Back when I was in college, one of the ways we would study the great writers of all time was to write snippets that mimicked their style. As I hope one day to become a bestselling novelist, I decided to undertake this exercise using Stieg Larsson, author of the world-wide blockbuster, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, as my subject.
Here goes:
Bloomstardvisdt sat down at his Viki® desk, which he had customized himself at the local Ikea showroom, choosing the stylish Artur legs and the plain-wood Byske table top, and then taking advantage of their inexpensive home delivery. It was a stylish combination that had held up surprisingly well for the cost, which had been a mere 1100 Kronor ($139.99). He turned on the orange Lasso desk lamp, which he had ordered from Crate and Barrel (www.crateandbarrel.com) and recieved free shipping, as he would on any purchase totalling more than 300 Kronor ($40.00).
Of course, he didn’t need the lamp to use his top of the line, seventeen inch MacBook Pro®. This laptop, considered the finest in the world (and the envy of PC users everywhere), had a keyboard equipped with backlighting, allowing him to see the letters even if it was pitch dark. Why had no-one thought of that before? It had been love at first sight, a G4/I.0 GHz in an aluminium case with a PowerP.C. 7451 processor with an AltiVec Velocity Engine, 960 megs of R.A.M. and a sixty-gig hard drive. It had BlueTooth and built-in C.D. and D.V.D. burners. All that and a 1440×900 pixel screen which outranked everything else on the market. It cost 38,000 Kronor ($4840.00) plus tax.
The fact that he had been forced to perform oral sex to a man he abhorred in order to get the money for this computer did not bother him; it was a minimal sacrifice for such a perfect machine.
What do you think?
Sadly, if this were college, I would have failed the assignment. The problem is too much plagiarism—I copied most of the above, word-for-word, right out of the book.
