Name a respected/highly regarded author whose work you can't stand

[Sandpiper]

I'll start off.

Ernest Hemingway

[Beaverhausen]

1. I'm with you on Hemingway

I'm also not too hot on Anne Rice either.

[fudge stripe cookays]

108. I'm with you on BOTH. n/t

[Az]

2. Highly regarded by some, world record for most works published

Jack Chick. :puke:

[Nalgenelover Snort]

69. Ergh, I agree.

I wrote my final paper for physical anthropology on his tract about Why Professors Who Teach Evolution are Going to Hell. This particular one was a brilliant piece of propaganda that almost had me convinced until I re-read it more critically.

Mostly, though, his works are hysterically transparent. I like to read them when I need a good laugh. His ones about L'il Suzy are especially funny.

In case anyone's curious:

http://www.chick.com/catalog/tractlist.asp

[22181]

3. I'm with you on Anne Rice and I'll add...

James Joyce & Mark Twain

Can you believe I majored in English? (I actually passed many a college course covering these two without getting through a full copy of any of their works.)

[Az]

6. Gonna hate you forever for the Twain ref

Ok everyone gets their own opinion. But not about Twain. You must bow down and acknowledge his greatness....... (taking a deep breath)..... maintain low tones .. maintain low tones..... better now.

[22181]

7. Sorry... But at least I still can't stand Bush? Does that help?? :)

[Az]

9. Still dizzy.... can't trgoype

[hlthe2b]

19. Yes.Mark Twain would have been today's democrat! Gotta love him!

[July]

37. Hemingway came to mind as soon as I saw this thread.

Love Joyce and Twain, though.

[BigMcLargehuge]

66. Never bothered with Joyce

Liked Twain, liked Twain alot.

Wish Anne Rice was never born. Man, I can't stand her. I think I started to grow ovaries trying to read Interview with the Vampire. I never made it past the first few chapters of The Feast of All Saints before falling asleep and whapping my head on the table... and her porn is amateurish and silly, really silly.

[mongo]

4. Dr Phil.

Well, he started out as an author anyway.

His show is such pap.

[Beware the Beast Man]

5. Michael Crichton

Almost always the same premise: scientific wonder, sometimes used for amusement purposes. Smarmy creator of said scientific wonder. Some catastrophe occurs. Chaos ensues. Smarmy creator gets his in the end.

[laura888]

67. Agreed! Also his female characters are..

...quite canned, with no depth at all.

[Robeson]

134. True

He has some good premises, unfortunately, I just don't find him that interesting (or good) of a writer.

[BigMcLargehuge]

8. Fitzgerald

never could appreciate the settings of his work.

[Fenris]

10. Kafka, Faulkner

[BigMcLargehuge]

64. Kafka? really?

The Prison Colony was really good, I thought.

[DODI]

11. Hemingway for me too!

[eek]

12. DH Lawrence, Tom Robbins

and yeah, Hemingway. Except for Moveable Feast

Never bothered with Ann Rice ; just know I'd hate it!

[BigMcLargehuge]

68. Ugh Tom Robbins

the crunchiest writer ever... all the annoying crunchy kids used to tote around his crap and insist that a story told from the perspective of a stick and a pack of cigarettes was high art.

Someone should break his fingers off.

[Ellen Forradalom]

111. Double that UGH

Those books have no structure whatsoever. Highly annoying to read.

[TlalocW]

13. Herman Melville

I read Moby Dick in high school and the his unfinished novel Billy Bud in college. I love what are normally thought of as "the classics," but trying to get through anything he wrote is like riding a tortoise who's stuck in mud.

I read an interesting exchange between him and Emerson I believe. Melville wrote to Emerson trying to discuss various literary concepts with him. Emerson wrote back asking Melville if he had found a certain kind of boots he wanted to buy for his daughter.

TlalocW

[DivinBreuvage]

23. Oh, you are a sad, sad little person.

That's the first I've heard of any correspondence between him and Emerson. I think you're mistaken, though I'd welcome the correction if you can provide it.

