Irene Iddesleigh in 372 Pages We'll Never Get Back (Book List)

Nov 17, 2021 Marc *Dark Reader with a Thousand Young! Iä!* rated it did not like it

Shelves: general-fiction, classics, self-published-manatee-abortion, first-sentence-problems

This is one of those 'special' books that demands either a one-star rating, or an ironic five-stars. There is no justifiable middle ground. Currently included on Wikipedia's "List of books considered the worst" (a list in flux that I happened to discover at the right time to highlight the existence of Empress Theresa, since removed), where this ideal summation is found:

"[Irene Iddesleigh] is often described as the worst novel ever written, with purple prose that is circumlocutory to the point o This is one of those 'special' books that demands either a one-star rating, or an ironic five-stars. There is no justifiable middle ground. Currently included on Wikipedia's "List of books considered the worst" (a list in flux that I happened to discover at the right time to highlight the existence of Empress Theresa, since removed), where this ideal summation is found:

"[Irene Iddesleigh] is often described as the worst novel ever written, with purple prose that is circumlocutory to the point of incomprehensibility."

Mocked throughout history by literatis including Mark Twain, J.R.R. Tolkien, and C.S. Lewis, it is truly something special, akin to The Eye of Argon in that every single sentence accurately reflects its totality. Why write what you mean, when instead you can use florid prose to utterly obliterate intention? What meaning is one meant to derive from passages such as this chapter opener:

A word of warning tends to great advantage when issued reverently from the lips of the estimable. It serves to allay the danger pending on reticence, and substantiates in a measure the confidence which has hitherto existed between the parties concerned. Again, a judicious advice, extended to the stubborn and self-willed, proves futile, and incurs the further malice and fiery indignation of the regardless, the reckless, and the uncharitable.

Why say that someone liked gardens, when instead they are

being passionately an ardent admirer of the fairy-like fruits of the efforts of the horticulturist.

Is something hard to do? Or is it a . . .

task much more difficult of performance.

Are you an orphan, or would you describe yourself as . . .

I, whose parentage is as yet bathed in the ocean of oblivious ostentation, until some future day, when I trust it shall stand out boldly upon the brink of disclosure to dry its saturated form and watery wear with the heat of equality.

Is there illiteration? Ill-intended it is indeed:

Better leave her to the freedom of a will that ere long would sink the ship of opulence in the sea of penury, and wring from her the words:—“Leave me now, deceptive demon of deluded mockery; lurk no more around the vale of vanity, like a vindictive viper; strike the lyre of living deception to the strains of dull deadness, despair and doubt; and bury on the brink of benevolence every false vow, every unkind thought, every trifle of selfishness and scathing dislike, occasioned by treachery in its mildest form!

Which you rather travel by "the express train of friendship," or "the boat of dreamland" along " the path of powerful pursuit," when in either conveyance you might "again be dashed into the dam of denounced riches." I know which I would choose.

It's not only the narrator's voice; the style carries into what scant dialogue exists. Please try to imagine anyone, in any time period, speaking like so:

“Tell me, I implore of you, Sir John and husband, why the once blithe and cheerful spot of peace is now apparently a dismal dungeon on the night of our home-coming, when all should have been a mass of dazzling glow and splendour?

Can it be that she who proffered such ecstacy for months before, on the eve of our return, is now no more? or can it be possible that we have crossed each other on the wide waters of tossing triumph or wanton woe?

Speak at once, for pity’s sake! and do not hide from me the answer of truth and honest knowledge? Oh, merciful heavens!”

So, yeah. It's bad. Aside from the prose, there is no hint of a plot until at least nine chapters in, and what unfolds from there, well, the less said the better. I will simply state that, were you to read this book for yourself, it's not only the prose that would leave you flabbergasted.

My favorite part of the whole affair, is when Amanda McKittrick Ros herself,

demanded there and then that the pen of persuasion be dipped into the ink of revenge and spread thickly along the paragraph of blood-related charity to blank the intolerable words that referred to . . .

a one-page review of this, her first book, by critic and humourist Barry Pain. She felt so offended that she wrote a thirty-page preface to her next book, Delina Delaney, solely to clap back at him. Peering through this text, almost as indecipherable as her fiction, you will find many now-classic responses to criticism. She says, "I've never heard of him." She says his opinion matters not a whit to her (that's thirty pages' worth of not caring, if you're keeping track). She asks, "what have you written that's any better?" She accuses him of being in love with her. She criticizes his single words and phrases at length and out of context. It's quite the diatribe.

** Read along with the '372 Pages We'll Never Get Back' podcast, which I highly recommend. ** ...more

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