Submitted by HereWeFuckingGooo t3_xtmxjb in books
For me it's Tarzan of the Apes. I love the concept, the plot, and even Tarzan's character arc, but the writing is absolutely abysmal. I swear Edgar Rice Burroughs has never met a run-on sentence he didn't like. This one in particular has haunted me,
>From this primitive function has arisen, unquestionably, all the forms and ceremonials of modern church and state, for through all the countless ages, back beyond the uttermost ramparts of a dawning humanity our fierce, hairy forebears danced out the rites of the Dum-Dum to the sound of their earthen drums, beneath the bright light of a tropical moon in the depth of a mighty jungle which stands unchanged today as it stood on that long forgotten night in the dim, unthinkable vistas of the long dead past when our first shaggy ancestor swung from a swaying bough and dropped lightly upon the soft turf of the first meeting place.
Read that sentence out loud without taking a breath, I dare you. It's all so wanky and pompous and trying way too hard to come off like classic literature instead of just being a good pulpy read about a hot, naked, muscle man in the jungle. Which, as an aside, is when the writing actually shines.
>The young Lord Greystoke was indeed a strange and war-like figure, his mass of black hair falling to his shoulders behind and cut with his hunting knife to a rude bang upon his forehead, that it might not fall before his eyes.
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>His straight and perfect figure, muscled as the best of the ancient Roman gladiators must have been muscled, and yet with the soft and sinuous curves of a Greek god, told at a glance the wondrous combination of enormous strength with suppleness and speed.
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>A personification, was Tarzan of the Apes, of the primitive man, the hunter, the warrior.
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>With the noble poise of his handsome head upon those broad shoulders, and the fire of life and intelligence in those fine, clear eyes, he might readily have typified some demigod of a wild and warlike bygone people of his ancient forest.
As homoerotic and fun as it is, it could still use an edit and it's still trying to sound smarter than it needs to. Every sentence is crammed with superfluous or repetitive information. Kind of ironic considering almost all his information about Africa is completely wrong. Not surprising considering Burroughs never even set foot there.
I want to read the other Tarzan books but I'm not sure I can endure the awful writing. On the plus side at least he knew it was bad. Rudyard Kipling, in his autobiography, wrote that Burroughs, "had 'jazzed' the motif of the Jungle Books and, I imagine, had thoroughly enjoyed himself. He was reported to have said that he wanted to find out how bad a book he could write and 'get away with', which is a legitimate ambition."
Maybe that was just Kipling being shady, but if Burroughs really was trying to write something that bad then job done.
What other badly written books have a great story?