One of my favorite passages:

It was a clear steel-blue day. The firmaments of air and sea were hardly separable in that all-pervading azure; only, the pensive air was transparently pure and soft, with a woman's look, and the robust and man-like sea heaved with long, strong, lingering swells, as Samson's chest in his sleep.

Hither, and thither, on high, glided the snow-white wings of small, unspeckled birds; these were the gentle thoughts of the feminine air; but to and fro in the deeps, far down in the bottomless blue, rushed mighty leviathans, sword-fish, and sharks; and these were the strong, troubled, murderous thinkings of the masculine sea.

But though thus contrasting within, the contrast was only in shades and shadows without; those two seemed one; it was only the sex, as it were, that distinguished them.

Aloft, like a royal czar and king, the sun seemed giving this gentle air to this bold and rolling sea; even as bride to groom. And at the girdling line of the horizon, a soft and tremulous motion -- most seen here at the equator -- denoted the fond, throbbing trust, the loving alarms, with which the poor bride gave her bosom away.

Tied up and twisted; gnarled and knotted with wrinkles; haggardly firm and unyielding; his eyes glowing like coals, that still glow in the ashes of ruin; untottering Ahab stood forth in the clearness of the morn; lifting his splintered helmet of a brow to the fair girl's forehead of heaven.

[TlalocW]

34. Blah-blah-blah

Omit overly-flowery language that he's using to show off, and you've got Ahab standing by the sea looking at the sky. No other author that I can think of ever used so much to say so little while in the process boring the hell out of me.

As for the correspondence, it's just something I remember from college. I could be wrong.

TlalocW

[DivinBreuvage]

59. Well, perhaps there is no poetry in you

You're not alone, the Polish hack Joseph Conrad hated him too; but I think Conrad was just jealous.

[TlalocW]

90. Oh, I like poetry too

But poetry isn't just string a bunch of 10-dollar words together to make one look smart. :)

TlalocW

[DivinBreuvage]

91. What kind of poetry, like Hallmark cards?

(just kidding)

[TlalocW]

103. Hey...

A bland couple of lines and a picture on a stiff piece of paper folded in half that you buy for $2.98 beats the 50 cents I wasted on Billy Bud by Melville.

:)

TlalocW

[DivinBreuvage]

149. Well, I still disagree with you, but...

Your last zinger leaves me speechless, I can't top it. Nicely done!

[KittyWampus]

155. No Other Author? You've Never Read Marcel Proust

[Ediacara]

85. LOL

This is soooo softcore porn. It's terrible, like Lovecraft, only even slower and completely lacking in any story.

And word usage, is COMPLETELY wrong.

1) Steel isn't blue.
2) Air cannot be pensive, as it cannot possibly think.
3) If the birds' wings are snow-white, it is not necisary to describe them as unspeckled.

[DivinBreuvage]

86. Hey, if you want softcore porn try reading Chapter 94!!!!

"A squeeze of the hand".

While some were occupied with this latter duty, others were employed in dragging away the larger tubs, so soon as filled with the sperm; and when the proper time arrived, this same sperm was carefully manipulated ere going to the try-works, of which anon. It had cooled and crystallized to such a degree, that when, with several others, I sat down before a large Constantine's bath of it, I found it strangely concreted into lumps, here and there rolling about in the liquid part. It was our business to squeeze these lumps back into fluid. A sweet and unctuous duty! no wonder that in old times this sperm was such a favorite cosmetic. Such a clearer! such a sweetener! such a softener! such a delicious mollifier! After having my hands in it for only a few minutes, my fingers felt like eels, and began, as it were, to serpentine and spiralize. As I sat there at my ease, cross-legged on the deck; after the bitter exertion at the windlass; under a blue tranquil sky; the ship under indolent sail, and gliding so serenely along; as I bathed my hands among those soft, gentle globules of infiltrated tissues, woven almost within the hour; as they richly broke to my fingers, and discharged all their opulence, like fully ripe grapes their wine; as I snuffed up that uncontaminated aroma, --literally and truly, like the smell of spring violets; I declare to you, that for the time I lived as in a musky meadow; I forgot all about our horrible oath; in that inexpressible sperm, I washed my hands and my heart of it; I almost began to credit the old Paracelsan superstition that sperm is of rare virtue in allaying the heat of anger: while bathing in that bath, I felt divinely free from all ill-will, or petulence, or malice, of any sort whatsoever. Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers' hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say, --Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness. Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm for ever!

