Over at the New York Times’ Paper Cuts: A Blog About Books, David Kelly muses on overrated literature:
Of course, some famous writers have offered their own unofficial nominations. Vladimir Nabokov declared that “Don Quixote” was “cruel and crude” and that “Death in Venice” was “asinine” (compared with Kafka, he said, Mann was a “dwarf” or “plaster saint”). His onetime friend Edmund Wilson, on the basis of “The Trial” and “The Castle,” said he found it “impossible” to take Kafka seriously as a “major writer.” And then there’s Norman Mailer, who, after reading “Waiting for Godot” and seeing the 1956 Broadway production, proclaimed Beckett a “minor artist.” But Nabokov was Nabokov, Wilson was entitled to one blunder, and Mailer was always happy to make a fool of himself.
There are well over 300 reader responses so far, suggesting nominees for bloated or plain uninspired fiction: “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley; “any of Raymond Carver’s short-story collections”; “The Bell Jar”; and “anything … by the master of the run-on sentence, William Faulkner.”
The funny thing is, very few of the commenters display critical thinking to support their opinions.
I was never a fan of Ayn Rand. Too preachy.
By: eyeingtenure on March 15, 2008
at 12:43 pm
If you haven’t read it, you might like to give Tobias Wollf’s wonderful novel, “Old School”, a shot. He takes some appropriately devastating jabs at Rand in the book.
By: Rodger Jacobs on March 15, 2008
at 12:47 pm
We’ve all got one or two. A bete noir of literature. Alas, two of mine are Henry James and Dickens. I know what’s great about them, and I DO accept it–their virtues just don’t talk to me at all. Probably my fault. I like harder, more direct stuff.
By: John Shannon on March 15, 2008
at 4:34 pm
Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is one of my all-time favorites but I confess to not preferring much else he wrote, though I understand his importance to literature and his influence. One need only to study the collective works of John Irving to see the infuence of Dickens on contemporary authors.
I think you hit the nail on the head, though, John: For many people it’s a question of whether the author speaks to you personally, creates characters and conflict that you can relate to. In my younger and more vulnerable years, to pilfer from Fitzgerald, I couldn’t stomach John Updike. Now, nearing 50 years of age, I read Updike’s fiction — his essays are another matter, mind you — with absolute awe at his immense talent with words. .
By: Rodger Jacobs on March 15, 2008
at 4:40 pm
I think mine is De Sade. His books tend to be barely-described anecdotes strung between preachy invocations of the End of Morality.
By: David N. Scott on March 16, 2008
at 7:24 pm
Oh God. I loathe DeSade, David. And who’s that DeSade-worshipping contemporary who wrote “Dark Eros”? Him, too.
By: Rodger Jacobs on March 16, 2008
at 8:05 pm
I find “Don Quixote” loses quite a bit in translation. (A Spanish teacher who would obviously have rather been teaching literature required her 3rd year students to read it in the original Spanish.) It’s likely unfairly reviewed by those who’ve only read it in English.
The first line of “A Christmas Carol” is my favorite opening sentence of all time, but I had trouble slogging through most of his other works as well.
Overall, I think far too many people mistake personal opinion for objective criticism.
By: Julie Scott on March 17, 2008
at 8:47 am
Exactly, Julie. After several decades of reading, these days if a book does not strike my fancy it’s usually a result of something I can put my finger on: bad dialogue, a slow moving plot, a thesis that the writer fails to deliver on, always something that I can deconstruct intellectually, not emotionally.
By: Rodger Jacobs on March 17, 2008
at 8:57 am