… Fatiguée, as Nigella Lawson notes, is what the French call greens that have lost their crispness, from sitting around too long, or from too much dressing.

Writing can be wilted in the same ways – from sitting around too long, or from being drizzled with too many words.

The problem of tired writing compounds when your subject is itself superannuated.

Yet most subjects are old.  Not much crisp under the sun.  The point of being a good writer is taking something new to the plate.  Plumping things up so people see some aspect of the world fresh.

Consider, for instance, a seasonal problem.

Everyone knows big time university basketball is a rank enseamèd dish, stew’d in corruption.  Every March sports writers get up on little ladders and scrounge in their pantries for the canned indignation.

But why?  Why do that?  Limp writing makes nothing happen.  It’s mere ritual.  It’s filing a story because you’ve got space to fill by Tuesday.  Jim Calhoun has a job to do, and so do you.

But if you had the scruples whose lack you attack in Calhoun, you wouldn’t inflict this sort of futility on your readers.

… From showcase summer camps, to AAU tournaments, to street agents, to runners from professional agents, this is the landscape schools live in. This is the basketball culture, and for all of the NCAA’s attempts to control it, it always seems to get worse, a cesspool of inherent corruption. To the point where the NCAA recently ruled that a seventh-grader is now regarded as a “recruitable” athlete.

Think about that for a second.

Which is not to say that all schools break the rules.

It is to say, though, that this is the basketball world all schools operate in, to the point where virtually all big-time programs are fragile, a deck of cards that has the potential to crumble at any minute, whether it’s off-campus problems, allegations of recruiting violations, rumors of being carried academically, or other supposed atrocities that highlight the fact that players often are not like the other students on campus, regardless of the hype to try to convince people that there are.

Suffice it to say there are no virgins here.

Let’s scathe through that, shall we?

“From showcase summer camps, to AAU tournaments, to street agents, to runners from professional agents, this is the landscape schools live in. [The list’s okay, though all the tos are a bit awkward. Ending on in is weak; remember that you always want to end your sentence on a strong word.   And keep an eye on that landscape metaphor.] This is the basketball culture, [This is. This is. Repetition can be effective, but in this case it feels weak, in part because the language is so blah. We begin to doubt the writer’s conviction.]  and for all of the NCAA’s attempts to control it, it always seems to get worse, a cesspool of inherent corruption.  [It gets worse because the NCAA doesn’t attempt to control it, so here the writer signals his refusal to take on the heavy labor of actual critique. Things get more tired by the minute.   And a cesspool of inherent corruption tells you everything you need to know about l’écriture fatiguée.  Forget the quick transmutation of a landscape into a cesspool, and think instead about the lazy effort to lend a lifeless salad some life by suddenly spicing it way up.  Cesspool is a big ol’ word, way out there. You want to reserve it for something really big, like your suicide note (“Dear World,” wrote George Sanders, “I am leaving because I am bored.  I feel I have lived long enough.  I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool.  Good luck.”), or for a piece of your best writing, in which you demonstrate conviction.]

To the point where the NCAA recently ruled that a seventh-grader is now regarded as a “recruitable” athlete.  [Dump the quotation marks.]

Think about that for a second.

Which is not to say that all schools break the rules.

It is to say, though, that this is the basketball world all schools operate in, [Note the clumsy wordiness, the overuse of the to be verb, the ineffective repetition.]  to the point where virtually all big-time programs are fragile, a deck of cards  [Dead metaphor.]  that has the potential to crumble at any minute, whether it’s off-campus problems, allegations of recruiting violations, rumors of being carried academically, or other supposed atrocities [Tone problem.  What does he mean by calling these things supposed atrocities?  I don’t get it.] that highlight the fact that players often are not like the other students on campus, regardless of the hype to try to convince people that there are.  [There instead of they.  Mistakes will occur when you’re doing automatic writing.]

Suffice it to say there are no virgins here.  [Off we go to another dead metaphor.]”

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Update:  UD is grateful to James, a reader, for pointing out that both of her fatiguées take an extra e.

No, James.  You are not a pest.

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Another Update:  This is more like it.  The guy actually cares.