Good Writing, Bad Writing(Barry) A few months back a young girl from India posted a rather ingenious bit of fiction on StoryStar. Was it world-class literature? No, of course not, but the plot was quite original and held the readers’ interest straight through to the final paragraph. Also, the author’s minimalist style was uncluttered and spoke passionately to the reader’s heart in a way that was neither trite nor maudlin. I gave her five stars and well-deserved praise.

Flash back forty years or so.

In the 1980’s a short story written by one of the academic rising stars, appeared in the prestigious Atlantic Monthly magazine. Though the writing was contrived with a threadbare plot, things came alive toward the end of the story when the female protagonist fornicated with her lover then walked barefoot across a floor strewn with broken glass. Why anyone would take erotic pleasure walking naked on shards of broken glass was a mystery to me. Shortly thereafter, I stopped reading the Atlantic as well as the New Yorker Magazine, which had become equally erratic in its choice of literary offerings and turned my attention back to the 19th century classics.

What’s the point here?

In the late twentieth century academia became enamored of a new school of writing dubbed intelligent erotica. Intelligent erotica suggested that smut, perversity, degenerate and grotesque behavior could be gussied up and made wholesome when filtered through the prism of creative writing. Nothing could have been more ridiculous!

Additionally, while this steamy new trend was all the rage, young writers who favored more conventional style stood utterly no chance of ever being published in the literary small press. Traditional prose had become passé, out of vogue, unfashionable. A country club mentality pervaded the universities and Ivy League colleges such that, without a post-modern mindset, unsolicited manuscripts ended up on the slush pile never to be seen or heard from again.

Where the Indian girl’s short story published in StoryStar held a meaningful message, the academic’s prose with its broken glass and rabid sex was hopelessly fragmented. The Indian girl offered the reader a subtle moral message embedded in a cleverly-told plot; the seasoned writer featured in the Atlantic Monthly offered ‘unintelligent erotic’.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the word ‘publish’ to make generally known, make public announcement of or disseminate to the public. Tracing the term even further back historically we find the Middle English “publisshen" to make publicly known, proclaim, divulge (the contents of something written), present something written to the public,"

The academic press often reminds me of the AKC (American Kennel Club), where without proper pedigree or bloodlines, no one gains access. And yet, at StoryStar everyone is welcomed, even writers from foreign countries struggling with English as a second language and gray-haired, eighty year-old geezers like myself. Unlike the literary small press, StoryStar is egalitarian encouraging novice writers; its philosophy is democratic, all inclusive.

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