The Awl is upset with Dave Eggers‘ novelization of Where The Wild Things Are, a chapter from which was published in The New Yorker along with the publicity photo that is driving them bonkers. As is the terrible writing.
Hands Off That Rumpus, Dave Eggers!
Tom Scocca: And the next nine pages, not counting the cartoons, are devoted to a piece of “short fiction” by one of the Warner Bros. movie’s screenwriters, which is a novelization of the Warner Bros. movie’s story.
This is a big, long step beyond using the fiction space to give everyone a preview of the new Jhumpa Lahiri. It is a step that carries the New Yorker off the sidewalk and into a deep ditch bubbling with raw sewage.
I am upset because it was the single most stupid piece of writing I can remember ever seeing there, bar none. What makes a piece of writing feel “stupid?” Well, you can start with movie novelizations. There is no way to re-inspire that which was pretty damn inspired in the first place—as Dave’s story painfully demonstrates, and I’m sure his screenplay will do the same.
Oh, he got into a scene or two—I liked Max sailing closer and closer to city lights that grow dimmer and dimmer, until they are gone. Then we pretty much knew we were in magic-land. But transitions, Dave, transitions. In many ways, the hardest part of writing. You may not say, And then. You simply may not, else your reader pause and say to themselves, Who wrote this shit?
And whatever happened to editors? The New Yorker used to be famous for them. Give it a try yourself, read the story aloud to a child. The stupid parts—which is to say, Not Written—will tax your enthusiasm and your voice; you will find yourself trying to keep the reading peppy, to get past all those “and then” moments.
The Awl is in a snit over the true commercial spirit of that which was published as a short story … which just happened to be illustrated by what I take to be an Annie Liebowitz photo, made to publicize the movie. (Like it needs anymore publicity.) That’s where the ethics swerve off the sidewalk …
Bound to happen. When The New Yorker began running a photo with each story start page. We don’ need no steenking pictures, we want to read the steenking story, lemme have my own pictures, thank you very much, in my head.
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right on, Connie. i couldn’t believe the New Yorker was publishing what is everything but legally defined plagiarism. This wouldn’t pass muster as a paper for a creative writing program at any college today but i guess the New Yorker must feel it’s outre creative to copy someone else’s storyline.
You have to wonder. It’s just one big ad for the movie.
Wanna bet? When the movie is released, in the scene where we see Max’s mom with her Wretched Intruder Boyfriend, right in plain sight on the table next to the couch where they are necking or whatever, will be a copy of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.
The New Yorker is doing Infomercials. Whatever would Robert Benchley say? If only he could….