post what you think are overrated classics

velveteen rabbit

Um, The Confessions of Zeno.

Yeah, while I like some of her stuff, Virgina Woolf's very overrated. Also, Anais Nin (though does anyone really rate her any more?). And some Somerset Maugham is just AWFUL ('Theatre', I'm looking at you). Same for DH Lawrence - some great stuff (esp short stories), some real crap.

Lord of the Flies

I disagree with To the Lighthouse. I read it twice this year & found it more moving than most modernist novels.

Wuthering Heights is overrated tho, especially by Harold Bloom.

I love To the Lighthouse.

I find Jane Austen overrated. She's not bad, just ok.

The DaVinci Code is overrated.

I thought The DaVinci Code had a picquant what-the-fuckness that more than justified its existence.

Zuleika Dobson

Next, I suppose, you'll be telling us you don't like watercress sandwiches either.

They all kill themselves, I found it depressing not funny.

Also Mrs. Nickleby in Nicholas Nickleby was a really irritating character, justice was not done with her, it would have been a much better story if she'd been raped and murdered by the mad gentleman next door. That would be a joke i'd laugh at.

If you found that depressing, I strongly urge you to confine yourself in the future to listening to recordings of Up With People, while gazing at pictures of puppies and kittens on the Internet.

Henceforth I shall try to do derive greater amusement from the deaths of fellow humans.

Anything by Kazuo Ishiguro (Never Let Me Go was very moving though)

The Blind Assassin (Otherwise titled "no one knows who their father is")
God of Small Things (HUUgely depressing)

Tom Jones (never explained how and why Bridget Allworthy hid her pregnancy)

See, 'Never Let Me Go' was very over-rated: second-hand sci-fi ideas told without conviction, set in a world that doesn't ring true the moment you think about how it's all meant to work. But I loved 'Remains of the Day'.

Over-rated: bloody Duras' 'The Lover'

set in a world that doesn't ring true the moment you think about how it's all meant to work

Yeah exactly, though it was still very moving

'guess how much i love you'

This much? [________________________________________]

Is that a classic? What's the definition of a classic really.

i used to feel this way about 'the phantom tollbooth', but i came to a kind of peace with it.

Because it is great.

(never explained how and why Bridget Allworthy hid her pregnancy)

Why didn't need to be explained. And some knowledge of the clothing of the period also renders how moot.

An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser.

I suspect that I feel this way because his work really hasn't aged all that well. The heavy, dense prose is much too difficult to get through.

Slate asks a bunch of writers this question:

http://www.slate.com/id/2301312/

My main answer would have to be Proust.

If you don't like it, I have others.

huh i searched for an ILB thread to post that slate thing but couldn't find it

im not sure Moby Dick was worth the three months it took me to plough through the thing.

that article made me angry

although surprisingly approving for once of elif batuman

all those writers interviewed probably suck

yeah ive got to say i kinda hate this shit. would much rather have writers talk abt underrated stuff

thought this was going to be about overrated ilx posts

For Elif to bitch about PhD-lit and to be then interviewed along with writers who she probably wouldn't read is, I'd suggest, not a good look. That said, she come across really well.

I could say The Magic Mountain in terms of time spent/what I got out of it. Then again I don't feel time spent with a bad book (especially one that lingers in the memory long afterwards) is ever time wasted. Hate any notions to maximise the quality of my time.

This question makes me angry then sad then go somewhere else.

dickens, obv

hope you went somewhere else

it was either that or work back thru the thread SBing mfers

you're just a literary starkey

au contraire it's just the word "overrated" i want erasing from the language

man it's murder waiting for the football to start

things are often overrated, it's vm a thing

overrated by who??? there's like a World Rating Stuff Committee that sits down and sets the official rating of everything but then Mister X, super-genius, sits down and reads a book and is NOT DECEIVED by the idiotic overrating of the World Rating Stuff Committee because he thought this book was a bit pish, the soulless git?

that way leads to a world of "Blowjobs and Acid and Foie Gras are mad overrated claims filthy savage" headlines and oh hang on this is ILX

you overrate that committee

great expectations, and i mean all jokes aside, but y'know

thought it was Hard Times you had a hard time with

soured dickens forever i think

nah i think that was his father's imprisonment for bankruptcy

oh wow a bunch of book critics and creative writing teachers didn't really enjoy reading gravity's rainbow or ulysses, STOP PRESSES

yeah. heartily approve of matt weiland's trolling tho

On a recent episode of South Park, the kids got all excited about reading The Catcher in the Rye, the supposedly scandalous novel that's been offending teachers and parents for generations. They were, of course, horribly disappointed: As Kyle says, it's "just some whiny annoying teenager talking about how lame he is."

