The Greatest Golfer Who Never Lived
Author: J. Michael Vernon

Well, that wasn’t cool. I had this awesome post all strung together, and then wordpress lied and said it had been saved when apparently it hadn’t — good to know! That post had a sweet explanation of why Preacher Week has been put on hold, but now I’m frustrated, so I’ll give you a lame bulleted list version:

    -I only have two posting days this week, and that’s not enough for Preacher week
    -I did nothing to promote Preacher week in advance

So now I’m going to promote Preacher week as being next week. For today, I decided to do something a tid bit different.

Out at the poolside the other day, I was kind of bored, so I picked up a novel. Like a non-graphic novel. Or a graphic novel without graphics, if you will. I read it through it’s entirety and wanted to rant about something. I figured this would be a good place and that anyone reading this would be able to take a break away from reading about comics and engorge themselves on me hating on a writing style. Sound fun? Well, you have no choice.

The author of this book is a lawyer. The protagonist is a law student. The law student does law work. The law student learns information about a golfer. The law student tells people information. The entire books reads like this.

J. Michael Vernon leaves his law trace on this book so badly that it reeks of lawyer. He uses every moment he can to complain about the tough life of law school, brag about law-speak (“in law school, we call this a . . .”), and separate his lawyer class from the rest of society. It’s absolutely ridiculous and unidentifiable by anyone else. We care about the story of Beau Steadman, the kid the mystery is all about, not some law mumbo jumbo, and a court scene that happens to have absolutely perfect timing at every turn (cliche!). There’s this whole “well, I’m a lawyer, so la-di-da” throughout the book. Well I have a question about these fancy law schools: Do they not teach you that in writing you’re supposed to show, not tell? I can totally see that Vernon is a lawyer because the whole book reads like a law manual. It’s an absolutely thrilling experience! 

I think it’s really cool that people can cross into other professions (i.e. lawyer to writer), but please don’t spend all of your time in that crossover harping on your previous profession. Start anew, and show you’re multi-talented. Do something completely different. Now, THAT would be impressive.