PhilRM: I occasionally reach the end of a review wondering “John, do you think this book is worth reading, or not?”

I see. A review must expand vocabulary, validate 13 years of post-secundary education, showcase sophisticated erudition (BIG WORDS) and therefore be intellectually rewarding to read.
If the enumeration of strengths and shortcomings of the work under scrutiny doesn’t add up to a clear, albeit personal and open to debate, evaluation of merit, well, that’s not the main purpose, right?

In the course of my English Literature classes I’ve read, among others, Beowulf, Sir Gawain and The Green Knight, The Faerie Queene, The Changeling, A Journal of the Plague Year,The Mysteries of Udolpho, Vanity Fair, Zanoni. I don’t find Clute particularly obscure or challenging, nor does he enlarge my vocabulary or convey a frisson of literary excitement.

He does, however, give the impression of a mismatch between style and function, or at the very least of unnecessary sophistication. To wonder what’s the point is only a natural reaction.

Some of his coinages (“realpolitiking consiglieri”) taken in isolation may be considered aptly descriptive turns of phrase and felicitous creations , but the cumulative effect is floridness with no apparent purpose, and therefore bathos. I’m sorry, but I don’t think that the phrase “indurated durance vile” has been chosen because it conveys some particular shade of meaning with regards to the type of confinement we may encounter in The Windup Girl.

But maybe I’m too literate to appreciate what Clute’s trying to do.
I may be misled by my studies of classical rhetoric – the science, or art, of harmonizing goal, content and form, which was strict in prescribing which kind of style was appropriate for various types of discourse, and aware of the potential pitfalls of wrong choices.

“For instance, bordering on the Grand style, which is in itself praiseworthy, there is a style to be avoided. To call this the Swollen style will prove correct. For just as a swelling often resembles a healthy condition of the body, so, to those who are inexperienced, turgid and inflated language either in new or in archaic words, or in clumsy metaphors, or in [b]diction more impressive than the theme demands [/b]…
Most of those who fall into this type, straying from the type they began with, are misled by the appearance of grandeur and cannot perceive the tumidity of the style. ” (from the Rhetorica ad Herennium).

The main problem with Clute is something he’s not responsible for: people who try to imitate that approach. Then it just becomes parody.

That being said, it seems he had a much better impression of Bacigalupi’s novel than I did, but I’ll elaborate on that this weekend, after I recover from the possible flu.