by Ben Blatt
Most of these names should not surprise you. Virginia Woolf’s The Waves is an experimental novel written in soliloquies. In his book Survivor, Chuck Palahniuk writes: “There are only patterns, patterns on top of patterns, patterns that affect other patterns. Patterns hidden by patterns. Patterns within patterns.” It’s no surprise to see some of his work near the top of this list.
Books with the Most One-Word Anaphora
BOOK
AUTHOR
ANAPHORA %
The Waves
Virginia Woolf
16.0
Survivor
Chuck Palahniuk
13.5
The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Neil Gaiman
13.3
Breakfast of Champions
Kurt Vonnegut
13.2
Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut
12.3
The Fountainhead
Ayn Rand
12.3
Cat and Mouse
James Patterson
11.9
Slapstick
Kurt Vonnegut
11.5
Lullaby
Chuck Palahniuk
11.4
Kiss the Girls
James Patterson
11.3
“So it goes” aside, Vonnegut speaks in repetition often, and to great effect. Here’s a passage from Cat’s Cradle:
Before we took the measure of each other’s passions, however, we talked about Frank Hoenikker, and we talked about the old man, and we talked a little about Asa Breed, and we talked about the General Forge and Foundry Company, and we talked about the Pope and birth control, about Hitler and the Jews. We talked about phonies. We talked about truth. We talked about gangsters; we talked about business. We talked about the nice poor people who went to the electric chair; and we talked about the rich bastards who didn’t. We talked about religious people who had perversions. We talked about a lot of things.
The percentage of sentences in which the first two words are the same as the previous sentence—what you might call two-word anaphora—reveals a similar pattern to the chart above. It’s not just that Vonnegut, Woolf, or Rand was being lazy and starting each sentence off with a boring the. Two-word anaphora tends not to end up in the final text unless it is intentional. The same authors top the following list, with the arrival of the master himself, Dickens.
Books with the Most Two-Word Anaphora
BOOK
AUTHOR
TWO-WORD ANAPHORA %
The Waves
Virginia Woolf
5.5
Survivor
Chuck Palahniuk
4.0
The Chimes
Charles Dickens
3.6
Fight Club
Chuck Palahniuk
3.3
Shalimar the Clown
Salman Rushdie
3.2
The Torrents of Spring
Ernest Hemingway
3.2
Slapstick
Kurt Vonnegut
3.2
The Sirens of Titan
Kurt Vonnegut
3.1
Atlas Shrugged
Ayn Rand
3.0
The Battle of Life
Charles Dickens
3.0
On the other end of the spectrum we can look at the type of book that chooses not to use anaphora very often. Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon has over 10,000 sentences and just 1.6 % of those (163) begin with the same word as the previous sentence. Pynchon’s work makes up five of the top ten slots here.
Books with the Least One-Word Anaphora
BOOK
AUTHOR
ANAPHORA %
Bleeding Edge
Thomas Pynchon
1.6
Vineland
Thomas Pynchon
1.9
Inherent Vice
Thomas Pynchon
2.2
Against the Day
Thomas Pynchon
2.3
The Children
Edith Wharton
2.4
A Son at the Front
Edith Wharton
2.5
Other Voices, Other Rooms
Truman Capote
2.6
Mason & Dixon
Thomas Pynchon
2.6
Twilight Sleep
Edith Wharton
2.7
The Grass Harp
Truman Capote
2.8
Slaughterhouse-Five has 87 instances wherein three straight sentences start with the same word. If Pynchon were to write in the same exact manner, then Bleeding Edge would be expected (based on its length) to have 230-plus such cases of three consecutive sentences starting with the same word. Instead, there are just eight.
Pynchon favors variety; Vonnegut favors familiarity. I looked at the most common three-word strings to start off sentences in every book. In Slaughterhouse-Five the ten most common cases are:
1. So it goes
2. There was a
3. It was a
4. And so on
5. He was a
6. He had been
7. He had a
8. They had been
9. One of the
10. Now they were
These represent almost 7 % of all sentences in the book.
In Inherent Vice the ten most common openers are:
1. By the time
2. After a while
3. There was a
4. I don’t know
5. It was a
6. Not to mention
7. What do you
8. I don’t think
9. Doc must have
10. Now and then
These represent less than 1.5 % of all sentences in the book.
