Each Thursday, your Crap Archivist brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from basements, thrift stores, estate sales and flea markets. I do this for one reason: Knowledge is power.
Unicorn Vengeance
Author: Claire Delacroix
Date: 1995
Publisher: Harlequin Historical, because unicorns are historical
Discovered at: Salvation Army
The Cover Promises: "The Stirring Conclusion to the Unicorn Trilogy." Also, true passion means not caring if your lovemaking smashes your lute or sets your hair on fire.
Representative Quotes:
"Aye, this night Wolfram would know the fullness of mating." (page 226)
"This then was what lovemaking was about? Indeed, Genevieve was quite surprised. No fool was she, for livestock had her family always kept, but this was a revelation." (page 177)
Before we get to what just might be the single worst sentence in any published, novel, let's take a moment to consider how it might have come to be.
First, imagine that you're an author hellbent on knocking out a Harlequin Historical romance.
Step One:
Find an old-timey synonym for pants:
"Her tiny fingers caressed him there and he thought he might burst his chausses."
That's from the first, not-quite-completed sex scene in Unicorn Vengeance, a goofy and ambitious Harlequin that at first seems most notable for its failure to include any unicorns or vengeance.
And from the second sex scene:
"The feel of her tongue in his ear was enough to send Wolfram bursting from his chausses."
And just a page and a half later:
"Her loose chemise followed suit with lighting speed, and the sight of her creamy flesh was enough to make him burst his chausses."
From this we can conclude that if you ever go back in time to the France of 1307 -- the book's setting -- you certainly won't go broke in the field of chausses repair.
Step Two: Stick with old-timey words, no matter how hilarious they make your serious scenes.
That first sex scene ends abruptly in the middle of a handjob:
"Nay! Not so soon! Wolfram felt his seed spill across his stomach in a warm, tingling rush, even as he heard himself moan."
This is historically accurate, at least according to what a lady friend tells me about her summer working at Medieval Times. It also fulfills the narrative obligation of letting the maiden maintain her maidenhood until the book's climax.
Best of all, it gives us this line just a few pages later, as a fully sated Wolfram dreams of hiding out in a barn with Genevieve, the heroine:
"Days might they have to secrete themselves here, and his mind readily enumerated ways of passing that time."
That's secrete meaning hide.
Just keep on shoveling in random, archaic language. If your book is set in France, for example, feel free to abuse the Middle English compound mayhap:
"Well did Wolfram intend to satisfy both their desires this evening. Mayhap over and over the whole night through."
"Mayhap the imbibing of liquor was not as infrequent for the master as it was for Wolfram."
"Mayhap her overwrought imagination had conjured him from nought."
Verily did the streets of 14th century Paris ring with the English contraction 'Twas," first recorded in 1567:
"'Twas clear he had much to learn about the ways of women, for her behavior made absolutely no sense to him."
"'Twas warm, the air redolent of the sweet leavings of the horses."
"'Twas too much to bear. Wolfram gasped at the wave of pleasure that coursed through him and fell back bonelessly against the hay."
Staring down a dreary, plot-moving sentence? Enliven it with a twofer:
"Mayhap 'twas the Master's genealogy."
All this curious diction brings us to what is perhaps the most crucial step.
Step Three: To indicate that your romantic yarn takes place in ye days of olde, invert your subject/verb order like you are Sexy Yoda:
"Almost had he stolen the gift of her virginity from her as well."
"Something unnerving there was about his stare."
"So different was she from the rough men with whom he spent his life, and Wolfram's gaze devoured her daintiness."
Step Four: Invent some lovers!
Genevieve: "As perfect as some ancient Pagan goddess born fully with the dawn," she is
a headstrong, lute-playing minstrel/princess whose quest to avenge her murdered brother hits a snag when she falls in love with the dude who killed him. Oh, she's also the last Guardian of the Holy Grail, for some reason, even though that doesn't matter in the story at all.
