How not to write …

… including the worst sentence in the book (not the one quoted below, however): The American Conservative — Gloomy Gus Goes to College. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

… Eric G. Wilson doesn’t make anybody laugh, unless it be at him. He uses Aristotle’s theory of catharsis—tragedy drains the audience of pity and terror, leaving them purified—to defend his compulsive need to view human road kill at auto accidents. Then, with dizzying speed, he applies it to violence in popular entertainment in a sentence that, so help me, I have copied correctly: “I’m a defender of the catharsis theory, at least partially, and probably more than I’d like to admit, because I hate Tipper Gore.”