What books do you think have been wildly overrated?

[walto]

The movie thread has been so much fun, I thought a similar book thread might also be a kick. I'll start out with some easy game: the Harry Potter books.

But I'm planning a move toward Gordimer and Updike very soon.

[bluenoter]

Not so fast, Walt. Have you read the Harry Potter books? I have, and I think that they're beautifully written (by which I don't mean to imply overwritten--not in the least), deserve every bit of the hype, and will endure as kids' classics.

[Tanager]

Anything by Tom Clancy, John Grisham, or Robert Ludlum.

[Brian Olewnick]

Originally posted by Tanager
Anything by Tom Clancy, John Grisham, or Robert Ludlum.

The first two or three Ludlums, where the plot didn't revolve around saving the world and neighboring planets, weren't halfbad for the genre (The Osterman Weekend, in particular) and his comic novel The Road to Gondolfo was, iirc, pretty good.

I was gonna say Grisham, but I can't imagine anyone actually rating him highly as a writer.

I might put forward Garp.

[Tanager]

Originally posted by Brian Olewnick
I was gonna say Grisham, but I can't imagine anyone actually rating him highly as a writer.

I have no idea why, but when The Firm came out, I remember folks toting around as if it were the one work for which they'd been waiting their entire lives. I also remember a guy with whom I used to work who would tell anyone who'd listen that he really appreciated Clancy's views on the Constitution and that that was how he wanted to be guided in his life.

I'm not making this up.

[GoodSpeak]

Clan Of The Cave Bear.

Ugh.

[Salvador Dali Lama]

Damn near everything on the best seller list.

A lot of "classics".

anything by Steinbeck. Especially Grapes of Wrath.

[al j]

Road to Gandolfo was fun!

Grisham: I enjoyed all hell out of TIME TO KILL, a real page-turner in the true sense of the term. If you're looking for good writing with an author like Grisham then you are reading it for the wrong reasons.


DeLillo's UNDERWORLD (the prologue is the only thing going for it)

Kerouac's ON THE ROAD (rapidly lost its luster for me and doesn't hold up near as well as some of his others, like DHARMA BUMS)

Steinbeck's TORTILLA FLAT (I was way into his work at the time and was hoping for another score, but this one turned out to be shit)

George Eliot's SILAS MARNER (can somebody tell me what all the hubbub is with her work?)

[Captain Hate]

Originally posted by Brian Olewnick
I might put forward Garp.

Don't go there, Brian!!

Ludlum marks an epiphany (I hope I spelled that right) for me; I was reading one of his books on the beach at Ocean City, Maryland at around 1980 (I don't know which one; not the first couple) and it hit me: This book is shit; I'm 30 years old and I'm not wasting my time reading shit anymore.

The most overrated book is The Charterhouse of Parma (at least the most recent translation). Why anybody (including Henry James!!) considered it anything but boring, implausible lightweight fluff is a mystery to me.

[walto]

Blue, I read as much as I could stand of the first one (about 3/4), and I also saw both (extremely literal, I've been told) re-tellings on film. My wife and daughter have both read the first three.

I think the books are among the most derivative bestsellers in the history of bestsellers. But what's worse, even if there were no magic in them at all, I'd consider them entirely unbelievable, if only because every single character is entirely unbelievable. But there are other reasons, too. The points awarded to the various "houses" are silly and random, there's a deus ex machina almost every chapter (sometimes a flying car shows up, sometimes a phoenix), one can never know what's a "big deal": flying apparently not, but "parcel talking"...wow!

I could go on, but what's the point? I've got two kids, and get to read a lot of children's books. To me, these are among the flat out worst I've come in contact with.

[Chris Castelle]

The Lord of the Rings.

[Salvador Dali Lama]

You're just trying to stir up shit Chris. Either that or you have down syndrome.

[Monte Smith]

I'll second the Lord of the Rings, though I understand that the books give much pleasure to many geeks and closeted Dungeons and Dragons fans.

Come on, the point of this thread is "wildly overrated," and so people like Grisham don't belong. Everyone knows he is airport literature, even he does--I hope.

James Joyce! There I said it. No one can have every literature department on his side without being wiiiildly overrated.

