention as a reader. Even though the end of the prologue, with the revelation of The Sculptor’s castration of Tommy, was interesting, had I not been required to read the book for class, I never would have made it that far. With all the football talk that was frontloaded into the prologue, I was completely bored by the time I got to page three. However, I did have to keep reading, and my interest was piqued at the end of the prologue, so as I said before, my disinterest in the first few pages was something that I could have excused.
Part of the problem for me, though, was that it never really got that much better. It has some interesting and even suspenseful moments, but generally speaking, I found the plot very predictable. I read a review on Amazon that talked about the great “plot twists” that occurred in the novel, and honestly, I am still wondering what that reviewer what talking about. The only even miniscule twist I could see was [SPOILER ALERT] the death of Cathy’s ex-husband. But even that I saw coming very early on. The first time Cathy spewed vitriol about her husband, I knew he was either going to end up being the killer or a victim. I suppose someone might also have seen the very end as a sort of plot-twist, but again, I didn’t at all. Instead, it seemed nothing more than a contrivance that allowed for a possible sequel.
In addition to all of this, I was really put off by the portrayal of women in this novel. It seems to me this author has some real issues with women, or at the very least some definite mommy-issues. While I will acknowledge that the three women we “see”—Cathy, Janet, and Rachel—are at least professional women, that is the best I can say about the characterization of women in this novel. Aside from these three women, every other woman mentioned in the novel is either a drunk, a prostitute, an adulterer, a child molester, dead (at a young age), or any combination of these. Even the three women we do see have questionable subtexts attached to them. Janet, while defined as a professional women who is the head of her department at a prestigious university, is nevertheless portrayed throughout the novel as nothing more than the stereotypical mother-hen figure. Although we are “told” that Rachel is a competent, hard-working, and capable FBI agent, the only time we actually “see” her in the novel, she is portrayed as a cold, uncaring, hard-ass bitch—the stereotypical image of female law enforcement. As for Cathy, while she is “the preeminent scholar on Michelangelo” (as we are told several times), more often than not she is portrayed as being weak, insecure, and completely reliant on men for her sense of happiness and fulfillment. This is completely at odds with my experience of women at the top of their field in academia. These women, who often have to fight against precisely these stereotypes to get to the tops of their fields, are rarely weak, insecure or reliant on men for their sense of fulfillment. There are numerous ways that Dr. Catherine Hildebrant is diminished and objectified throughout the novel, not the least of which is the male characters’ constant (and somewhat nauseating) reference to her as “the pretty art history professor”—a phrase that not only seems to negate her “preeminence” in her field, but one that also seems to privilege her looks over her accomplishments.
There’s a lot more I could say about the characterization of women in this novel, but in the interest of time, I’ll save that for my final paper for this class. Part of my reasoning for this is that, for all my frustration regarding these issues, honestly these are what I’ll call Level-1 grievances—mild to moderate irritants that in and of themselves would not necessarily preclude me from enjoying the storyline itself. There have been many novels that didn’t grab my interest right away or that had fairly predictable plots that I have still thoroughly enjoyed. And, for better or worse, the less-than-optimal portrayal of women is one I have come to accept as almost inevitable in the genres I love. I am a fangirl—a female lover of the horror and science fiction genres, the two genres most notorious for their misogynistic images of women. I understand that I am something of an interloper in a land still largely dominated by the Boy’s Club, and as such I have come to realize that if I want to read novels in the genres I enjoy, I have to be able to push past these sexist images and judge the story itself separate from them.
A much bigger issue for me was what I’ll refer to as Level 2 grievances. These are flaws in the fundamentals of good storytelling—amateurish mistakes that anyone who has taken a basic high school creative writing course should be able to avoid and that any editor with any interest in producing a quality product should have caught before the book went to print. The first of these Level 2 grievances is the author’s reliance on “telling” instead of “showing,” particularly when it comes to emotion. Although I didn’t mark any of these in the reading to be able to give a specific example, it was something I noticed continually throughout. I didn’t mark any, though, because even this was a fairly forgivable sin, in my opinion. I don’t know any author who doesn’t occasionally commit the “telling” sin, especially first-time authors who haven’t had much training in creative writing.