[sir_captain]

105. you're reading far too literally n/t

[KittyWampus]

156. In Metaphysics Air As Element= Mental World

steel blue refers to a gray blue

use of snow white and unspeckled reinforces notion/theme of purity

Melville, like Joyce are profoundly more entertaining when read aloud by those familiar with the work.

[flamingyouth]

25. I can't stand Melville either

It feels much better to know I'm not alone.:D

[tjdee]

38. oohhhh LORD Melville!

I had to read Moby Dick and lord was it the mooooooossssst exxccrrruuccciaaattiinnngg book of all time.

The story's alright, the concept's alright, but the person who said that Melville uses flowery show-offy language is right on.

[DivinBreuvage]

87. Yeah, that's right....

it's LORD Melville to you.

Try Billy Budd for a much sadder and more subdued type of language.

[sir_captain]

46. Beg to disagree

Melville was a genius. There is more meaning in one of his sentences than in most others' entire books.

Moby Dick is entirely inappropriate for high school reading, and I don't know why so many schools try to do it. Try giving it another shot now.

edit: Melville, in my humble opinion, is the finest American writer ever.

[DivinBreuvage]

58. Finally, a perceptive and discerning mind!

You're right both about his profundity and about the fact that it's a mistake to cast his pearls before high-school swine. I also agree with you that he's our very finest writer.

Actually I confess I couldn't get past chapter 16 the first time I read Moby-Dick either (I was a junior in college at the time) but after going through a difficult, lonely period a year later I managed to try it again and once he got me onto the ship I couldn't stop reading. I fell in love with him by the time I reached Chapter 49 ("The Hyena") and have never fallen out.

His earlier work is not his best, although it's what made him famous at the time. My favorite (or perhaps it would be more accurate to say the book I am most drawn to) is Pierre, written just after Moby-Dick but darker, more tortured, and more profound.

Israel Potter was mainly a throwaway, though the battle scene between John Paul Jones' Bonhomme Richard and the British warship Serapis is absolutely spellbinding.

I won't go on at further length because this is supposed to be an "authors you hate" thread... but I will say in closing that only Melville is fit to stand on the same stage as Walt Whitman as a poet of the Civil War. If you prefer a darker and more ambiguous interpretation of that war, Melville is Whitman's master.

[BigMcLargehuge]

61. Love Melville too

and Conrad. Can't see why you call him "That Polish Hack", Lord Jim is Brilliant so is The Secret Sharer and Heart of Darkness.

I was exposed to Melville when I was a kid. I was born and raised in the shadow of Melville, in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Home port of the doomed Pequod.

[DivinBreuvage]

70. I was not being serious about Conrad, hun

Just playing with him because of what he said about Melville. Though I did read Heart of Darkness because of everything I heard about him being so dark and profound and similar to Melville, and came away disappointed. I should probably read him again now that I could do it without that baggage.

Since you mentioned growing up in New Bedford: let me say that, for the most part, I hated the John Huston version of Moby Dick... but it does contain one of the most effective scenes I've seen in a film, even more effective than Melville's own description of it: when Ishmael goes to the Whalemen's Chapel and the people are singing that dirge-like psalm and the camera slowly moves down the aisle and you see on the walls all the tablets erected to the memory of men who had been killed in the hunt for whales.

(I assume the scene was shot in the Whalemen's Chapel in New Bedford, which I've heard is still there... maybe you could confirm or deny this).

