Useless pretensions

You know, I've always been irritated by authorial quirks like the one — the "big one" — outlined in this brilliant post from Laura Miller at Salon. I've worked hard myself on trying to strip the affectations from my own work, things that part of my mind thinks are clever but clearly aren't. It's pretension, top to bottom, and it's a failure in the writer when he leaves unnecessary obstacles between his work and his reader.

(Yeah, I said Cormac McCarthy has a failing. Deal with it.)