[bluenoter]

Walt, what can I say? I'm amazed that you feel that strongly about the Potter books. I do wonder whether your perceptions were colored by your having seen the movies, literal retellings or not (I haven't seen them).

To me, the books were derivative of only eminently borrowable mythic material. "Believability" is simply not a standard it would have occurred to me to apply. I can see the other shortcomings you mention, but they didn't bother me.

I'm not a parent and don't normally read children's books. What did your wife and daughter think?

[stonemonkts]

Originally posted by Monte Smith
James Joyce! There I said it. No one can have every literature department on his side without being wiiiildly overrated.

The instant I saw the thread title, I knew my man would be dissed by someone. Et Tu, Monte?

The problem with putting Joyce on the most wildly overrated list is this: HARDLY ANYONE HAS EVER TRULY READ THE MAN'S WORKS, NEVERMIND ACTUALLY UNDERSTANDING MORE THAN A SLIVER.

I would imagine anyone who understands him would have been motivated to try, perhaps by the sheer brilliance of the prose (the sound of the words spoken aloud initially drew me in way back).

In other words, to understand Joyce is to love him.

Joyce can never be considered "wildly" overrated. Unless you mean people who love him are also wild about singing his praises.

The most overrated book in the history of mankind is the Christian Bible. There, I said it.

[Monte Smith]

What can I say, stone? Last time I read Portrait of the Artist I threw the book across the Elizabethan Garden in Central Park and decided that I don't give a damn about hell, epiphanies, or Irish Catholics.

[Nate Dorward]

Walto: well I had the advantage of starting the Harry Potter series with book 3 & then working backwards: the series actually gets stronger (& longer) as it progresses. Rowling's writing is fine, though merely functional (fine by me); some aspects are laid on too thick for an adult reader (the repetitively nasty portrait of Harry's surrogate family, e.g.) but one hardly reads the books for finesse, but for brightly-coloured invention & the hairpin-turn plots. If you're looking for smarter writing in recent kid's books try the Series of Unfortunate Events books, which are the closest thing you'll get to Edward Gorey in novel form. (Another series that gets better & better as it progresses: it begins as an apparently endless string of shaggy-dog stories but as it continues Snicket begins to do an elaborate takeoff on the classic American paranoid novel--everything connecting to everything--even tossing in a parody of the end of The Crying of Lot 49 at one point.) -- Another series I'm quite fond of (now completed) is the Mennyms series (the author's name escapes me right now: Sue somethingorother), a surprisingly downbeat series of books based around the lives of a family of living dolls. That sounds like a trivial premise, but the paradoxes & miseries of their situation are worked out carefully (for instance, the problems produced by their being temporally out of synch with humans, never aging or changing) & their intense fear of being discovered & the dry, unsentimental writing keep things interesting. What I like about them above all is that unlike much popular fiction (including the Potter books) plot is a fairly unimportant component of the books.

Joe: haven't read Silas Marner but plenty of other George Eliot books. I'm not sure what to say: Middlemarch for instance is one of the most intensely worked & scrutinizing portraits of the human comedy in the 19th century English novel.

There are certainly many books I have little time for which seem very popular, or sometimes (as in the case of say Orwell's last two novels or Tolkien) I can see merit in but am distrustful of their hold on the wider culture (to the point where open polls of the greatest fiction of the last century inevitably place those authors' works at the top). Often the problem is just that once a book or author gets stuck in the pantheon it's hard to unstick him/her/it: it's the equivalent of an idee recue, like "Shakespeare didn't write Shakespeare" or the like. Thus the reputation of authors like Dylan Thomas or Seamus Heaney (to land on two figures from my own area of specialty) gets set in stone in the wider opinion, & is virtually unshakeable, very little responsive to the estimates of those actually acquainted with contemporary poetry.

But, all that said, I don't have any strong expectations that my own reading interests mesh with those of others, & the idea of implicitly arraigning others for esteeming books I don't or vice versa is in the end a bit stomach-churning.

[john williams]

Originally posted by Chris Castelle
The Lord of the Rings.

I agree - too wordy. Anyone who goes on for a whole chapter about friggin mushrooms needs an editor.