Is it more than that? Lots of people, including some writers I revere, seem to think so. But I've never been able to see what they're seeing, nor can I buy into the myth that Holden is some sort of representative American teenager. He's a self-pitying prep school esthete obsessed with his little sister, the kind of boy who takes it upon himself to erase obscene graffiti from bathroom walls. And that fantasy about catching children in a field of rye? "Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around—nobody big, I mean—except me." What's that all about? I'm not suggesting we need to like Holden in order to consider him important, I'm just baffled by the reverence and affection so many readers seem to feel for this peculiar creep.

But for what it's worth, I could never read The Catcher in the Rye; even as an unhappy adolescent I found the voice cloying, annoying, and frankly phony. And for the record, ducks do very well in Central Park in the winter. If worst comes to worst, Holden, they fly. They're birds for Chrissake!

'catcher in the rye'

Brave New World

aw that's on my shelf for attention

people who think Ulysses is overrated are so fucking tedious

I think they have a different relationship to books than me

meh

overrated by who??? there's like a World Rating Stuff Committee that sits down and sets the official rating of everything

This is either ill thought out or disingenuous. When people use terms like 'overrated' they are fairly obviously referring to tendencies of discourse carried out within a certain cohort.

I don't have any particular problem with calling things out as overrated, but I almost invariably hate articles like this one, which really are a smugfest, and very often a chance for intellectual types to spout anti-intellectual bullshit to prove some tendentious point (ooh, Ulysses is pretentious, ooh, Shakespeare is 'wordy', ffs people).

otmfm

There are many quite boring parts in Ulysses but few of the people who waste time getting lol smug about hating it don't mention the awesome not-boring chapters (the entirety of the Stephen section and "Hades," the first two Bloom chapters, etc).

Agree with Corey

agree with Emily

well said

don't particularly agree about boring parts in Ulysses

except insofar as anything, including exciting things, can seem boring, to a person, at a time, in a place

One of the traditional definitions of a classic is a book that is still read and appreciated (and generally in print or obtainable) a century or more after its first appearance. At present, this would give us a cut-off date of 1911m which would exclude most of the books that have been discussed so far.

As for overrrated or not, obviously not every book will satisfy every person. Most classics will be pretty meh for a large percentage of readers at some point in their lives. What's important is that they continue to speak to enough people that they never slip into complete disuse or irrelevance, despite how old they are.

Given that, I'd say that any classic could be mentioned here by someone, and that fact would not be very revealing about the classic status of the book, but rather a revelation about the reader and what they are currently able to appreciate or enjoy.

tendencies of discourse carried out within a certain cohort"

to put it another way then: "overrated" implies a world of caring about the opinion of other people who i don't feel are more qualified than me to have an opinion, and it's a world i'm trying hard to avoid

but you're prepared to kick back against the world of uncaring ppl, by the same measure.

Course, the enthusiasm of others is generally a more pleasant ambience than disinterest (or worse) so that's understandable i guess

One of the traditional definitions of a classic is a book that is still read and appreciated (and generally in print or obtainable) a century or more after its first appearance.

is this really traditional? interesting qn.

like, the 'temple classics' list had shit more recent than that.

(& obvi you won't find many books that have been continuously in print for more than ~150 years...)

the enthusiasm of others is generally a more pleasant ambience than disinterest (or worse)

i think that's it really. read something Morton Feldman once said about "not arguing with talent any more" and Morton wasn't very good at holding to it but i like it as an idea. any art that's got currency beyond the artist's lifetime has something to offer i think and fuck worrying about whether too many of the wrong sort of people like it.

except Lawrence, obv, who is fucking terrible forever.

