I've never understood why people have got so down on Bulwer-Lytton because of that notorious sentence of his. What exactly is so bad about it? And imagine if you were a Victorian reader. I suspect it would have sucked you right in. Maybe we should all go out and read The Lat Days of Pompeii.
Monday, March 25, 2013
Apparently I can …
… at least three times out of four: Can you spot a Charles Dickens sentence? | Books | guardian.co.uk. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
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Dickens v. Bulwer-Lytton?
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Nige: Edward Bulwer-Lytton: Peerless Unreadability:
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I don't think Nige and I are all that far apart, since my point (which I could have made clearer) was that I could well understand how Bulwer-Lytton's contemporaries might find him appealing in a way readers no longer do. I still don't think that the notorious sentence, while certainly pedestrian, is so notably awful. Perhaps there should be a contest in which people re-write the sentence, turning it into what they would prefer (without, of course, entirely discarding its Victorian inflection).
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