Mark had revisited his boarding school novel exactly once since moving home and been reminded afresh of its awfulness. It struck him as a dense, occasionally pornographic retelling of A Separate Peace. Paragraph upon paragraph clogged with ten-dollar words and impenetrable unnecessary subclauses. Everywhere the fusty odor of E. M. Forster and Henry James. For pages at a time not a concrete noun or active verb in sight—just terrible. He doubted he’d ever write again, but if he did he suspected a plunge into John Grisham might be useful. Maybe that was the way forward. Maybe he could put his
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