The CRITIC

The girl slept on her cousin’s couch after recently moving from another cousin’s couch. The tiny apartment had only two bedrooms; her cousin slept in one of them with her husband. Four of their children slept in the other bedroom and their fifth child slept on the couch with the girl.

She went into the bathroom because she had nowhere else to go. She would have gone to a coffee shop or anywhere else to sit down and read but her cousin’s husband was so paranoid that he locked the door after 8:00PM and would not open it again until morning.

It was like a prison in an otherwise abandoned building.

The girl never discussed being poor but the burden of her circumstances weighed on her mind, body and spirit. Only in the books did she see perfectly manicured lawns and trimmed trees. Her environment was filled with barren dirt fields that children used as playgrounds. The makeshift playgrounds were riddled with weeds and broken bottles and discarded bags of chips, candy wrappers and cigarette butts.

But the lack of material wealth, like insufficient food and money and medicine, was not the epitome of poverty. Instead, it was the shame, inferiority and powerlessness that caused her great isolation and depression.

Reading was her only escape.

Reading was her window to the world and she had become very critical of bad writing; in fact, she was obsessed with exposing it. In her estimation, being subjected to mediocre writing was like verbal and mental abuse; her brain was offended by it.

Formal writing, as far as she was concerned, demanded adherence to a strict code. She could not tolerate vagueness or wordiness. She hated poor spelling and poor grammar; inappropriate language, stilted prose, repetitiveness, and above all, typos.

She also couldn’t stand a predictable plot or low stakes. She hated flat characters and stories that generated no emotional resonance. She could think of many reasons to despise bad writing but the reason that got under her skin the most was that bad writing was boring. It might bore the reader because it was too confusing or too logical. It might bore the reader because it was too hysterical or too lethargic. The precise reason for bad writing was not important to her, just that it had to be rooted out and exposed because the agony was too great.

The girl stayed in the bathroom all night, reading and snoozing in and out of consciousness until daybreak.

The story, with which she found many flaws, centered on a character named James Bond, who was a British spy. The book’s title? Live and Let Die.

In the story, Mr. Bond’s mission was to infiltrate an underground criminal empire in Harlem which was led by the fiendish, Mr. Big, who was laundering gold coins from a pirate treasure to help finance Soviet espionage. Mr. Bond’s mission was to stop the money laundering, and by doing so, kill off one of the Soviets’ main sources of funding.

The girl was intrigued by some aspects of the book: the game of smuggling sunken treasure from shipwrecks; exotic locations; dangerous stakes; and a dash of sex. But she could not stomach that the novel was filled entirely with clichés and appositives.

The clichés were bad enough, but the appositives irritated her to no end. She could not understand why the writer insisted on renaming a noun that appeared right beside another noun.

For instance, “Bond looked past him across 55th Street. His eyes narrowed. A black sedan, a Chevrolet, was pulling sharply out into the thick traffic.”

“A black sedan, a Chevrolet,” was redundant. It was like saying, “An insect, a cockroach, was crawling across the kitchen table.” It was just unnecessary and it annoyed her to no end that the writer did it repeatedly.

She was also troubled by the fact that James Bond was a secret agent but he kept telling everyone his name, which defeats the notion of secrecy. And not only did he announce his name to everyone he met, he always repeated it twice, as in “Bond, James Bond.”

Race was also a problem for the girl. The book’s non-White characters were always strange and grotesque. Mr. Big was an omniscient hoodlum who practiced voodoo and controlled wildlife. All of the Black characters apparently believed in voodoo and were feeble-minded enough to fall under Mr. Big’s spell.

The women were reduced to sex objects at every turn and the Black dialect of the Harlem New Yorkers was atrocious.

The girl slammed the book shut, found the nearest public library, and posted her critique of the cringe-worthy book.

It was only a matter of days before her unflattering critique had gone viral on the internet. Within weeks she was offered the job of book critic at the most prestigious newspapers; and within the year she had gained international prominence as the premiere book critic in the world. She had become known for her harsh critiques of any author who assaulted her sense of good literature.

The life of poverty was in her past and the ghetto was a memory.

She wore the finest clothing and drove the finest vehicles. She ate the most delectable foods; drank the most exquisite drinks; and lodged at the most decadent establishments.

The girl’s star continued to rise, culminating in a Pulitzer Prize for journalism. Her influence was so wide-spread and her opinions so well-regarded, that her judgement about a book could make or break an author.

Still, she spewed her critiques and insults without regard to anyone else’s opinion or livelihood.

She referred to author’s works as “nothing but a lot of pompous hot air; sappy and contrived; embarrassing new low” and “curiously flimsy and synthetic.” She also described books as “dreary, portentous, suffocating, and psychologically obtuse.” She referred to one book as “absurdly melodramatic” and another as “magical mumbo jumbo.” No book and no author was spared.

She enjoyed her new life as the world’s premiere book critic and she relished the notoriety of her harsh critiques.

Her fame and her fortune continued to rise, that is, until she decided to write her first book.

She placed a blank piece of paper on her desk and powered up her computer. She pulled her chair up to the computer, placed her fingers on the keyboard, and then she became paralyzed by the fear of receiving a vengeful and mean-spirited book review.