Left Behind fails as a novel for many, many reasons... the odious lack of empathy it holds up as a moral example... its perverse misogyny, its plodding pace, its wooden dialogue, it fetishistic obsession with telephones, its nonexistent characterization, its use and misuse of cliches, its irrelevant tangents, deplorable politics, confused theology, unintentional hilarities, hideous sentences, contempt for craft, factual mistakes, continuity errors ... its squandering of every interesting premise and its overwhelming, relentless and mind-numbing dullness...
The presence of all of those faults -- in a single book and in such concentrated form -- is more than enough to secure its place on a list of the Worst Books of All Time. ... (but)Left Behind's forceful refutation of its own premise, is what earns this book my vote as the Worst Book of All Time.
It makes me think hard about the relationship between bad writing and bad thinking.
