>>18332025
Your quote is worse. The goal is clearly humoristic, yet you try to make it appear too literary, specially by qualifying lawyers as ''independent''. I mean, what?
Also, the police detective bit makes it kind of wrong, because it does indeed bring to memory investigative journalists (the detectives of journalism, so to speak) and others journos who often end up in pretty bad situations (some of them go to war zones, others face death threats from politicians).
Not to mention the fact that Mailer gives a fine image of ''shaky hands'', making his sentence more concrete, while yours is all purple-prose abstractions. Notice also how he not only conveys incompetence for medicine, but also lack of courage through that image, i.e., he tells two things through a single image, while you show no image whatever, you merely tell.
Not that the Mailer quote can't be improved upon, it is not a great quote, just a funny one. It can be improved. But you didn't do it. Yours is worse.