{"id":8654,"date":"2012-11-20T19:52:59","date_gmt":"2012-11-21T00:52:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/wp\/?p=8654"},"modified":"2012-11-20T19:52:59","modified_gmt":"2012-11-21T00:52:59","slug":"touched-by-the-hot-hand-of-bewilderment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/touched-by-the-hot-hand-of-bewilderment\/","title":{"rendered":"Touched by the hot hand of bewilderment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I long regarded James Fenimore Cooper as the worst writer ever published. I&#8217;m not a slow reader \u2014 I read Patricia McKillip&#8217;s entire <em>Riddlemaster<\/em> trilogy in one long evening \u2014 but it took me a full month to force my way through <strong><em>The Prairie<\/em><\/strong>. Mark Twain was too gentle in <a href=\"http:\/\/xroads.virginia.edu\/~hyper\/hns\/indians\/offense.html\" target=\"_blank\">his assessment of Cooper<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>But apparently there are worse than Cooper. Amanda McKittrick Ros, for instance. Here&#8217;s the opening of her poem &#8220;Visiting Westminster Abbey.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Holy Moses! Take a look!<br \/>\nFlesh decayed in every nook!<br \/>\nSome rare bits of brain lie here,<br \/>\nMortal loads of beef and beer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Amanda_McKittrick_Ros\" target=\"_blank\">According to Wikipedia<\/a>, &#8220;The Oxford literary group the Inklings, which included C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, held competitions to see who could read Ros&#8217; work for the longest length of time without laughing.&#8221; Her first novel, <strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/files\/34181\/34181-h\/34181-h.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Irene Iddesleigh<\/a><\/em><\/strong>, is available at Project Gutenberg. I&#8217;ll leave it for readers with stronger stomachs to attempt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I long regarded James Fenimore Cooper as the worst writer ever published. I&#8217;m not a slow reader \u2014 I read Patricia McKillip&#8217;s entire Riddlemaster trilogy in one long evening \u2014 but it took me a full month to force my way through The Prairie. Mark Twain was too gentle in his assessment of Cooper. But &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/touched-by-the-hot-hand-of-bewilderment\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Touched by the hot hand of bewilderment&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8],"tags":[335],"class_list":["post-8654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-and-anti-culture","category-curiosities-and-silly-stuff","tag-literature"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xam3-2fA","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8654\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}