<3

One of the traditional definitions of a classic is a book that is still read and appreciated (and generally in print or obtainable) a century or more after its first appearance.

All those Galsworthy, Walter Scott seem untouched...

Perry Anderson reads Walter Scott.

Perry Anderson seems to have read nearly everything there is to read, and good on him.

Another one for the untouched classics: Somerset Maugham

Really? Lots of people who don't ordinarily read used to ask for Of Human Bondage at the bookstore where I worked a few years ago.

Ha! Ok, gonna backtrack, my 'evidence' comes from the pile of Maugham books that don't look as if they've been touched.

Still don't see anyone reading these...

Galsworthy, Walter Scott seem untouched...

This goes right to the heart of the criterion of still being read and appreciated. Some so-called classics are only being read because young people are being forced to read them in the context of school, not because of any personal inclination. They've become textbooks, not living literature.

I'd say that if, after being 'exposed' to Galsworthy or Walter Scott in the classroom, no one ever goes on to voluntarily read any works of theirs, then those presumed classics are effectively dead letters... or should I say "whited sepulchers"?

how many people have to voluntarily read s.thing before it's a classic? i think it's a bit of a stretch to say schoolkids read things under duress whereas adults are totally free agents. adults are often pretty herd-minded ime.

i wd be surprised to hear anybody talk about Somerset Maugham nowadays, had no idea he was still read, always thought he was more of yr "popular in his day" kind of guy.

xp yeah they had to make me read Joseph Andrews at school then suddenly i realised books from hundreds of years ago cd be funny and relevant to me and away we went

only thing I've read by Somerset Maugham is Ashenden, his spy story, it was ok but can't hold a candle to Eric Ambler.

right now I'm re-reading Joseph Heller's Catch-22, mostly so I can discuss it w/my son who read it school last spring. it's considered a classic in the states, not sure of its status in the UK though I was surprised to see it listed as one of JG Ballard's favorite novels. I'm not ready to declare it an overrated classic but am finding it a bit repetitive and slow-going. still i can totally understand why it's considered classic, this is basically every complaint about the ww2 era army i heard from my dad growing up, woven into a rich satirical tapestry. not sure what its relevance might be in the "war against terror" era or what my kid and and his high school classmates made of it.

as for that linked article, what a tool kit. lee seigel needs to drop acid.

i wd be surprised to hear anybody talk about Somerset Maugham nowadays, had no idea he was still read, always thought he was more of yr "popular in his day" kind of guy.

i've gone along feeling he was maybe bigger in the US [via bush]

like the guy who wrote 'se7en' held him in high regard

i loved loved loved 'catch 22' when i read it as a teenager, relevance be damned

seems pretty relevant to anybody who's worked in a reasonably-sized bureaucratic institution, fwiw

xp

also yeah a lot of Maugham stuff was turned into Hollywood movies i think so maybe his cultural cachet is bigger in the US

i read of human bondage "voluntarily" when i was about 25 based on a recommendation and liked it a lot more than i thought i would.

He's one of those Important Writers that non-readers lean towards, like Ayn Rand.

I can't imagine anyone taking any enjoyment from Lord Of The Flies. Am I wrong?

yes. next.

Catch 22 is so overrated imo that I assume I'm missing something obvious

try reading it. next.

i gives a fuck if a book is deemed overrated... idk if this is bc i didn't 'study english in a formal setting' after the age of 17, but rly

When people use terms like 'overrated' they are fairly obviously referring to tendencies of discourse carried out within a certain cohort.

you can guess my level of respect for the majority of people in this uh cohort.

im interested in how some stuff stays in circulation and other stuff doesn't, and that's related to the 'tendencies of discourse', but unless you're proposing to do away with critics i don't see how the whole problem of over- and under-rating is to be solved.

unless like it's not really a problem

re-reading i wasn't obviously sarcastic enough. yeah.

oops sorry okay i'm gonna take it outside for a ride

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v165/noodle_vague/20090425193707George_Cruikshank_-_Tristram_Shandy_Plate_V_My_Uncle_Toby_on_his_Hobby-horse.jpg

^^^ underrated classic

(not because of any "proto-postmodernism" nonsense, but because it is totes hilarious and charming)

public fortification is a good idea

Is it really underrated anymore? I think it isn't because of its proto-postmodernism (which I think is a real thing and wouldn't put in quotes).