Wolfram: "A tall man, distinguished of carriage and silver of mane," he's a Knight Templar, assassin, and poison-maker bound by an oath of chastity and poverty. But also he's not really a Knight Templar because of his bastard blood, so it's no great tragedy when his oath proves as weak as his chausses. He suffers page after page of remorse for having lustful thoughts and tipping Genevieve a coin he should have donated to his order, but he never for a second regrets his years as an assassin.
Step Five: Find excuses to keep your lovers apart for 300 pages.
Step Six: See how many hilariously bad sentences you can sneak past your editors!
"His blankets itched as they never had before, and Wolfram longed to rip his sensible long shirt from his back."
A "sensible long shirt"? He also favors Crocs and cardigans!
Add just one comma, and this next one could be a line of Waylon Jennings' narration for the Dukes of Hazzard.
"Well it seemed that the time for confidences was not ripe."
Like slick bars of soap, hearts are hard to keep a grip on:
"The fairness of his flaxen hair surprised her, but she dismissed her heart's whimsical lurch out of hand."
Shocking Detail:
Genevieve never takes vengeance upon Wolfram, but Wolfram does have a dream about meeting a unicorn whose horn he suspects could be ground down to make a capital poison.
Hightlight:
After writing more than 100 Studies in Crap, I feel confident in proclaiming that Unicorn Vengeance contains the single worst sentence ever published in a novel. (Self-published ringers like Dangerous Dana do not count!)
Here's two runners up:
"Fear rose in her chest as she recalled the gleam of avarice that had lit her eyes and she wondered whether he coveted her lute."
"Verily, the din of the place would unsettle a man's innards."
And the winner:
"Like the wolf he was named for was he, he realized, for his life was solitary above all else."
Your Crap Archivist challenges you to comprehend this on the first read.
And he challenges you to find a worse sentence in a published novel.
And he challenges you to write a sentence utilizing Delacroix's "he-comma-he" structure that is neither ungrammatical nor ambiguous.
My attempts:
The murderer was he, he realized.
The pronouns lack clear antecedents!
The murderer was he, He-Man realized.
Same problem! Did He-Man realize that he himself was the murderer?
"The murderer was he," He-Man said, pointing at Man-at-Arms.
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I've personally read worse in McCarthy:
While inside the vaulting of the ribs between his knees the darkly meated heart pumped of who's will and the blood pulsed and the bowels shifted in their massive blue convulsions of who's will and the stout thighbones and knee and cannon and the tendons like flaxen hawsers that drew and flexed and drew and flexed at their articulations of who's will all sheathed and muffled in the flesh and the hooves that stove wells in the morning groundmist and the head tuning side to side and the great slavering keyboard of his teeth and the hot globes of his eyes where the world burned. (All the Pretty Horses)
I believe you've already posted a far worse sentence from another book: "It was, Was, WAs, WAS, PRESTO! FAFFO THE CLOWN! Yeaaa! Voila! Voila Voodoo! Walla! Yea! Walla Walla! Voila Walla! Voila Faffo! Vive la Faffo! Wall of Voodoo, bro. Yea yea yeaa! Wall of Voodoo! Walla Voodoo! Who do? You do. Hindoo him do what him do!"
do screen plays count because if so heres a gem
I will tell you a story, a story about a man much like myself. A man who is myself.
Tommy Wiseau one uping you since 2000
Thats not true...
It means wolf and raven (hraban) and alludes to Odin, who was followed by his ravens Hugin and Munin and the wolves Geri and Freki
Wolfram also isn't a name that has much, if anything, to do with wolves. It's the old-timey word for tungsten.
For a truly awful book that is *not* a romance novel, try 'Cultivating Delight: A Natural History of My Garden," by Diane Ackerman. Be prepared to gag.
The worst sentence I ever read in a book was from Steven Donaldson's Against all things ending. The line was 'His compelled transubstantiation left him frangible.' That line is on the first real page of the novel and I almost stopped reading after it.
That last sentence would make sense if wolves didn't live in packs and were solitary animals....
Thank you. That was delightful. I've hesitated to read romance novels, yet, you've managed to make them worthwhile, certainly as excerpted here, for a good laugh.
