Ed Wood, you are avenged!

Updated on November 8, 2007 By Ken Begg 13 Comments

Megan McArdle at her Thealantic.com blog references this astounding Newsday quote, which author Susan Faludi is using at her own site.  I almost wish I could write quite this badly.  It’s surely a mark of genius in its own way:

“Journalism is her splendid trade. Susan Faludi listens like a tuning fork, and picks up unseen vibrations. There’s not a subject that she touches on that she doesn’t illuminate in prose as graceful as a gazelle.”

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  • Ericb

    Uh, since when do tuning forks listen to anything?

  • BeckoningChasm

    That’s the sort of sentence that would make me stop reading right then and there. I can’t even imaginae padding out a NaNoWriMo project with that, unless I promised to drive off a cliff right afterwards.

  • Ericb

    I did notice that Faludi doesn’t give the name of the person who wrote the blurb. So is the art of journalism in such dire straights that someone who writes like that can get stuff published in a national magazine?

  • Maybe she didn’t want to embarrass the author. It is funny, and telling, that this is the best pull quote Falludi could find to put up on her own website.

    Newsday Mad-Libs!! Let me try: “Journalism is her magnificent obsession.* Susan Faludi listens like a large dollop of Miracle Whip, and picks up untasted flavors. There’s not a subject she touches on that she doesn’t illuminate in prose as limpid as a limpet.”

    [*OK, I may have borrowed that exact phrase.]

  • R. Dittmar

    In a similar vein, here is a hilarious dissection of Thomas Friedman’s anti-ear:

    http://www.nypress.com/18/16/news&columns/taibbi.cfm

    Warning: There is some (to my mind) unnecessary profanity here.

  • Ericb

    I tried searching for where that quote came from and couldn’t find anything. I even searched Newsweeks own website. I wonder if it’s from a blog of some person only tangentially related to Newsweek.

  • Newsday, my friend, not Newsweek.

    You can see why this probably got through. They have to put up seven times as much stuff as Newsweek.

  • ScottM

    The quote was from John Leonard, though a writer of Faludi’s tuningforkesque gifts and illuminating gazellery should surely understand such basic stuff as the proper use of ellipses and square brackets.

    http://www.readinggroupguides.com/guides_S/stiffed1.asp

  • Ericb

    oops, well, uuuhrm, I searched the Newsday website and their review of “Terror Dream” was swiped from the LA Times and that review doesn’t have that quote. I searched the website for the entire quote as well and nothing turned up. So, I wonder where it came from. I know that movie studios make up blurbs sometimes, I wonder of Faludi’s publisher or angent or whatever did the same.

  • Ericb

    oops again. I had assumed that the quote was referring to the book the website was hawking. I didn’t think of searching reviews of her earlier books.

  • Off-topic Question!

    Lord Begg, have you seen this video for the song Knights of Cydonia?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV1bRfLHA3A

    I imagine you might like it.

  • The Rev. D.D.

    The English major in me died a little after reading that quote. Thanks a lot.

  • Jimmy

    Surely this can only be Cullen Blaine, the creator of R.O.T.O.R., writing under a pseudonym.