Pretentious Authors

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Pretentious authors deserve a cunting.

1.Any book which has been either shortlisted for, or won an award, is usually shite.

2. Authors who write stories in the present tense, as if they want to ‘place the reader in the action’ are cunts. Whenever I’m in the library (aka local community centre full of noisy cunts on their phones, and cunty kids running up and down like wild animals), if I see a book with this style of writing, I just won’t bother with it, even if the plot looks interesting.

3. Authors who just write meaningless crap.
Example, Lucy Ellman who wrote Ducks, Newburyport. This must surely be the biggest pile of pretentious shit in recent history. I had a brief look at it and saw it was a load of inconsequential rambling, with no structure or plot. Just one long sentence, lasting over 1000 pages, consisting of mindless shite, written by someone who must have been high as a kite at the time.

It also won awards, ergo, shite.

A waste of anyone’s time, unless you read the Grauniad, not to mention a waste of paper.

Amazon Link

Nominated by: mystic maven

96 thoughts on “Pretentious Authors”

  1. Until you’ve read Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart ( Booker Prize winner 2020),you simply haven’t lived Daarrllliiinnnnkkkk. It is a visceral, emotionally nuanced portrayal of working class Scottish life and a blazingly intimate exploration of a mother-son relationship…..simply unputtdownable for us more sophisticated types….I have,of course,reread it several times while having a shit

    • I’m sure the struggles of alcoholic types in post-industrial working-class Glasgow tugged on the Fiddler heartstrings as you were crimping off a post Bushmills brown loaf, Dick.

      Good afternoon Fiddler.

  2. I don’t read much fiction but when I do, my strategy is to not read anything less than about 30 years old, preferably older classics like Orwell, Dickens, Dumas, Dostoyevsky etc in the basis that they’ve stood the test if time so must be worth a read. Some shite still gets through that filter but it’s usually safer than. Looking at anything contemporary.

  3. Well, I recommend 3 classics: Carl Van Vechten`s Ginger Heaven, Joseph Conrad`s The Ginger Of The Narcissus and last, but not least, Agatha Christie`s Ten Little Gingers. They are all about rhizomes & anagrams.

  4. My biggest bugbear is authors using french phrases, seemingly to show off. It’s not that I don’t understand it, it’s just overused when there’s already a perfectly good English phrase that would do. Anyway, it’s true that a lot of modern authors seem to disappear up their own arses. Also, I notice that the next James Bond author is going to be a wimminz. Ian Fleming would have been so proud.

  5. Jack and Jill Went up the Hill.

    Clearly an in-depth critique of the toxic white Alpha Male dominance in a 20th century patriarchy and subservience in a post-war industrial working class society.

    Jill was obviously the subjugate victim, oppressed and physically, mentally and sexually abused under the tyrannical jackboot of the strident patriarchy.

    Jill was also a person of colour having been forced into early slavery as soon as she arrived on British shores. Jack regretted such tyranny and became a neo-feminist sympathiser and offered considerable reparations to the oppressed Jill in order to conform to the new 21st century dynamic ..

    Such events as Jill walking up a hill for a pale of water, will never be repeated not least without a health & safety investigation first so that no harm will come to Jill who is considering her sexuality during the current transmogrification of neo-liberal sexual identify and empowerment.

    • Jill got her feminist revenge, by giving Jack a dose.
      He had to put vinegar and brown paper on his bellend, as the cunt who invented penicillin wouldn’t be born for centuries 😢

  6. I like to read “Celebrity Diaries” from 20 years ago, when the stars shined like the diamonds they are and reminded us little people what scum we are. Here’s an excerpt from one of my favourites:

    March 31st, 2001
    Dear diary, woke up today with a splitting headache and covered with inexplicable scratches. My right arm is covered with a slippery tan-coloured residue and streaked with blood with, even more bizarrely, small chunks of seemingly partially-digested carrot right up to my elbow. Smells odd too, like chopped liver.
    Weird! I ought to go and check if one of my guests remembered to slide the pool cover across. Don’t want anyone falling in accidentally! Strange, I think I can hear some faint sirens.”
    From “Michael Barrymore and Friends party frolics”
    © Penguin Publishing 2001

    • Sublime-Melvyn Bragg

      An allegory for our times-New York Post

      One conceptualises the carrots to represent the purging of childhood ways and boldly stepping into the adult world-Stephen Fry

      I wasn’t there. I was in Puzza Express, Woking-Andy Windsor, Police Gazette

      • CG@ – Without being facetious I would contend there is more wit, intelligence and insight on this site than many a “book” I have read.
        And I believe my superlative input has further enhanced this, because I’m dead modest like that! 😀

  8. I like a good read me self. If you like the horror genre (my fave), I heartily recommend Richard Laymon, James Herbert and Shaun Hutson.

