Errors Are ‘Limitless’: A Rant

This is a rant.

There’s no other word for it, so I’m not even going to be coy. This is a rant, plain and simple.

This is a rant about fifteen of my hard-earned dollars blown all to hell, immolated on the altar of alleged “popular entertainment.” And this is a rant about the kind of crap that gets passed off as said “popular entertainment.”

More specifically, this is a rant about a horribly written book, a novel that has just been made into a movie. I can’t speak for the movie, which I haven’t seen yet, but I am going to rant about the book. Because it sucks.

Perhaps you’ve heard of it: Limitless, by Alan Glynn. The new movie stars Bradley Cooper, Robert De Niro, and Abbie Cornish. But as I said, my quibble isn’t about the movie. It’s about the book.

I picked up Limitless at my local Barnes and Noble last week. I went there with my son to get more books to read to him before bed. That meant perusing and purchasing some nice fat novels that he can’t quite read for himself yet. While I knew just what to get for him in the kids’ section, I had a harder time picking a novel for myself. I’ve been rereading old favorites instead of hunting down fresh meat because I’m just not sure what’s good.

But I had read a couple of reviews of Limitless (the movie, that is), and I liked the premise: an essentially lazy person, a writer, runs into his ex-wife’s brother, who offers him a drug so new it doesn’t have a name. He takes the pill and finds out that instead of giving him a destructive high, it opens up the previously closed-off pathways of his brain and he becomes efficient and creative.

That’s all I know so far, because I’m not even a quarter of the way through the book yet. But you can tell This Can’t End Well. Or, if it does, not before some serious chaos and panicked running about, as the main character has already encountered one dead body, and you can tell he’s going on that hit list sooner rather than later.

Sounds good, right? I thought so. But it’s not.

The writing is dry as dust, for one thing. But perhaps I should overlook that, as this is essentially a thriller, semi-sci-fi elements notwithstanding, and thrillers are not my thang. But that’s not what’s pissing me off. No, it’s something else entirely, and it’s so irritating that the writer/editor part of me started screaming in agony before I got to Chapter 3.

Maybe I could have avoided all this by not reading the author’s bio on the very first page, but I did. It told me very little (in its entirety, it says “Alan Glynn is a graduate of Trinity College, where he studied English literature. He is married with two children and lives in Dublin”), but that was all I needed to know.

Mr. Glynn is Irish. The main character in the story, Eddie Spinola, is an American who lives in New York City. Can anybody guess what kind of cultural whoopsie-whoppers can trip up an American reader? Here’s one:

When Eddie runs into his ex-brother-in-law, Vernon, on the street, in February, he and Veron chat for quite a while. On the street. In New York. In February.

Insanity.

New York City is weenie-shrinking sub-zero freezing in February, with icy winds barreling down those canyon-like streets so powerfully they suck the breath right out of your lungs. You don’t stand on the sidewalk and chat. Not in New York in February. If you do, your conversation would sound more or less like “whargarble mmff mmff,” because you’d have the lower two-thirds of your face jammed down into your scarf and turned-up coat collar the entire time.

But okay, maybe there was a brief thaw. It can happen. Even though that wasn’t mentioned, I’ll allow it. Except for one thing:

In the scene, Vernon is wearing a linen suit. Linen. In New York. In February. Is he committing suicide-by-hypothermia? Allegedly not, as he seems to be very interested in not dying, and yet there he is, acting all sorts of comfortable, in an open-weave outfit that shouldn’t see the light of day in the Northeast till July at the earliest.

Nitpicking, you say? Perhaps. But it’s these kinds of details that make or break a story’s believability, and I’m sorry, but I can’t get past things like that. Not to mention other jarring bits, like the fact that Eddie and Vernon smoke freely in a bar. Okay, maybe this story was set before the law banning smoking in public buildings in New York State.

But then there’s the scene where Eddie goes to the corner store to get Vernon some aspirin. I quote: “Vernon hadn’t said what brand he wanted, so I asked for a box of my own favorites, Extra-Strength Excedrin.” What’s wrong with this picture? Think about it a second. There’s no mention of the clerk’s reaction; Eddie just buys the painkillers and a newspaper and leaves. It’s easy to correct; let’s add what’s missing. How about turning this into dialogue? A little improv, if you will.

Eddie (in the corner store, to the clerk): Can I get some Extra-Strength Excedrin, please?

Clerk: Go fuck yourself.

[Scene.]

There you go. This is New York. Where, if you have eyes that work, you can see all the painkiller varieties on the shelf in front of you, not behind the counter. And, if you have hands that work, you have to get it your damned self.

Still too picky? Perhaps. But add in the British/Irish-isms, such as saying someone “had gone” instead of “left” or “walked away”, ending several sentences with “yeah?” instead of “you know?”, and trashed idioms—”in the shithouse” instead of “in the shit” and “chew over old times” instead of “chew the fat” or “reminisce about old times” (all this before page 63), and the editor in me blows a gasket.

And really, that’s my main complaint. Where was this guy’s editor? The book is published by Picador (Picador USA, based in New York City, no less!), an imprint of Macmillan. As part of the mega-publisher Macmillan, I’d assume they have good editors. However, no good editor worth his/her weight in commas should let this stuff fly. Heck, it’s an easy fix. This is an Irish author; place the story in Dublin. Or, if it absolutely has to take place in the U.S., make Eddie an Irish person living in Manhattan. But never, ever should an author try to get away with sounding like a native of another country if he doesn’t know his stuff well. (For the record, I have read that Mr. Glynn lived in New York for four years. That’s not long enough, apparently.)

But if the author insists, then it’s the editor’s responsibility to fix the errors. That’s what an editor does, fer cryin’ out loud! That’s the lion’s share of his/her job! And Picador can’t say that this book was rushed to print in the publisher’s excitement over discovering the next Wasteland or Crime and Punishment, either, because it was previously published under the name The Dark Fields, in 2001. In ten years, they couldn’t find time to clean this crap up?

I admit, this is the editor in me freaking out. Readers who don’t fix others’ writing for a living would never notice this stuff. All the same, I think it’s a sad commentary on the publishing industry, that a poorly written book can get printed (twice!) and be turned into a movie just because there’s lots of breathless running around and juicy bloody murders. (Well, at least the stilted narrative and error-filled dialogue might be corrected in the movie version. I hope, anyway.)

Alas, ’twas always thus, I realize. The publishing industry is as flawed as any other, I suppose.

But that doesn’t change the fact that I blew $15 on this garbage.

I should point out that I don’t wish any ill on Mr. Glynn. In fact, I congratulate him on his success and hope his agent negotiated him a fantastic deal for the movie rights. However, as a starving artist myself, I really wish I had my $15 back, because I’m not sure I’m going to be able to make it through the rest of this book.

I might have some recourse, though. When I went to the Picador Web site to get the link for this blog, I happened to notice that they have an e-mail address you can write to, specifically to report a defective book. Hmm…