Misery, with exclamation marks

I don’t know why I even link to stuff like this: that same old, same old complaint about Canlit, the muddy middle thereof, the endless misery of the prairies (with no offence intended to Saskatchewan readers — I feel for you, I really do, what with the endless family history you all seem to have endured):

… the trend … was a very depressing tendency towards humourless, dismal stories. What was more, she said, some of these novels suffered from the curse of the bookclub – “a story with an issue at its heart rather than a book you can’t put down”.

“There was very little wit, and no jokes. If I read another sensitive account of a woman coming to terms with bereavement, I was going to slit my wrists.”

So there you go.

Oh, wait — that’s not about Canlit at all — it’s about the Orange Prize! And the whole lead-in to this post was just a disingenuous setup for this paragraph, wherein I poke fun at those critics of Canlit who pretend that all that misery isn’t, in fact, a global phenomenon! With exclamation marks! On everything!

You really should have known from my ellipsiss, um, ellipsisses? Ellipses? Oh, I give up.