I suppose one book where the idea of something being overrated might have some meaning beyond it being something you can't see what all the fuss is about is the King James Bible. It's almost idolatrously venerated beyond its religious importance by some - that is to say the version seems more important than the book it's a version of, it's the only version of the Bible. Its cadences and formulations have passed into use of every English speaker. It's often beautiful, although not uniquely different in that respect from its immediate predecessors, and often wrong, at least in the light of its modern versions.

I guess that 'some' might need glossing. Who? Well, a certain type of linguistic conservative, I guess. High churchgoers. What does overrated mean here? Something which holds an importance for some beyond its intended importance? Something like that maybe.

Diamaird MacCulloch essay on its quatercentenary. Also very good is the Adam Nicolson book that's referred to - The Power and the Glory I think it's called.

you know whats really overrated? the beatles

well yeah but kip

just got back into town after camping for a week and am really excited about reading this thread

I saw a lot of marmots

Underworld - Delillo
Middlemarch - George Eliot
Ferdydurke - Gombrowicz
Lady Chatterly's Lover – Lawrence
The Good Soldier – Ford Madox Ford
Deptford Trilogy - Davies

that is my list of overrated 'classics' and i will rep for ulysses, finnegans (although i've never read it end to end, i've enjoy'd hunks of it at a time) and gravity's rainbow (even though it took me 3 tries and the end gets very dull

)

that article is mighty white

also really dumb

cosign on chatterly, it's tripe

Catch 22 is the best book imo

some ppl underrate the beatles but they're wrong

Yale: Mary and I have invented the Academy of the Overrated for such notables as Gustav Mahler--
Mary: Isak Dinesen and Carl Jung--
Yale: Scott Fitzgerald--
Mary: Lenny Bruce. Can't forget Lenny Bruce, now, can we? How about Norman Mailer?
Isaac: I think those people are all terrific, every one that you mentioned.
Yale: Who was that guy you had?
Mary: No, I didn't. It was yours. Heinrich Boll.
Isaac: Overrated?
Yale: Don't wanna leave out Heinrich.
Isaac:Gee, what about Mozart? You guys don't wanna leave out Mozart, I mean, while you're trashing people.

don't like lawrence's fiction too much but will rep for this pretty hard

http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTkbMZmDKKb8JberdYNPM48DmwxTekjo1GUAzY2ydn3atPCkJttdA

xps to remy's post:

I'm reading The Good Soldier thinking, This guy is American? The language he writes in is really distracting and unnatural, but the way character is revealed and the construction of the narrative are really masterful.

Middlemarch seems like it's for a certain kind of book reader, like someone with the mentality for playing Warhammer 40k and thinking up backstories of entire dynasties, but who doesn't want to lay it all out on the table like that and chooses a tidier hobby such as reading.

That BR Myers book, A Reader's Manifesto, talked me out of reading Delillo. Was I wrong to be talked out of it?

is heinrich boll rated? Only ever heard of him as a local wonder tbh

i am not rising to the bait of freaking out in defense of middlemarch

Ok, I didn't mean it that way, the anger horseshoe way.

if br myers has talked you in or out of anything you might want to reconsider what you are doing with your brain

Middlemarch seems like it's for a certain kind of book reader, like someone with the mentality for playing Warhammer 40k and thinking up backstories of entire dynasties, but who doesn't want to lay it all out on the table like that and chooses a tidier hobby such as reading.

Or for readers who like good stories and characters.

I, on the other hand, will happily snap the bait.

i held my breath on Middlemarch and counted to 10.

Ok, or people who like good stories and characters. I don't feel strongly about this.

Did you read the book, max? I don't agree with all of his reasoning, but it's really not a bad book, and when he says, "Read this excerpt. This excerpt was highlighted in a NYT book review as an example of the best writing this book has to offer. Isn't it bad?" it will be be pretty bad, and he'll reasonably lay out why. Whatever his failings, even his critics admit that he's good at picking out passages of bad writing. I haven't read any of his articles, though, and maybe I would dislike him if I did.