    For a dramatic thrill ride you can’t go wrong with Arthur Hailey.

    For non-graphic/gory murder/thriller, Sue Grafton’s ‘alphabet’ books are ace.

    You’re welcome.

    • Hi IY, for some highly imaginative horror, Edward Lee’s “Infernal Angel” trilogy takes some beating.

      • Thanks Thomas. I always appreciate recommendations as most of my favourite authors are dead (Laymon, Herbert, Hailey, Grafton, etc.).

      • In which case, the three other authors I’d recommend:
        Jonathan Maberry
        Blake Crouch
        J A Konrath (also writes as Jack Kilborn)

      • Thank you again, Thomas. I’ve made a note and will add your recommendations to my list. Cheers – IY.

    • I dont read, prefer to be read to,
      I find it taxing following the words with my finger and muttering it aloud.
      All authors are pretentious wankers.
      Know that Stephen King?
      La-di-da yank fuck.
      I met him at a book signing.
      I asked him to sign my book

      “Miserable you are my inspiration and I owe everything to you,
      You wrote Misery really and I copied it, cheers steve
      Your best mate x’

      Stuck up cunt refused!!!
      Get above themselves, lose touch with the common man.
      And you don’t get much more common than me…😁

      • Mis: most authors are so shit-scared of cancel culture, they have jumped on the woke bandwagon.

        As I young man, I enjoyed the works of Dean Koontz👍 He is now woke beyond belief.

        Clive Barker and Graham Masterton are the benchmark for horror.
        Stephen King writes live sonnet’s to his state. Very well, I hasten to add👍

      • MNC@ – I had a similar discourteous response when I was discovered hiding in J K Rowlings bedroom recently! (I was simply there to check the gals size so I know which scaffolding company to contact if Miss busty needs a new bra!)
        Can’t walk up and down outside Linekers house with a length of rope saying “soon, you cunt” – Court order preventing me firing pot shots at the windows of 10 Downing Street hoping to get lucky..
        Some fkin people eh?

      • I find the thought of Miserable snr reading bedtime stories to his 5ft 10′ 8 year old quite funny.

    • I see in response to your horror genre post IY. no one has mentioned Stephen King.

      I read a few of his output in my misspent youth.

      To save other cunters the trouble and anguish, I summarize his entire opus thus: something spooky happened, usually in Maine.

      • King’s earlier output was great, but he gradually slipped down the slope into guilt ridden liberal wankerdom, resulting in finger wagging shite like Under the Dome and Sleeping Beauties.
        I’d rather remember him for good stuff like Salem’s Lot and The Stand…

      • Cannot help but agree. He seemed to have gone “off the boil” as it were, with Rose Madder, but seems to have come back to full steam, as it were, with Dr. Sleep ( pun intended).
        I also enjoyed Mr. Mercedes and the two follow on book.

      • My thought exactly.
        By coincidence-I have just watched the very reasonable Directors cut version of Doctor Sleep👍

      • Thanks BH. I have a few Stephen King novels on my shelf. I read him occasionally. I never really bothered with him (despite his great reputation) until I picked up Full Dark, No Stars on a cruise a few years back. I loved that. I read Dr. Sleep about a year ago too and got the movie for Xmas as a double pack with The Shining. A double feature with some beer and pizza should be happening soon.

        I have The Stand on my shelf. Been meaning to get stuck into it, but other shorter reads keep getting in the way. Then I discovered Sue Grafton and she’s got me hooked on her ‘alphabet’ series. They’re a fun and light read and a nice change from the heavy horror I usually enjoy.

        This evening I will be finishing off Finishing Touches by Thomas Tessier.

  9. No, the real cunts are the twats who use our money to give these orfurs these awards.
    You cannot blame the “artistes” for being made rich by cutting sharks in hslf, arranging bricks on floor, flogging off your semen soaked bed , tastefully arranging your turds, flogging off graffiti, writing a book with no punctuation or upper case letters, composing right minutes of silence
    Was it WC Grace who said ” It is morally wrong to let a sucker keep his money. ”

    See Emperors clothes or Hncock’ s poetry episode.