Of much greater concern to me, and a lot more irritating, were Funaro’s reliance on amateurish tricks for conveying information to the reader in ways that were completely unnatural. The first of these is Funaro’s habit of having his characters talk out loud when no one else is around. Now, granted, I know people talk to themselves in real life, but the things Funaro had his characters saying aloud were so stilted and unnatural that they were laughable. One early example of this occurs on page 40. After deciding that it would be unwise for him to follow “Dr. Hildy” to see if she had received the note he left to her on his first unveiling, The Sculptor reveals his future plans:
On the front cover of my copy of The Sculptor, Gregg Olsen is quoted as saying “It reminded me of why I loved The Silence of the Lambs so much.” I couldn’t agree more. Reading crap like this reminds me why I love good writing so much.
The novel, The Sculptor, by Gregory Funaro, gives me hope as an author. If this book can get published, so can mine. While the plot of The Sculptor was satisfactory, and the research involved was commendable, everything else about the book made it one of the most painful reading experiences I have had to endure in recent memory.
Some of my objections to this novel were, largely, personal preferences. These are things that I could have excused—could have overlooked and maybe even still enjoyed the novel anyway. First of all, the beginning of the book did not grab my attention as a reader. Even though the end of the prologue, with the revelation of The Sculptor’s castration of Tommy, was interesting, had I not been required to read the book for class, I never would have made it that far. With all the football talk that was frontloaded into the prologue, I was completely bored by the time I got to page three. However, I did have to keep reading, and my interest was piqued at the end of the prologue, so as I said before, my disinterest in the first few pages was something that I could have excused.
Part of the problem for me, though, was that it never really got that much better. It has some interesting and even suspenseful moments, but generally speaking, I found the plot very predictable. I read a review on Amazon that talked about the great “plot twists” that occurred in the novel, and honestly, I am still wondering what that reviewer what talking about. The only even miniscule twist I could see was [SPOILER ALERT] the death of Cathy’s ex-husband. But even that I saw coming very early on. The first time Cathy spewed vitriol about her husband, I knew he was either going to end up being the killer or a victim. I suppose someone might also have seen the very end as a sort of plot-twist, but again, I didn’t at all. Instead, it seemed nothing more than a contrivance that allowed for a possible sequel.
In addition to all of this, I was really put off by the portrayal of women in this novel. It seems to me this author has some real issues with women, or at the very least some definite mommy-issues. While I will acknowledge that the three women we “see”—Cathy, Janet, and Rachel—are at least professional women, that is the best I can say about the characterization of women in this novel. Aside from these three women, every other woman mentioned in the novel is either a drunk, a prostitute, an adulterer, a child molester, dead (at a young age), or any combination of these. Even the three women we do see have questionable subtexts attached to them. Janet, while defined as a professional women who is the head of her department at a prestigious university, is nevertheless portrayed throughout the novel as nothing more than the stereotypical mother-hen figure. Although we are “told” that Rachel is a competent, hard-working, and capable FBI agent, the only time we actually “see” her in the novel, she is portrayed as a cold, uncaring, hard-ass bitch—the stereotypical image of female law enforcement. As for Cathy, while she is “the preeminent scholar on Michelangelo” (as we are told several times), more often than not she is portrayed as being weak, insecure, and completely reliant on men for her sense of happiness and fulfillment. This is completely at odds with my experience of women at the top of their field in academia. These women, who often have to fight against precisely these stereotypes to get to the tops of their fields, are rarely weak, insecure or reliant on men for their sense of fulfillment. There are numerous ways that Dr. Catherine Hildebrant is diminished and objectified throughout the novel, not the least of which is the male characters’ constant (and somewhat nauseating) reference to her as “the pretty art history professor”—a phrase that not only seems to negate her “preeminence” in her field, but one that also seems to privilege her looks over her accomplishments.
There’s a lot more I could say about the characterization of women in this novel, but in the interest of time, I’ll save that for my final paper for this class. Part of my reasoning for this is that, for all my frustration regarding these issues, honestly these are what I’ll call Level-1 grievances—mild to moderate irritants that in and of themselves would not necessarily preclude me from enjoying the storyline itself. There have been many novels that didn’t grab my interest right away or that had fairly predictable plots that I have still thoroughly enjoyed. And, for better or worse, the less-than-optimal portrayal of women is one I have come to accept as almost inevitable in the genres I love. I am a fangirl—a female lover of the horror and science fiction genres, the two genres most notorious for their misogynistic images of women. I understand that I am something of an interloper in a land still largely dominated by the Boy’s Club, and as such I have come to realize that if I want to read novels in the genres I enjoy, I have to be able to push past these sexist images and judge the story itself separate from them.
