It might be a good thing in other contexts, but a ‘worthy’ reputation will get you nowhere as a writer
When did “worthy” become a pejorative term? Orange prize judge Kirsty Lang was praising Rose Tremain’s winning novel, The Road Home, when she said that “though it could have been a worthy book, it wasn’t”. Literature worthy of our attention, it seems, must not commit the sin of being worthy. The phrase “worthy but dull” seems to have been conflated into one epithet.
According to publishers it’s the kiss of death for a manuscript to be described as worthy unless it is followed by the preposition of, as in worthy of consideration. It has come to mean something pious and preachy without being compelling, a bitter pill without a sugar coating. Radio and TV drama departments are similarly filled with a dread of “worthy” submissions. The flight from the word worthy, according to Tasja Dorkofikis at Portobello Books, tells us more about British culture’s suspicion of anything intellectual.
To lift a piece of writing out of worthiness, it must apparently be “compelling”. But surely this is the standard to be applied to all writing, not just the “worthy” stuff. Before the current fashion for “political” work, “worthy” was often used to reject work deemed to be issue-based. Rose Tremain’s novel shows things have changed a bit, since it has been widely praised for being its moving treatment of one of the biggest contemporary political issues: migration.
And it’s not just fiction which must avoid the W-adjective. There’s more scope for worthiness in non-fiction, but even then it will be dressed up by the marketing people. My own collection of recently published stories of illegal immigrants to Britain, Enslaved, was branded a “misery memoir” by my publisher. Although it shares none of the self-indulgence of that genre by making all the dare-I-say-it political links, I acquiesced, in the hope of creeping into the affections of potential readers and showing them how worthy “worthy” really is.
via Books: Books blog + Written language | theguardian.com http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2008/jun/06/whynobodywantsaworthybook