[BigMcLargehuge]

71. it wasn't shot in the Seaman's Bethel, but in a replica of it

:)

And yes, the Seaman's Bethel has a bow rostrum and the names of the dead on the walls. It's an amazing place.

I actually like the Huston version. I think Peck captured the madness of Ahab pretty well, and the effects, for the time, were wonderful. The problem I had with it was with Ray Bradbury's script. He had to cut so much depth from the book.

The recent remake with Patrick Stewart is a travesty. All of New Bedford is excised from the script, instead moving the home port to Nantucket.

Bastards.

[DivinBreuvage]

76. I haven't seen the Patrick Stewart version... agree with you on Bradbury

and in fact maybe I should blame Bradbury more than Huston, though I believe Bradbury himself complained that he was forced to cut a bunch of stuff that he really didn't want to.

I hated Peck's Ahab. I thought he was far too stately and subdued. His quarterdeck scene had none of the fascist rage and passion of the book.

[gpandas]

93. nantucket? why would they do that?

[BigMcLargehuge]

118. because they are shitheads

no other reason

[gpandas]

142. you make me laugh, big. n/t

[BigMcLargehuge]

72. here's a sample from Lord Jim

From Chapter 2

The Patna, with a slight hiss, passed over that plain luminous and smooth, unrolled a black ribbon of smoke across the sky, left behind her on the water a white ribbon of foam that vanished at once, like the phantom of a track drawn upon a lifeless sea by the phantom of a steamer.

Every morning the sun, as if keeping pace in his revolutions with the progress of the pilgrimage, emerged with a silent burst of light exactly at the same distance astern of the ship, caught up with her at noon, pouring the concentrated fire of his rays on the pious purposes of the men, glided past on his descent, and sank mysteriously into the sea evening after evening, preserving the same distance ahead of her advancing bows. The five whites on board lived amidships, isolated from the human cargo. The awnings covered the deck with a white roof from stern to stern, and a faint hum, a low murmur of sad voices, alone revealed the presence of a crowd of people upon the great blaze of the ocean. Such were the days, still, hot, heavy, disappearing one by one into the past, as if falling into an abyss for ever open in the wake of the ship; and the ship, lonely under a wisp of smoke, held on her steadfast way black and smouldering in a luminous immensity, as if scorched by a flame flicked at her from a heaven without pity.

The night descended on her like a benediction.

[DivinBreuvage]

77. Thanks for this

I'm going to need to look into Conrad.

On an unrelated note, I love that picture and caption in your sig!

[BigMcLargehuge]

82. thanks for the compliment about my sig line

don't know if you ever get near New Bedford, but every year they had a marathon read-around of Moby Dick at the Seaman's Bethel. Those who participate and stay for the whole session receive a hard cover of the novel.

I am going this year.

[DivinBreuvage]

84. I do know of it... I'd love to see New Bedford one day

as well as the rest of New England. Too $$$$ for a poor chick from Ohio though. :(

[Elidor]

101. Moby Dick is pretty schizophrenic

It seemed like every other chapter was very boring and the ones in between sparkled a bit. His description of life aboard a whaling vessel was interesting, but the prose was pretty turgid at times.

I liked the tension in the relationship between Ishmael and...was it Queeg? God, it's been a while. He had a good thing going between the two of them and then just dropped it, neglected it.

I found it a worthwhile slog, but I don't see how it's bandied about as a classic. He had some very good moments, and some dismal ones as well.

[Bat Boy]

123. And way more about whaling than anyone should know.

God, it's like he's obsessed with it or something...

[C_eh_N_eh_D_eh]

14. Robert A. Heinlein

Zzzzzzzzz......

[LeftishBrit]

15. D.H. Lawrence

With the exception of a very few of his poems.

[mede8er]

153. Third for DH......

I actually threw one of his books against a wall about halfway through....never done that before or since....

[LowerManhattanite]

16. Tom Wolfe

His magazine work for Esquire in the 60's was brilliant. The expansion of his "new journalism" approach into novels and non-fiction tomes just doesn't work for me. Te-di-ous!