[Nate Dorward]

Originally posted by stonemonkts
[B]The problem with putting Joyce on the most wildly overrated list is this: HARDLY ANYONE HAS EVER TRULY READ THE MAN'S WORKS, NEVERMIND ACTUALLY UNDERSTANDING MORE THAN A SLIVER.[b]

Oh, nonsense. Countless people have read Joyce, from those grinding their way through a unversity syllabus to adolescents looking for dirty passages to ordinary joe-blow common readers. It's absurd to pretend that there's some "true" way to read or understand the books. & it's especially absurd to claim that no-one who doesn't "love" Joyce's writing actually "understands" it.

This kind of response, plus the response above that those who don't rate Tolkien highly are suffering from Downs Syndrome, is precisely the kind of thing I meant when I was saying how stomachchurning this kind of taste-rating can be.

[stonemonkts]

Originally posted by Monte Smith
What can I say, stone? Last time I read Portrait of the Artist I threw the book across the Elizabethan Garden in Central Park and decided that I don't give a damn about hell, epiphanies, or Irish Catholics.

That's quite an image. I once flung Proust across my college quad, but retreived it immediately. I was later rewarded for my efforts.

FWIW Portrait is my least favorite. The memorable scenes for me are the episode with the prostitute, and on the bridge while his father consults the priests. Dubliners was the finer work, as a whole. Ulysses is my favorite. I've read Finnegan's Wake several times but do not claim to appreciate it fully, but hope to eventually, if I live long enough. Guide books help translate the many references contained, but I feel true understanding must come within oneself, like one of those things you don't give a damn about.

[moneyp]

I'll cop to a few of these. The LOTR trilogy was really rough sledding for me. Took me forever to finish them.

Clancy: I made it through a couple of not so thinly-veiled xenophobic chapters of PATRIOT GAMES until Jack Ryan gave the Prince of Wales a pep talk than proceeded to tell the Queen what was wrong with her country....

THE FIRM was actually pretty good, I thought, but I understand his follow-up books are just more of the same.

Joyce: Was underwhelmed by ULYSSES (though I'm willing to give it another try) and FINNEGAN'S WAKE. Liked PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST... and THE DUBLINERS, though.

How about Henry James? Kinda liked TURN OF THE SCREW, but found him too lugubrious to finish anything else.

Strangely underwhelmed by LOLITA. Haven't read any other Nabokov.

Outright hated THE NAKED LUNCH and THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING when I first read 'em, but came around.

[Nate Dorward]

For Henry James try Washington Square, which is one of his most enjoyable books (& with maddening predictability is one of the few things James left out of his collected works). I also liked Portrait of a Lady & What Maisie Knew (the latter is a bit odd as it is an unusually obvious instance of a "transitional" work: about 3/4ths of the way through middle-period James becomes late-period James, I gather in part the result of James's switching to dictation to a typist as a method of composition).

[stonemonkts]

Originally posted by Nate Dorward
Oh, nonsense. Countless people have read Joyce, from those grinding their way through a unversity syllabus to adolescents looking for dirty passages to ordinary joe-blow common readers. It's absurd to pretend that there's some "true" way to read or understand the books. & it's especially absurd to claim that no-one who doesn't "love" Joyce's writing actually "understands" it.

This kind of response, plus the response above that those who don't rate Tolkien highly are suffering from Downs Syndrome, is precisely the kind of thing I meant when I was saying how stomachchurning this kind of taste-rating can be.

Ok, my statements were couched in a somewhat adolescent style, and I've already noted how this upsets your stomach from previous posts, so your response is no surprise.

I'm not suggesting there is any true way to read or understand his books, rather I relayed how whenever I ask anyone who dislikes Joyce if they've ever actually read him, what I get back is something like "I tried but I couldn't understand half of what he was saying". So the point is not how one reads Joyce, but whether the regular joe-blows who diss the man HAVE read any of him. I've never encountered anyone who has read Ulysses, for instance, and didn't profess a profound respect at the very least. Granted I don't seek out conversations regarding Joyce. Most of my experiences with others' opinions have come because someone spotted me reading him, and felt the need to comment.


My vote for most wildly overrated author (even though the thread asks for a "book") is Henry James. A boring prude if ever there was one.

EDIT: I honestly sent this post prior to reading any others after Nate's initial repsonse to me. Pure coincidence that we both mention James.

