Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

To me, prose becomes purple instead of merely descriptive or lyrical when the author does any of the following:

1. She is a habitual noun- and verb-molester. It’s a sickness. She can’t leave the naked, quivering, defenceless word alone; she must assault it with modifiers, gleefully thrust in multiple adjectives and adverbs, and violate it merrily with superlatives and bad metaphors--not unlike what I’m doing to this paragraph now.

2. The descriptions, while elaborate, are almost always quite painfully mundane. The wind is “cruel and biting,” bare branches are “gnarled, grasping fingers,” the eyes are “sparkling orbs,” old women are “withered crones,” words are not spoken, they’re “rasped passionately.” Nothing new is offered; you’re drowned in a sea of descriptions that have been used so often, they’re well-nigh meaningless.

3. When the prose isn’t mundane, it’s jarring. The phrase “alabaster mounds,” when used to describe breasts, often makes me think of large lumps of cold, dead marble; probably not the effect the author wanted to achieve. And I won’t even tell you what I think when I read words like “slick love grotto” or “passion-bedewed portal,” though the phrase “gag me” does feature prominently in these thoughts.

4. To these authors, more = mo’ betta. The old maxim to make every word count holds no meaning to them, neither does the concept that over-described objects can interfere every bit as much with a reader’s visualization as under-described objects.

Take, for instance, this passage from the beginning of Laura Kinsale’s The Prince of Midnight. In this passage, S.T. first realizes that Leigh, the heroine, is actually a woman dressed as a boy:

He was certain of it. Abruptly and utterly certain. The soft, husky voice that didn’t rise and fall in ordinary tones, but stayed stubbornly gruff; that skin, those lips, the slender build--oh, she was a female, the sly little cat. She had the face to carry it off, too, clean and striking, marvelous, with a full jaw and dramatic brows, and enough height and carriage to pass for a youth of sixteen.

In my opinion, descriptive, but not purple. Now witness what adding and/or changing some modifiers can do to the passage:

He was certain of it. Abruptly and utterly certain. The soft, husky voice that didn’t rise and fall in ordinary tones, but stayed stubbornly gruff and raspy; that creamy skin, those beestung, lush lips, the slender build with the deliciously rounded bottom that was far, far too luscious to be male--oh, she was a female, the sly little creamcat. She had the face to carry it off, too, clean and striking, marvelous, with a full jaw and dramatic, winged brows that soared on her smooth alabaster forehead like angels in flight, and enough height and carriage to pass for a devastatingly beautiful youth of sixteen, a youth worthy of being sculpted by no less a master than Michelangelo.

One paragraph of this sort of writing is one thing, but a whole bookful of it? GAH.

I’m not going to be all PC and say that “there’s no such thing as bad or good, it’s all personal preference.” OK, it’s somewhat personal in that the purple line in the sand is located differently for different people. But once that line is crossed? Purple prose is bad writing. Bad, bad, bad.

I also don’t think there’s necessarily anything wrong with liking it. Shit, I like Doritos, and it’s certainly not haut cuisine, nor do they have any sort of redeeming nutritional value. I even acknowledge that they look, smell and taste kind of disgusting (especially the Cool Ranch flavor), but I don’t care, I love ‘em anyway.

Same thing with purple authors. When I’m in the right mood and when the author gets the shade of lilac just right, I enjoy reading purple prose, much in the same way I enjoy a really silly blockbuster in which the most taxing thing I have to do is trying to decide if Keanu’s semi-pained frown is indicative of his character’s inner turmoil, or whether he needs to up his Metamucil dosage.

More often than not, though, I can’t stand purple prose. It drives me nuts; the inner editor in me longs to drag out the red pen and slash out all the unnecessary modifiers. With lascivious, wanton abandon, even.

Sarah’s Part of the Rant:

My purple prose master, the author to whom I kneel when I search for the overwrought, overwritten, and overblown, is Beatrice Small. In fact, while going through books to keep or to donate this weekend, I pulled out the sequel to “Blaze Wyndham,” which is hands-down my favorite purple book, which follows the saga of Blaze’s daughter Nyssa. I put it in the ‘Keeper’ pile, as I don’t own a copy of Blaze Wyndham so Nyssa will have to do until I find one.

Hubby asked, “Why are you keeping that book?”
Sarah: “Because it is the most purple book I own.”
Hubby: “Purple?”
Sarah: “Yeah. Purple. The prose.”
Hubby: “Huh?”
Sarah: “Stay right there.” Flips to page where Nyssa has sex. (Of COURSE Nyssa has some sex! What would a purple be without some nookie?)
Sarah: “Ahem: ‘He deposited his love juices into her moist canal.’”
Hubby: “WHAT?! You can’t throw that book away! You have to keep that!”

Phrases like that define the purplest of the purple. To back Candy up, oh yes, nothing turns a book to grape flavoring like overworked words: “huskily” is my personal trigger, along with “redolent.” For some reason, I see “redolent” and my brain reads “corpulent.” Not at all what the author was intending, I imagine.

For example, I have now in front of me said saga of Nyssa and her love juices. Here are some purply examples for your titillating pleasure:

“Your love juices begin to flow, sweetheart,” he said softly, kissing her ear as he spoke. “That is how I know you are ready for me.” The tip of his finger found her tiny love button and he rubbed it....

She cried his name even as the feeling of pressure building within her exploded in a starbust of incredible pleasure… He could feel his love juices gushing forth in a great discharge of sweetness that overflowed her womb. He fell forward atop her body, exhausted, yet filled with a contentment he had never known.

Ah, the golden standards of purpleism: love juices, love button, and, further into the sexcapades of Nyssa in “Love, Remember Me,” we find his raging member.

What bothers me most is that purple prose does little to advance the story or even distinguish it from others of its ilk. I picture the author trying to come up with a masterful adverb or a devastating adjective, and unwittingly using the standby seen in hundreds of other works, even as the author tries to deviate from the pack. It’s sad - it’s like talking to someone who doesn’t express a thought originally, but couches everything in cliche so you feel like you’re not really talking to anyone. Not anyone intelligent, anyway.