  10. I read a book once by ladybird,
    It was about an ould man who wanted an enormous turnip for his dinner
    “ he pulls and he pulls , but the turnip is to big
    My Mother snatched away from me saying this is the kinda shit that makes you blind

  13. The last good book I read was ‘into the wild’ by Jon Krakauer.
    A true story (later made into a mediocre film) of Chris McCandless who died as a hermit in Alaska.

    McCandless was a idealist
    And at the other end of the spectrum politically to me,
    But still admired his rigid determination to abide by his convictions and beliefs.

    He donated or burned all his money, gave away all his possessions and went to live alone in the wilderness.
    He was a academic,
    High IQ, but naive with no common sense,
    He misidentified a plant that even botanists struggle with poisoning himself,
    Rendered immobile,
    He starved to death.

    I enjoyed it!👍

    • Miserable….
      Krakauer’s “Into Thin Air” is another great read. Highly recommended and a devastating account of the 1996 Everest disaster.

    • Saw the film MNC, he didn’t come across as a natural for the wild
      Even the people he did meet on his journey tried to advise but he suffered from deaf ears.
      His pilgrimage was personal but his abilities were lacking for extreme hardship of hunter come gatherers of times gone by
      I didn’t read the book but I bet it was a journey some of us would love to live and fuck em all and society as it’s known as presently 👍

      • Evening Mecuntry 👍

        I really enjoyed the book,
        McCandless was very young and as you know, when young your gung ho, reckless.
        I think he was a decent kid,
        Very earnest, and a bit of a SJW,
        But to my surprise I liked him,
        Wanted him to succeed.

        He had no chance though.
        Alaskans are a breed apart,
        They know youd need supplies for a few months,
        Be able to fish& shoot,snow shoes, chainsaw,
        Decent gear, few ton of seasoned logs etc.

        Worth a read.👍

      • Back in 1987, I took three weeks off work and lived “off the land”.

        All I had were the clothes I stood up in, a survival knife, with flints and steel), water purification tablets, which I used only once, emergency sucrose (mint cake-which I didn’t touch), some twine, a stainless steel flask to hold water and my abilities to be a hunter/ gatherer.
        This was in April, in rural Cumbria.

        I did it after the death of the closest thing I ever had to a brother, passed away.

        20 days-living totally isolated and in harmony with nature.
        It was an incredible experienced-like religious enlightenment, to put it into context to some on here.

        You really do learn a lot about yourself-and necessity really is the mother of invention.

        I watched that Mcandles film-a Hollywood tear-jerker version, of real events, I imagine.

    • Yes CG ,necessities are the key when tesco ain’t just a stones throw away
      I’ve lived a bit with nature and she sure is not forgiven
      Glad you experienced real , most will never

  14. Always enjoyed Bunter back in the day.
    Harry Wharton, Bob Cherry, Quelch and Skinner. The names alone are legendary.

    Of course these superb books have been cancelled for not being a boring celebration of anorexia (ie Fattist) and for containing our friend from the East…. aka ‘the dusky nabob, Hurree Jamset Rahm Singh“

    PS whatever happened to all the Harold Robbins books churned out in the 70s? Must be a hole the size of Wembley Stadium. The Carpetbaggers is a great (epic) yarn!

    • George Orwell once wrote a great essay about the Bunter books and claimed that a team of writers produced them to a formula and that Frank Richards did not exist. Frank Richards did in fact exist and wrote an irate lengthy reply which is worth reading and is almost as good as the essay.

      George Orwell_Horizon_Reply.pdf (friardale.co.uk)

  15. Pretentious authors would not exist without pretentious “readers” i.e. people who do not have enough self confidence to put a book aside if they don´t like or understand it, no matter how celebrated the author. I get sick to death hearing people raving about Jane Austen, for example, or Americans orgasming over Hemingway.

    My father-in-law spent years ploughing through Dante´s Inferno then turned to the collected works of Dostoyevsky, even taking notes as he read. It was obvious that he had only a vague idea of what he was reading about and I´m sure he did not enjoy a minute of it. He then turned to Tolstoy. I told him to ignore every scene in “Anna Karenina” in which the character Levin appears, as he is a bore and Tolstoy devotes chapters to his thoughts on the need for agricultural and local government reform in Russia is in the 19th century. However, he claimed he would not be able to say he had properly read the book if he did this so sentenced himself to countless hours of torture.