So Pynchon’s variety is seen not just in his lack of anaphora, but in the variety of his sentences as well. In the sample of all fifty authors seen in the previous chapter, Pynchon ranks near the bottom when we look at the percent of sentences that use his top ten openers.I Only James Joyce beats him for more variety. Vonnegut ranks toward the top, behind only a few authors—Hemingway, Gaiman, Rand, Rowling, and Stephenie Meyer—who rely on their top ten openers more often.
For curiosity’s sake here are the top ten most popular three-word sentence openers for a handful of other notable books. Like Pynchon and his openers, I was looking for variety so I handpicked the examples to be as different as possible. Limited as they may be, each offers a tiny glimpse into the depths of each work.
FIGHT CLUB
FIFTY SHADES OF GREY
THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
E L JAMES
MARK TWAIN
1. You wake up
1. Christian Grey CEO
1. By and by
2. This is the
2. I want to
2. There was a
3. I am Joe’s
3. My inner goddess
3. I don’t know
4. This is a
4. His voice is
4. It was a
5. I go to
5. From Christian Grey
5. What is it
6. You have to
6. I have to
6. There was no
7. This is how
7. I shake my
7. The old lady
8. The space monkey
8. I don’t want
8. Then he said
9. The first rule
9. I need to
9. What did you
10. Tyler and I
10. I don’t know
10. At last he
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
THE GREAT GATSBY
THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA
JANE AUSTEN
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
1. I do not
1. It was
a
1. The old man
2. I can not
2. I want to
2. He did not
3. I am sure
3. There was a
3. I wish I
4. I am not
4. She looked at
4. I do not
5. It is a
5. I’m going to
5. But there was
6. Mrs. Bennet was
6. I’d like to
6. But I will
7. It was a
7. He looked at
7. But I have
8. I have not
8. She turned to
8. There was no
9. She is a
9. It was the
9. I wonder what
10. It was not
10. I don’t think
10. The sun was
ANIMAL FARM
THE DA VINCI CODE
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
GEORGE ORWELL
DAN BROWN
HARPER LEE
1. The animals were
1. The Holy Grail
1. Jem and I
2. It was a
2. I don’t know
2. There was a
3. All the animals
3. It was a
3. I don’t know
4. I do not
4. Find Robert Langdon
4. It was a
5. The animals had
5. Langdon felt a
5. There was no
6. None of the
6. There was a
6. Aunt Alexandra was
7. Do you not
7. O Draconian Devil
7. It was not
8. No animal shall
8. Oh lame saint
8. Judge Taylor was
9. Whatever goes upon
9. Langdon and Sophie
9. That’s what I
10. As for the
10. The altar boy
10. I don’t want
Too Many Clichés in the Kitchen
Martin Amis hates clichés. When the English novelist published a book of his literary criticism, he decided to call it The War Against Cliché. Amis explains his title by asserting that “all writing is a campaign against cliché. Not just clichés of the pen but clichés of the mind and clichés of the heart.”
Amis is not alone. Clichés, by definition, are overused. No writer considers themselves an abuser of tired language. But what is considered a cliché is open to interpretation. Imagine if we had Amis read thousands of books at once to assign each an Amis Cliché Score. Modern technology is not advanced enough to create Martin Amises to do our work for us, but even if it were it would have limited value. It’s very likely that Martin Amis, an academic from a literary family, would have different standards from anyone else.
And it’s also hard to imagine weighing one cliché against another. A story that ends with the good guy saving the day and getting the girl has a clichéd ending. How do you weigh that clichéd ending with another book that has a more original ending but is full of stock characters? Which book is more “clichéd”? That’s not a question an objective method could answer.
But if we focus on overused phrases, what Amis would consider “clichés of the pen,” it might be possible to answer the narrow question of who writes with the most clichés. Which author uses sayings such as “fish out of water, “dressed to kill,” or “burn the midnight oil” the most?
The above are all expressions found in The Dictionary of Clichés. The book by Christine Ammer published in 2013 contains over 4,000 clichés and, to my knowledge, is the largest collection of English language clichés. Because of its size, and the fact that Ammer had been compiling collections of clichés and colloquialisms for 25 years before The Dictionary of Clichés was published, I’ve chosen her as the official arbiter of what does or what does not count as a cliché.