My intentionally bad Bulwer-Lytton entries pale in comparison.
It's the 'was he' bit surely. Grammatical, but nearly unreadable.
Proving his oath as weak as his chausses...dear God, I can't stop laughing.
"Like the wolf he was named for was he, he realized, for his life was solitary above all else."
This is actually proper grammar and it has nothing to do with murder, rather the lone nature of a wolf. Not that I endorse ridiculous romance novels, but there is nothing wrong with this sentence.
I haven't read all the comments, but I can't be the only one who laughed hard enough to burst his or her chausses.
"invert your subject/verb order like you are Sexy Yoda"
OK, I can try that.
Big butts, I like.
...Lie, I cannot.
When a girl with an itty bitty waist, I see,
and that round thing, in my face it is,
Sprung, I get.
Mission accomplished!
Dear Studies In Crap friend,
We are two English majors working on a proposal for a conference. During a break, we stumbled across this ingenious work of literary analysis. We want you to know how fantastcially happy we are to discover your existence and to know that we are not the only two literature enthusiasts in the world who read crappy novels just to giggle at the atrocious use of the English language and gross misapropriation of history. One of our personal favorite lines, found in a romance novel set in a historically ambiguouis time (there is a King Henry mentioned, but which henry is never specified...) the following line occurs:
Maggie: Your ladyship's father will surely not approve
Sarah: Oh, ''tis no big deal.
Thank you for the wonderful work you are doing here, and know that you made two more avid fans for life this evening!
Sincerely,
J&C
Take a look at KEEPERS OF EDENVANT (1987) by Carole Nelson Douglas. Having read it (for reviewing purposes), I never had the will to look at any of her other work. The sentence that lingers in memory is "'Your mouth is as blind as your overhoarded eyes,' she said insightfully." She might well deserve a wing to herself in the Crap Archives
Thanks for the laugh. Great piece, except for this: "Here's two runners up". Here *is* two runners up? Mayhap it should be "Here *are* two runners up.
Hilarious!
You didn't mention in regard to your winning sentence that wolves are highly social animals.
Never in my life has a horse left me any "leavings" which could remotely be considered sweet.
Verily, mayhap thou shouldst recognize, however, that writing to a market is not the same as creating a work of quality. Popular shlock is still schlock.
ok... weird comment, but, in my experience, bursting chauces is more common than one would dare believe. we tore 3 pairs in our production of robin hood, and (fortunately) none were sexually induced.
This is made all the more sad (or maybe the more shockingly hilarious!) by the fact that the author here in question, has, according to her bio 'an honours degree in history, with a focus on medieval studies' and is 'an avid reader of medieval vernacular literature' . (Claire Delacroix, aka Deborah Cooke)
The ones about "chausses" are particularly funny considering that "chausses" were essentially socks. The short pants worn under the tunic or shirt were "braies".
Wolfram gasped at the wave of pleasure that coursed through him and fell back bonelessly against the hay
I've spent a lot of time wondering whether pleasure is a particle or a wave, but this sentence doesn't solve the problem for me. On the one hand, it courses through him, like a wave; on the other, it falls bonelessly against the hay afterward, which seems like the behaviour of a particle. Damn you, pleasure science!
"Like when Washington defeated the Nazis at Gettysburg" is the WORST sentence ever.
haha one of the books in the trilogy was nominated for some award! hopefully it's better than this one.
Yup, the Romance author with 30+ books to her name who has been published by 3 different NY houses over the past two decades has no idea what she is doing.
Come on, it's professional's job to know their market and write to it.
Congratulations to Morgan, who has won not only our hearts and minds with that quality sentence . . . she has also won the Glen H. Weldon Memorial Award for Excellence in Studies in Crap commenting!
Thanks for rocking our Captcha!
"She was a he, he realized after removing her pants, but it was long past closing time, 'she' would have to do, and he started kissing the nape of her neck' and nibbling on her Adam's Apple. "
That's good Morgan but the "he" after the comma is still ambiguous, as it could refer either to the man who realized or to the man who was a woman! They could be the same person too but the context isn't clear!
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