    • I had a friend who decided he wanted to become well read in Fng Lit.
      He had to finish each book before he started another.

      He started on this one and when I heard I thought oh no.

      I had Brideshead aband d Anna Karenina waiting.

      But he couknt finish the book. ‘I am still reading it’.

      He may well still be. We lost touch.

      Anyway (here’s my joke) I suspect it was just too tedious for him to finish it.

      But as I say he couldnt start another until he finished this one.

      He was in Catch 22.

      • You’re a cunt Miles, you already new the outcome and you shouldn’t tempt ,it’s not becoming of you

    • Mr. Polly, good evening.
      I read, a lot.
      If reading was an Olympic sport, I’d win gold.
      But I quite agree. If a book hasn’t grabbed my attention by the first chapter, in the bag it goes, destined for the charity shop.

      • Carl Hiassen, closely followed by Evan Hunter. Books I read over and over.
        Mick Herron isn’t awful, either.

      • Dickens still my all time fav, Every year I revisit at least one Dickens novel, Great Expectations just can’t be beaten but close tie with Oliver

    • Arthur Conan Doyle was a bit odd.
      Not pretentious like,
      Just a bit puddled.

      He created Sherlock Holmes which obviously was a big hit,
      Still going strong today.
      But he was heavily into the Spiritualist movement.

      He fell out with friend Harry Houdini when Houdini exposed fake mediums,
      And got involved with the Cottingsley fairy thing,
      Fooled by two little girls who took photos of fairies cut from a book,
      The daft cunt lapped it up.

      • Or maybe he’d just found the ideal way to spend time with little girl? Ahem, cough cough!

      • I was given the complete works of Arthur Conan Doyle, as a 10 year old, for Christmas.
        Along with the complete works of Dickens, various Edgar rice Burroughs, Mark Twain, Shakespeare etc, etc.

        It was the discovery of guitars, guns, girls and alcohol that fucked me🧐

      • CG@
        As a youth I was a big fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs,
        And liked Mark Twain,
        But was mad on Jack London!
        Thought he was the bollocks 👍

        The call of the wild..

      • Couldn;t read Call of the Wild as a kid, the abuse of the dogs, the kickings and beatings, just stopped me from reading on

      • yep a daft cunt in real life, but Holmes isn’t into any of that shit, I adore his sherlock books…mind you i could smack the shit out of Watson sometimes, he narrates but he’s thicker than a dark key in a classroom

  19. Hopefully, once my divorce comes through, I’ll be able to get my book published (without having to share any profits), something I’ve been working on for a couple of years: the completion of de Sade’s unfinished masterpiece of depravity ‘120 Days of Sodom’. Originally only a quarter complete (3/4 written in notation form by de Sade), I’ve been labouring to flesh it out, using my flowery prose and unconscionably sick and depraved imagination. What I’ve produced so far is truly demented…but in keeping with the spirit of the original. Once complete, reading it’ll be a sharp shock for a dull mind, blended with a dreadfully impure piquancy.

  20. Back in June I spent the princely sum of 49p on the complete works of Sir Henry Rider Haggard for kindle.
    It’s amazing! Full of elephant hunting, slaughtering savages and a recognition of the superiority of Englishmen.
    Recommended.

    • SHE is the best selling novel, but it doesn’t get interest until near the end, very slow going, the description of SHE who must be obeyed isn’t a patch on the real beauty of Ursula Andresss in the movie version.

    • About horoscopes?
      Best off with Russell Grant.
      Hes a qualified astronomist.

      Ive just read Derek Acorahs biography!
      Brilliant Degzy!
      Dont think he actually wrote it hisself,
      Think he used a ghost writer…
      Ahem.

      • T.o.C. opening sentence:

        “Once you have given up the ghost, everything follows with dead certainty, even in the midst of chaos.” 😀

        I see Ghislaine has been found guilty. Quelle surprise.

        Nighty night mate.

  22. Off topic, anyone see the dark key kid get flattened by the queens guard today?

    Gormless dark key family stood gawping and the kid gets in the way as two guards are marching across the square.

    A new way to ‘take a knee’ I’d offer from the video.

    Fucking priceless.

    • Ho ho, it was funny before I knew he was a darkıe; even funnier now.
      We need a few of those guardsmen on the beach at Dover with bayonets affixed to their rifles…they could claim that they though they were slaughtering seals; that they merely saw ungainly aquatic black mammals lumbering up the beach.

