Some Funny Writing

I took this from the book “The Lion’s Game” by Nelson DeMille. It’s by no means a literary classic but I think he does a great job of portraying a sarcastic and cynical voice.

You’d think that anyone who’d been shot three times and almost become an organ donor would try to avoid dangerous situations in the future. But, no, I must have this unconscious wish to take myself out of the gene pool or something.

Anyway, I’m John Corey… I was sitting in the back of a yellow cab on my way from 26 Federal Plaza to JFK with a Pakistani suicide driver behind the wheel.

It was a nice spring day, a Saturday, moderate traffic on the Shore Parkway, sometimes known as the Belt Parkway, and recently renamed POW/MIA Parkway to avoid confusion. It was late afternoon, and seagulls from a nearby landfill – formerly known as a garbage dump – were crapping on the taxi’s windshield. I love spring.

The book carries on with this style for about 900 pages, which gets a bit tiring at times, but overall I think it works and can come off as very funny at times. I don’t think this is necessarily ‘great’ writing, but it certainly captures a specific voice really well. I think from just reading these 100 words you can get an idea of what type of guy the character is and begin to develop an opinion about him.