[The beginning and ending of The Great Gatsby are] lauded as examples of superb writing. Every word is filled with meaning and substance, laden with implication yet as light as ether; and when you reach out to grasp one, it slips through your fingers ...
Like a fairy-tale beanstalk, [Fitzgerald’s words] soar endlessly into the air, carrying the reader with them. Each word gives birth to the next in a single, ascending stream. Searching for space to grow, they spread out until they cover the sky ... Words are sucked upward with their ambiguities and multiple meanings intact, so that they bulge with implications and possibilities ...
[Readers] naturally apprehend what Fitzgerald is doing, for the writing is of unparalleled beauty, and the resonance of his language leaves nothing unsaid. This, I guess, is what literary genius is all about.
—Haruki Murakami, translator’s afterword to his The Great Gatsby, translated into English by Ted Goossen in In Translation: Translators on their work and what it means, Esther Allen and Susan Bernofsky, eds.
Clearly, the worst writing being perpetrated in any language is that of blurb writing: highfalutin and utterly vacuous. (This being, in effect, an extended blurb intended for publication between the covers instead of on them.)
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