The state of American fiction

Have you been reading the Miss Snark blog for the last week or so?

In case you came in late, she's a literary agent with a killer blog in which she gives amazing, invaluable information about the writing biz, especially for beginners. She's generous with the information but does not suffer fools gladly. That said, she sounds a hundred times nicer than certain people.

This week she's doing her "crapometer" exercise, in which she invites writers to send in the synopsis of their novel. She will read and evaluate and gently make fun of it for the enlightenment of all.

First of all, she deserves combat pay for going through literally dozens of multi-page synopses of novels, most of them bad, and for paying attention to each one and giving it a fair shake. Secondly, she shows herself to be an excellent reader with an eye for what works and what doesn't, and thirdly, she is articulate and precise enough to point out exactly what's wrong, sometimes sentence by sentence.

But most of all, this exercise has revealed the shocking state of American fiction. Now, I have no doubt that almost everyone sending in stuff to her like this is an amateur. But the ratio of interesting stuff that has a chance in hell of ever being published to ridiculous total bull is about 1:12. If this is any indication of what an agent goes through day after day, I'd say the agents of America are performing a valuable service. They're like forensic readers, dealing with all the shit turned out by people's word processors.

Let me just quote a few words of one head-rotatingly bad synopsis:

In the following weeks, Jol discovers the Rapax's torture has destroyed his ability to use Rage. Worse, every time he sleeps, he is forced out of body to sites of other Rapax attacks. One Rapax and its skinflier--a toothy, stingray-like pet--sense Jol during these visitations: the Rapax tastes its father's magic in Jol's skin; the skinflier smells a Moon tattoo Jol can't see. Once Cat is better, Jol leaves and tries to repress everything but the desire to reach the courts--until this Rapax leaves one victim alive. Jol rushes to the rescue. It is a trap. He is captured and tortured for revenge.

E-fucking-gad. And a lot of these synopses are these weird-ass fantasy stories. Why in the hell do the talentless geeks of America choose that genre to jack off with? Why don't they choose, say, the western, or the scuba-diving spy story? Or better yet, why don't they just get the hell away from keyboards with letters on them and go shovel snow or do something else useful?

Something better

Courtesy of the enchanting but not nearly often-enough-updated Girl Friday blog comes this local restaurant review video -- local for Minnapolis, that is -- featuring two cheerful midwesterners. The gal, Lori, has real screen presence.

Plus:
Violet Blue's best books of 2005
Even though they are stuck in Barstow, Calif., the locals are planning New Years Eve fun, but the cops are ready for the desperate thrill-seekers.