[Monte Smith]

How about any author who has ever received the Nobel? Excepting the recipients that I like, of course.

[moneyp]

Nate: That's what I've heard. WASHINGTON SQUARE is on the pile to read.

[Squaredancecalling Steve]

The thought that James Joyce is overrated is beyond the pale.

mone: the next time you tackle 'Ulysses', try going along with a companion book. The old Stuart Gilbert guidebook was excellent in many ways, but too quirky and wordy; but the more recent one, 'The New Bloomsday Book' by Harry Blamires, is very helpful, keeps close to the narrative line, and provides useful background information for the major symbolism and historical references without getting bogged down in the details that bedevil Gilbert. My last time through Ulysses was my third, the first time I felt I had control of the entire book, and among the most powerful literary experiences of my life. The game is worth the candle!

It's so easy to miss things in 'Ulysses' -- there's a great scene in which Leopold Bloom sees Blazes Boylan just before him in the street, almost passes out from the shock, and staggers into a museum to recover; but the scene is written from Bloom's perspective with such a compression (Bloom is talking to himself, after all) that most readers miss it completely.

And 'Dubliners' is sublime -- 'The Dead' is among the greatest of all short stories in world literature, and 'A Painful Case', 'A Mother', 'Eveline', 'The Boarding House' 'The Sisters', 'Araby' and 'Clay' are all classics.

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

Also hard to see Steinbeck as overrated -- I don't think he's ever been considered in a class with Hemingway, Faulkner or Fitzgerald, and none of them is in a class with Melville or Whitman. Steinbeck is generally considered to be a solid third tier American writer, and that sounds about right to me. (Toritilla Flat is a dreadful book, though, not nearly as good as Of Mice and Men, The Pearl, The Winter of Our Discontent, or East of Eden.)

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

Given the huge popularity of absolutely formulaic dreck and mindless pap, I'm reluctant to single out any of the 'serious' writers of the past or present as overrated. When writers of the quality of Richard Yates and William Gaddis are largely ignored and the literary equivalants of Kenny G are making it big, the notions of overrated and underrated seemed to be cut loose from any moorings in literary reality.


°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

But not wishing to be a complete killjoy on Walter's thread, I'll suggest a couple of more or less contemporary overrated writers:
Joyce Carol Oates
Tom Robbins
John Gardner

[Douglas]

Clancy et al may not be classed as literature, but on the basis of one page of one book, I’d agree with Tanager. On a flight recently, I glanced at the Clancy my neighbour was reading. Following some dialogue with a reference to a codeword used in WWII, a three-quarter page excursus describes the background to the invasion of Sicily. Only then did the dialogue resume. So much for plotting!

[walto]

"If you're looking for smarter writing in recent kid's books try the Series of Unfortunate Events books, which are the closest thing you'll get to Edward Gorey in novel form."

Yeah, I read the first four of those. The guy is funny and can write, but they were just too unrelentingly bleak for me. When they got into forced labor and industrial accidents, I'd had enough. As to JK Rowling, I've heard they get better as they go on. Maybe that's true. My wife and daughter like 'em just fine.

On some of the others mentioned: I love George Eliot and Joyce, though I find the latter's later works slow-going as well as beautiful. Hard for me, anyway. James is up and down for me. Some great short stories. I liked Steinbeck a lot back in high school, but I'm not sure what I'd think today. In college, I liked a couple of Gardner's books (was "Nickel Mountain" one?) and disliked a couple others. I heard him talk once. Quite a character. I also enjoyed "Lord of the Rings" back then (but liked "The Hobbit" more for some reason). Oates has a tin ear. I love love love "Lolita."

[Tanager]

The Once and Future King, anyone?

[john williams]

Originally posted by walto
I love George Eliot and Joyce, though I find the latter's later works slow-going as well as beautiful. Hard for me, anyway. [/B]

Yes, Joyce writes some of the most beautiful prose and I feel like I should be devouring it. However, I only ever finished A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and unsuccesfully attempted to read Ulysses and Finnigan's Wake.

A few years ago, whilst still an undergraduate at uni, There was a group who met with a tutor for regular group reading of Finnigan's wake at lunch once a week. I remember the tutor saying at the time "We don't have a clue what its about but we are really enjoying it."