a little bit on writing

I started reading "Bel Canto" by Ann Patchett, which according to the cover won the Pen/Faulkner Award. Which baffles me. I read 120 pages and I could turn to any page and it would be horrible. I haven't felt this way about professional writing since "Memoirs of a Geisha" (garbage!). The characters' backgrounds are nonsensical, the plot details are FAKE. Not cliches, no no, just entirely unrealistic in the characters' thoughts, uncooperative metaphors and descriptions. For example:

"Gen and Roxane each imagined the accompanist going home, as in sitting up in a seat by the window of a plane, looking out at the clouds that pooled over the host country."

Now what's wrong with this sentence? Two characters each imagining the exact same thing? (The accompanist was not getting on a plane, by the way, he died in front of them.) And clouds that "pooled"? How terrible a description is that? Clouds don't pool. Also the bit about the clouds is superfluous. It does not add anything (except maybe confusion as we try to imagine clouds pooling, and wonder why two characters would both happen to imagine pooling clouds).

Versus... a different book I started reading instead, much better, called "In the Lake of the Woods" by Tim O'Brien:

"For a time Kathy stood gazing at the night sky. It surprised her to see a nearly full moon, a stack of fast-moving clouds passing northward."

See? Can't you just see those clouds in the night sky "moving" fast and "passing" by? And how they are in stacks?! YES. And can't you just see how she could be surprised by a nearly full moon? Because it is kind of thrilling to behold. And haven't you ever stood gazing at the night sky? Everyone knows what that's like. See how it's done?

See the difference between good and bad writing? Doesn't have to be ornate or provocative, just simple and true. The best authors tap into something profound about human nature and human thought.