There is no difference between what a book talks about and how it is made.

yeah i havent read the br myers book but the article on which its based is just... i mean its everything that the word "overrated" represents, smug empty challops, and he just flat-out doesnt _get_ delillo, at all

I don't agree with all of his reasoning, but it's really not a bad book, and when he says, "Read this excerpt. This excerpt was highlighted in a NYT book review as an example of the best writing this book has to offer. Isn't it bad?" it will be be pretty bad, and he'll reasonably lay out why. Whatever his failings, even his critics admit that he's good at picking out passages of bad writing. I haven't read any of his articles, though, and maybe I would dislike him if I did.

B.R. Myers is a total and complete hack and a waste of time. he wants everything in the world of fiction to be back in the 19th Century

skimming over the atlantic essay again i realize i had forgotten how much of it is devoted to him taking on strawcritics

Nothing gives me the feeling of having been born several decades too late quite like the modern "literary" best seller. Give me a time-tested masterpiece or what critics patronizingly call a fun read—Sister Carrie or just plain Carrie. Give me anything, in fact, as long as it doesn't have a recent prize jury's seal of approval on the front and a clutch of precious raves on the back. In the bookstore I'll sometimes sample what all the fuss is about, but one glance at the affected prose—"furious dabs of tulips stuttering," say, or "in the dark before the day yet was"—and I'm hightailing it to the friendly black spines of the Penguin Classics.

This is his opening paragraph of that essay and all this says to me is, he wants his fiction a certain way, and is unable to accept modern fiction on its own terms.

It has become fashionable, especially among female novelists, to exploit the license of poetry while claiming exemption from poetry's rigorous standards of precision and polish.

you know, i love the 19th century, too, but fuck this dude

that whole essay makes it sound like the contemporary fiction establishment slept with his girl or something

you know, the kind of critical deflation he practices in that article, the close reading, it's convincing; i can understand why you were convinced, bamcquern, but i just don't know how much it's worth. it creates this big show of being very analytical, but mostly it's just unfair? like, point-missing for the sake of it, dressing it up in close attention to language. also, as max points out, whenever he's talking about the state of criticism today it just sounds like he's making shit up.

like, yes, close attention to language is worthwhile, but not if your only intention is to discredit

Is this dude William Bennett?

Underworld - Delillo
Middlemarch - George Eliot
Ferdydurke - Gombrowicz
Lady Chatterly's Lover – Lawrence
The Good Soldier – Ford Madox Ford
Deptford Trilogy - Davies

i thought the good soldier was quite good but tbh i can't remember much about it 22 years later
will also stan for sons & lovers
couldn't get into ferdydurke at all gave up pretty quickly
i will read something by george eliot one day
kinda dislike robertson davies

its no big secret or revelation that a lot of book critics are stupid or annoying, but that doesnt mean that the books they review well are also stupid and annoying

^^^

Haha, you guys convinced me.

I started a gombrowicz book and I was enjoying it but I got distracted. I really like the good soldier.

I liked Gombrowicz's Pornografia a lot

Deptford Trilogy - Davies

g2h

In defense of bamcquern (and, sure, Myers) - he asked 'Did you read the book?' and every post after that was just 'the article' over and over. They're quite different, and the book makes a much better argument and generally casts the author in a much more positive light. He names many works of modern fiction that he likes and explains why, even comparing and contrasting them with the specific books he trashes, i.e. if you were intrigued by the genre of X but thought the writing sucked, you might enjoy Y.

i think deptford trilogy was too... canadian for me? i know i know, i read it back to back with crowley's aegypt cycle, which i also hated, so i'm not to be trusted about anything ever. middlemarch might be better than i remember – i read it at 19, and i wasn't predisposed to liking much of anything then. i like silas marner and daniel deronda, so it's not eliot/cross that's to blame, probably, but more my own ADHD or lack of interest in dynastic squabbles something. As for Good Soldier, I just thought the language was ponderous and bizarre and antiquated, and it reminded me of Henry James and came across poorer by comparison. I dislike "stuffy" as a literary style.