Why is some metaphor bad, and some good?

[elfs]

Quick, which of these is from something critically acclaimed, and which of these is the winner of a "bad writing" award?

• The beetle looked like a cross between an espresso machine and a 1928 Packard.
• For lunch they ate Tapir kabobs, sizzling hot, drowned in a red pepper sauce that the devil used to paint his Bentley.
• Her wet T-shirt clung to her torso like paint on the nose cone of a jumbo jet.

The last is from a "Bad writing" contest; the first two are from Mark Helprin's Memoirs from an Antproof Case, and Helprin is widely regarded as a master of metaphor and simile. I think the last line can be helped with some military imagery, but really, it does its job very well: it accurately conveys a sense of gleaming, precision form-fitting that gets the picture across quite nicely. So why is it "bad writing?"

Comments

[solarbird]

Context is often important in determining badness. Bad writing can have good things in it - sometimes even by accident. ^_^

[zillah975]

My take on it would be that the last metaphor is actively at odds with the thing it's describing, and depending on the context, could be good -- with such a short snip, it's hard to say. It could be good, for instance, if the author is using it to describe a cold, hard woman with a reputation for being completely non-sexual. However, if it's being used to describe a lush, sexualized woman in a wet tee-shirt contest, comparing her to the nose cone of a jumbo jet detracts from that. The term "jumbo jet" in itself is pretty non-sexy -- even "the nose code of an F-14 fighter jet" (if there is such a thing) or "the nose cone of a stealth bomber" might imply more sexiness than "jumbo jet."

So while the other metaphors are no more literally accurate than this one, they don't actively work against the mood or sense they're trying to convey.

Does that make sense?

[rapier.livejournal.com]

(frankly I'd be worried if she in any way resembled the nose.. wedge of a stealth bomber.)

[zillah975]

Oh absolutely, yeah, people should not, as a rule, resemble any kind of airplane. *g* But at least "stealth bomber" doesn't make her sound like she should be a lumbering behemoth, y'know? I mean really, "jumbo jet"? But of course the goal of a metaphor or a simile isn't to draw a one-to-one literal comparison between objects A and B. "The fog comes on little cat feet" -- well, cat's feet are small, and when they tread on you in the night they're sure not soft, and they tend to have sharp pointy things that'll draw blood. So not foglike. But it works as a metaphor because we're not thinking literally about it. "A pretty girl is like a melody" -- well, how so? The simile fails if we try to think much about precisely how a pretty girl actually resembles music.

So yeah, while I wouldn't normally recommend comparing a pretty girl to an airplane, there are degrees of badness to it. Most people have a different feeling of "stealth bomber" than of "jumbo jet" -- the first tends to evoke feelings or images of something sleek and fast and sexy; the second tends to evoke feelings of something sort of lumbering and maybe utilitarian.

'Course am rambling and telling you stuff I'm sure you already know, but that's what happens when I haven't eaten. :)

O_o

[(Anonymous)]

Well, have you compared the -shape- of a nose cone on a jubo jet to breasts?

Re: O_o

[zillah975]

Yeah. And?

Look, metaphor and simile are literary devices, not scientific comparison charts. They're not about whether thing A looks or sounds or acts literally like thing B. They're about evoking the sense of a thing that the author wants to convey, like the absurdity of the beetle-packard-espresso machine or the heat and humour of the sauce-devil-Bentley thing, not describing it to someone who's never seen one before. If a jumbo jet evokes, to you, the sense of seeing a beautiful, lush, soft, sexy woman, more power to you. To me, it evokes the sense of something cold, unyeilding, slow-witted and lumbering. And if the chick is cold, unyeilding, and lumbering, then the simile works for me.

And, less seriously, yeah I've seen the nose cone of a jumbo jet, and if her tits look like one then I'm saying lift and separate, baby. Wow. Unibreast. And have you looked at the Leaning Tower of Pisa? It's sort of phallic, but would you write "his cock jutted up proudly like the Leaning Tower of Pisa"? Sounds to me like brewer's droop.

elfs, I hope you don't mind your journal cluttered up with this. I hadn't thought to get into a debate here. Just so you know, I can't remember how I found your journal but I friended it because I remember you from Usenet years back and always enjoyed what you had to say.

[funos.livejournal.com]

The last one is clunky with references: Too many "on the", "of the", "like a", etc... in one sentence.

"Her wet T-shirt clung to her torso like paint on a jumbo jet." has better pace, or "..on a pair of jumbo jets.", depending on the imaginative intent.

But then again, I'm no pro, as this very post shows. :)

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[wyrdone.livejournal.com]

Punctuation:

Her wet T-shirt clung to her torso, like paint on the nose cone of a jumbo jet.

[duskwuff.livejournal.com]

Better yet, "...like paint to the nose cone of a jumbo jet."

Or some other sort of airplane, as stated above.

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

I think the problem with the third one is that once you've got to the paint you don't need to add anything. The jumbo jet is completely superfluous.

And why only one nosecone?

[omahas.livejournal.com]

Well, first off the last one isn't a metaphor at all, luv. It's a simile. Remember the difference? Simile's use "like" and "as", whereas metaphors do not. Secondly, the what's the difference between paint on the nose cone of a jumbo jet and paint on the front of a car? Both cling to the item they are painted on just as well. So that part of the simile falls flat. And the last part, the one trying to convey either power (because it's a jet) or size (because it's a jumbo jet) falls flat because there's no feel for why it should be power or size? Is she big? Then maybe something like the following would be better:

Her wet T-shirt clung to her mass like paint on the nose cone of a jumbo jet.

Not much better, but at least you get a better image.

[mundens.livejournal.com]

It seems, based on the comments, most people reading it think the woman is being compared to the jet whereas if you read it carefully you'll realize that it is her wet tshirt clinging to her breasts that is being compared to the paint clinging to the nose cone of a jumbo jet.

This is an apt simile, as the nose cone of a jumbo jet is somewhat breast-like, more so than, for example, and as mentioned, a fighter nose cone, which is too sharp and pointed.

But it's bad writing because it lacks clarity, obviously some people require more explanation to understand what the writer intended, it's not bad because of the simile it uses.