Every author uses clichés, even if each has a unique voice. For the chart on the next page, I picked an assortment of authors and one cliché (from The Dictionary of Clichés) that each uses at an unusually high rate.
It’s worth noting that Ammer’s cliché criterion, even with 4,000 entries, is not comprehensive and may be different than Amis’s list of expressions, or mine or yours. When detailing his view on clichés in an interview with Charlie Rose, Amis mentioned as examples “The heat was stifling” and “She rummaged in her handbag.” Neither of these two specific phrases makes its way into the Dictionary of Clichés.
But beyond that, defining a cliché is time dependent. Some clichéd phrases such as “never darken my door again” predate even older authors like Jane Austen. Others are younger. “Yada yada” was repopularized by a 1997 Seinfeld episode and “soccer mom” has a clear modern connotation. “Catch-22,” which Ammer includes, is based on the 1961 Joseph Heller novel. It wasn’t cliché when Heller invented it. Language changes over time, and if Christine Ammer published this list 200 years earlier, in 1813 (the same year Pride and Prejudice was published), the results would look different.
Clichés That Authors Use in More Than Half Their Works
AUTHOR
WORKS
CLICHÉ
Isaac Asimov
7 Foundation Series books
past history
Jane Austen
6 novels
with all my heart
Enid Blyton
21 Famous Five books
in a trice
Ray Bradbury
11 novels
at long last
Ann Brashares
9 novels
blah blah blah
Dan Brown
4 Robert Langdon books
full circle
Tom Clancy
13 novels
by a whisker
Suzanne Collins
3 Hunger Games books
put two and two together
Clive Cussler
23 Dirk Pitt novels
wishful thinking
James Dashner
3 Maze Runner novels
now or never
Theodore Dreiser
8 novels
thick and fast
William Faulkner
19 novels
sooner or later
Dashiell Hammett
5 novels
talk turkey
Khaled Hosseini
3 novels
nook and cranny
E L James
3 Fifty Shades books
words fail me
James Joyce
3 novels
from the sublime to the ridiculous
George R. R. Martin
8 novels
black as pitch
Herman Melville
9 novels
through and through
Stephenie Meyer
4 Twilight books
sigh of relief
Vladimir Nabokov
8 novels
in a word
James Patterson
22 Alex Cross novels
believe it or not
Jodi Picoult
21 novels
sixth sense
Rick Riordan
5 Percy Jackson novels
from head to toe
J. K. Rowling
7 Harry Potter books
dead of night
Salman Rushdie
9 novels
the last straw
Alice Sebold
3 novels
think twice
Zadie Smith
4 novels
evil eye
Donna Tartt
3 novels
too good to be true
J. R. R. Tolkien
LOTR and The Hobbit
nick of time
Tom Wolfe
4 novels
sinking feeling
Note: These clichés are all from The Dictionary of Clichés. The selection in this table was chosen by me for variet
y and oddity, not by any specific quantitative measure.
The last question to consider, before crowning our champion of clichés, is whether to include clichés that appear in dialogue. If characters are using clichéd phrases, is it clichéd writing? Or just capturing how people talk? Take, for instance, this sample of dialogue from James Patterson’s Mary, Mary, with phrases Ammer lists in her Dictionary of Clichés in bold. The main character, Alex Cross, is the first one to speak below.
“. . . But if it gets you Mary Smith, then everything’s okay and you’re a hero.”
“Russian roulette,” she said dryly.
“Name of the game,” I said.
“By the way, I don’t want to be a hero.”
“Goes with the territory.”
She finally smiled. “America’s Sherlock Holmes. Didn’t I read that somewhere about you?”
“Don’t believe everything you read.”
The short dialogue above has three clichés from Ammer’s set list of 4,000, as well as two other phrases (“I don’t want to be a hero” and “don’t believe everything you read”) that would be strong contenders if Ammer ever expands to 4,002. And while one could argue against including dialogue, I’ve ultimately decided to leave it in. If so much of your main character’s language is tied up in cliché, then at a certain point, so is your main character—and so may be your novel.
Now, with all these caveats out in the open, what do we find? Who is the most clichéd writer?
I’ve counted the total number of times any cliché appeared in an author’s writing, looking at all fifty authors I’ve been using as examples throughout this book.