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September 17, 2005

Carter's bodice-ripped

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Looks like the famous Bulwer—Lytton  bad writing contest has a new frontrunner for worst writer of the year, and who could it be but Jimmy Carter? Carter's new novel, The Hornet's Nest, is an unintentionally watery bodice ripper of lust, rape, lynchings, interracial dating and all the other things that preoccupy Carter's Snopesian mind. As fiction, the Sunday Times rules it a bowl of oatmeal. They also notice it's pretty much like its author himself. According to the Times, Carter:
 
...could have tried slightly harder when, in the closing pages, he describes Ethan Pratt approaching a moment of passion: 'He was overwhelmed with a feeling of tenderness, and was also aroused sexually, which his tight trousers made obvious to both of them.'

This is a well—meaning but lifeless novel. In celebration of President Carter's 80th birthday two days ago, we should all wish him a healthy, busy — and entirely fiction—free — old age.

—A.M. Mora y Leon   10 04 04