      • Stomping on dark children is funny to you?
        You are Lieutenant Governor Captain James Stirling and I claim 5 years off my transportation sentence.

    • Didn’t know it was an obamatang, they deliberately conceal them really well thesedays. One got dumped in a bus station by its breeders, video of the coppers carrying it around and yet every shot was angled so the cops arm or jacket just happened to conceal its head, arms, even its ankles, a scarf hid its hand at one point….these bar stewards are dead fucking sneaky

  23. Books written in the present ccontinuous are really irritating, and I’ll always avoid them.
    It’s also incredibly pretentious and self-important when the author of a weekend supplement piece does it.
    You know; ‘I’m sitting in the lounge of The Ritz, waiting to keep my appointment with George Clooney, and he arrives bang on time’ sort of shite.

    • Yep. It’s sort of like that in wimminz mags. Sis has stopped buying certain publications because of this.

  24. Last prize winner I read was outstanding, Goodnight Mr Tom. After having enjoyed the TV show I picked up a copy at a car boot and thought I’d have a read…I thought it would be a kid’s book but at 5p it didn’t matter, instead i found a beautiful book totally engrossing, couldn’t put it down…..another excellent prize winner was oranges are not the only fruit, (recommended by a fucking sick mate knowing i hate lesbos) but wow the creepy dark religious mother was mind blowing, fabulous writing, freaked me right out…..i think it’s just MODERN books that are shit now because of wokerism.

  25. The biggest pile of shit I ever read was Catcher in the Rye. All about some snivelling little turd that hates the world.
    I couldn’t believe that it had won awards, let alone got published.
    Best autobiography I have read was by Billy Idol. I’m amazed this guy is still alive and never caught AIDS.

    • We’ve had a copy on our bookshelf for years, and the missus has always been going on that ‘I should read it’.
      I tried during the first ‘lockdown’, and got about thirty pages in. Pile of old donkey.

    • Catcher in the Rye is dated now, but back in the early 1950s no one had been so bold as to write a novel like that – it was the is-a-cunt.com of its day. Salinger hated the fame it brought him, of course and he became a legendary recluse for 60 years.

      I bet that Billy Idol’s memoir is insane, as that guy lived the 70s and 80s at full-force hedonism. He’s actually a great songwriter when you look at his best songs and he always had a great band, Steve Stevens
      is a great musician.

      I prefer a great, warts-and-all biography or memoir from someone who has lived a crazy life than a work of flouncy fiction, unless the novel is based on a real-life character, event, etc. Marlon Brando’s memoir is great. Most people never have the balls to tell their own story truthfully, especially if they have a glossy, fine-tuned reputation and publishers don’t want to get sued.

      • I brought Billy Idol’s autobiography after hearing both him and Mick Fleetwood being interviewed by Chris Evans on Radio 2 several years ago.
        Fleetwood was giving it the usual blurb about the incestuous relationships of Fleetwood Mack. When Billy was talking it was full of dirty laughs to the questions that never really said anything. A pure example of less is more and the reason I bought his book. An amazing book and one of the best I have ever read.

  26. The novel was seen as a weak medium for over 150 years when it emerged on the literary scene. Then the “great” novels emerged in the 1800s and it was taken more seriously. But it is still a medium given to being overwritten to fulfil it’s length of 300+ hardback pages. Most of the stories told within novels should really be novellas of around 150-200 pages, or even just a short story. But novellas and especially short stories don’t sell well. Publishers want to put out a chunky hardback for $25 that gets reviewed in the big newspapers and magazines, so stories end up being overwritten, padded-out to 400 pages. I’ve enjoyed most of the short stories I’ve ever read, but with novels, I find that as many paragraphs bore me as much as thrill me. The novel takes about 8-12 hours to read, then the movie adaptation runs about 2 hours, in other words the screenwriter, director and editor do extensive trimming that the publisher of the novel was too scared to do!

    “A movie is real life with the dull bits left out.”
    – Orson Welles

    As for pretentiousness, that can’t be avoided or edited out if the writer is inherently pretentious. We live in the nanosecond age, the get-to-the-point age. The Apocalypse may well be unfolding, so if someone out there has something to say, they better say it in minimal words and give it some juice, raging energy and leave us roaring with laughter because there is an endless line of megalomaniacs online these days…

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