Apples & Onions & Artemis Fowl
Was rereading some Eoin Colfer recently - the two-decade-old stuff, like Airman and Artemis Fowl - and I realized Colfer has a signature style of humor that depends on one character having an advantage of about a hundred IQ points over everybody else. Smart Guy runs verbal rings around the other characters, who either 1) gape stupidly and make caveman noises or 2) tell Smart Guy where he can stuff his condescending nerd jargon, depending on whether we’re supposed to respect or despise them.
It works great in Artemis Fowl, where the whole premise is that Artemis is a genius surrounded by lesser intellects. In Airman, though, it feels a little forced. I get that Conor is supposed to be an educated and sensitive person who has fallen among criminals, but his language is sometimes so formal that he comes off as elitist and prissy.
This isn’t something I noticed when I first read the book - back then, all I clocked about Conor was the extraordinary courage. Eoin Colfer is usually such a snarky, ironic writer that I didn’t expect a genuinely heroic protagonist. But on this reread, I came in expecting a hero, so I was disappointed to discover the fussy pedant side of Conor.
I think of books as having multiple layers of storytelling. Not like an onion has layers - too cliche, and anyway I wouldn’t devour an onion the way I devour most books. Let’s say books have layers like an apple has layers. The apple core is like worldbuilding - structurally very important, but not interesting and not tasty. The sweet part of the apple is the plot and characters and all the other juicy storytelling elements that make a good book good. And the apple skin is like the writing - the actual prose you look at. Good writing can’t disguise a rotten story, but if the writing is flawed, I might decide I don’t really want to eat the apple after all.
Which means my surface-level critique of Airman, where I like the story but don’t like the language, is a bit like turning down delicious seconds at the farmer’s market just because they look a little wonky. It’s probably not a good thing that I want my prose as aesthetically perfect as supermarket apples.