A much bigger issue for me was what I’ll refer to as Level 2 grievances. These are flaws in the fundamentals of good storytelling—amateurish mistakes that anyone who has taken a basic high school creative writing course should be able to avoid and that any editor with any interest in producing a quality product should have caught before the book went to print. The first of these Level 2 grievances is the author’s reliance on “telling” instead of “showing,” particularly when it comes to emotion. Although I didn’t mark any of these in the reading to be able to give a specific example, it was something I noticed continually throughout. I didn’t mark any, though, because even this was a fairly forgivable sin, in my opinion. I don’t know any author who doesn’t occasionally commit the “telling” sin, especially first-time authors who haven’t had much training in creative writing.
Of much greater concern to me, and a lot more irritating, were Funaro’s reliance on amateurish tricks for conveying information to the reader in ways that were completely unnatural. The first of these is Funaro’s habit of having his characters talk out loud when no one else is around. Now, granted, I know people talk to themselves in real life, but the things Funaro had his characters saying aloud were so stilted and unnatural that they were laughable. One early example of this occurs on page 40. After deciding that it would be unwise for him to follow “Dr. Hildy” to see if she had received the note he left to her on his first unveiling, The Sculptor reveals his future plans:
“Beside,”
The Sculptor said out loud, “I won’t have time to spy on Dr. Hildy. For
tomorrow is Monday. And Monday is the day I begin my next project.”
Okay, seriously? Who does this? Who the hell talks to
themselves like that? This little bit of monologue is so stuffy, so stilted
that I literally burst out laughing when I read it—most likely NOT the reaction
the author was hoping to evoke. Considering that this is the last line of the
chapter where we get our first look into the screwed up mind of the killer, I’m
thinking this little bit was supposed to be ominous, foreboding—not laugh-out-loud
funny. If that had been the only place that this happened, though, I might have
chalked it up to the eccentricities of the killer. The problem is that a
similar moment occurs a few pages later with a different character as SAC
Burrell smokes a cigarette and contemplates the evidence of the investigation:
“Yes,”
Burrell whispered in a plume of smoke. “He had to have parked next door. But
then that means he also had to carry
Campbell and that boy around the back, across that narrow span of beach and up
the grassy slope. Now that’s one strong, one determined son of a bitch.”
Again, I ask, outside of Shakespeare, who does this? People
just don’t talk to themselves this way. Actually, I suspect Shakespeare may
have something to do with this. According to the author bio, Funaro is
a theatre professor, and this kind of aside in theatre is not uncommon. Still
Funaro should realize he is not writing a play. In a novel this kind of aside
is unnecessary and often pulls the reader out of the story, as it did with me.
It would have been much more effective for him to go into deep POV with his
characters and let these thoughts become a seamless part of the narrative flow.
Similarly, Funaro makes the rookie
mistake of having one character tell another things she already knows so that
the reader can know them too. Although this happens in several places
throughout the novel, the most egregious example of this occurs on page 123.
Nearly the entire page is dedicated to Markham explaining to Hildebrandt what
SHE wrote about in HER book. All I could think as I read it, was “yeah, I think
she knows what’s in her book.”
Even with all of this, I might have
still been able to enjoy this novel if the writing had been any good. But it
isn’t, and that is a Level 3 grievance, the kind that I just can’t ignore. Funaro’s
prose is stiff, stilted, bloated, overly complex, and pretentious. He
constructs his narrative like an academic argument, and his overuse of
interjections at the beginnings of sentences is nothing short of maddening. On
page 77, Funaro refers to television crime dramas pejoratively as “woodenly
acted, corpse-ridden soaps” and my reaction to that was that this man has no
right to such pretentious attitude. His own work is woodenly-written and mediocre at best. On the front cover of my copy of The Sculptor, Gregg Olsen is quoted as saying “It reminded me of why I loved The Silence of the Lambs so much.” I couldn’t agree more. Reading crap like this reminds me why I love good writing so much.
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