Here is one nomination for the most overrated novel of the 20th century.
I wonder about Gide and Sartre as well. J.D. Salinger is too easy a target, as is John Barth. How about Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird? I keep on thinking there is an obvious and juicy British nomination (just look up how the Penguin Guide to Classical Music treats Elgar recordings), but I can’t settle on a single glaring name which stands above all others.
For the most overrated major author, I’ll pick Carlos Fuentes. I love Mexico (and I’ve tried reading his works in Spanish), but I find he deadens the place rather than bringing it to life. Had he not been around for the fashionably left-wing, anti-imperialist 1960s, he’d just be another guy with a pen.
The most overrated good book is Henry James’s Portrait of a Lady, which although very good is far from his best work.
What are your picks?
← Previous Comments
I will nominate “One Hundred Years of Solitude” and “Wide Sargasso Sea”. Both appeared in the Modern Library 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century.
Barkley: On Mann, Dr. Faustus is under-rated. But my own favorite Mann is *Buddenbrooks*. As for Proust, *In Search of Lost Time* is the most wonderful thing I have ever read. Packing for the proverbial desert island, that’s the first thing that goes in – well, after the Wealth of Nations of course! (-;
Overrated old school: John Dos Passos
Overrated new school: Dave Eggers
Underrated old school: John Fante
Underrated new school: None. All of contemporary literature is overrated.
Eggers and Rand: Overrated. Potter: not literature.
But Steinbeck? Joyce? Heller? They may be widely taught and widely praised – but that’s because they’re damn good at writing. Lets not forget that novels become famous for a reason – and that cliches don’t start out as cliches.
徵信社
徵信
徵信社
One Hundred Years of Solitude.
A completely weak novel that was just a one shot stream of consciousness freestyle mess. Maybe you could say that he was the first of a very, very long line of so called ‘writers’ with ethnic names who the literary world simply lay down for due to pc sensibilities. Sherman Alexie, Junot Diaz, Chang Rae Lee, Amy Tan etc. Just a bunch of ethnic memoirists that no one has the nerve to criticize for fear of being called racist. I nominate the flood of ethnic,cultural assimilation memoirists as a whole as the most overrated novel in recent times. They’re not even writers and everyone falls at their feet when they trot out their teenage diaries and jazz them up a little with a thesaurus. sickening.
Overrated novel? How about Jack Kerouac’s ON THE ROAD? What exactly is the point of that novel?
To late to add an overrated novel? How about an author?
I wouldn’t normally mention his name but I think I am allowed to state Robert Ludlum as being the most overrated author. I wouldn’t normally call him an author but since Dan Brown’s ‘The Da Vinci Code’ has been mentioned…
To late to add an overrated novel? How about an author?
I wouldn’t normally mention his name but I think I am allowed to state Robert Ludlum as being the most overrated author. I wouldn’t normally call him an author but since Dan Brown’s ‘The Da Vinci Code’ has been mentioned…
How about “The Good Earth” by that “Nobel laureate” Pearl S Buck
← Previous Comments
Comments on this entry are closed.