[Elidor]

102. Wolfe's fiction is not that good, but I love his non-fiction

Well, okay, A Man in Full had some good moments. But he'll never top Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test in my eyes. That is my favorite by him.

He's pretty much an ass toward anyone who doesn't see "new journalism" as being the only way to write, but I'll cut him some slack on the basis of Acid Test.

[Mojambo]

24. I completely agree!

He's the worst!

[WoodrowFan]

29. UGH

agreed.

[BigMcLargehuge]

63. only had that reaction to one of his books

and I've read all of them, including his collected essays. The Number of the Beast was just terrible... but I really liked everything else, even the real juvie stuff like Have Spacesuit will Travel.

[southpaw]

17. Virginia Woolfe (sp?) (pure shit)

Anne Rice (over-written nocturnal shit)
Hemingway ("It was good. People danced. People laughed.")

[tigereye]

112. I love Woolf's writing

it can be a bit of a slog, but she was a really interesting and seminal writer. Hemingway was a journalist first and his very short sentences also spawned a new style of literature. No, he's not my fave either.

[Cats Against Frist]

18. Rilke

[zx22778a]

20. T. S. Elliot

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock made me drop out of high school because I was convinced any organization that could take this mindless babbling seriously was not worth my time.

[jobycom]

21. Hemmingway is God. Faulkner, James Joyce are sadists.

Can't stand either one. They ain't literary, they are just overbearing.

[CrownPrinceBandar]

22. Thomas Pynchon...............

His stories seem to go nowhere fast.

[Bunny]

26. Is Umberto Eco fair game?

I couldn't get past the first two pages of Foucalt's Pendulum!

[NashVegas]

53. Hell Yes!

I made it to page 50 and passed out.

[DivinBreuvage]

80. "The Name of the Rose"

was the most overrated piece of pretentious pseudo-intellectual poop I have ever had the misfortune to waste my time on.

And when I thought it couldn't get worse they turned it into celluloid poop with a Scotch piece of poop and a young Jack Nicholson knock-off piece of poop.

In the words of Dr. Clayton Forrester, "It stinks!"

[Ksec]

27. Edgar Allen Poe

I dont get it. Literally I dont understand wtf hes talkin about. Of course Im as dumb as a stone fence...

[NashVegas]

55. Psychosis

Perhaps you're just too mentally healthy to appreciate Mr. Poe's work.

[WoodrowFan]

28. Chomsky

sorry.

[Liberal Classic]

32. I'm not

:toast:

[sir_captain]

47. haha...good call

[KittyWampus]

157. Glad I Scrolled This Thread Before Posting My Nomination

and found someone nominating Chomsky first.

[AlFrankenFan]

30. Mark Twain and John Steinbeck n/t

[Piltdown13]

31. Steinbeck

I can understand why his work is well-respected, but I never really liked any of the Steinbeck novels that I read. I guess you could say that I can appreciate his work, but I sure don't enjoy reading it.

:shrug:

[suegeo]

33. Dr. Seuss

That god damn cat in the hat was making trouble for some little kids left home alone. Like little kids left home alone don't have enough problems of their own. And green eggs and ham? Fuck that. My dad was a farmer, and I don't have to eat any moldy food.

Also, the person who wrote the children's book where that little duck Ping was always getting whacked on the back for being late.

Don't hit the little duckie. Why can't they just float their boat down the Yangtze River without injecting violence into it?

[Khephra]

35. Gods, that list is too long to even bother typing up

So I'll just add one here that's not mentioned already.

Toni Morrison

I've read three of her novels, and I wanted to kill myself while I was reading each one.

I think I'd rather have my fingernails and toenails ripped out than read "Beloved" again.

[tjdee]

39. ITA. The show-offy 'look at me' ism of her writing is insulting.

I think after a certain point her books turned into Hey Look at My Literary Writing and How Out There I can Be.... really irritating.
I wanted to hurt someone after Beloved too.

[Khephra]

42. I had to study Beloved for a "Book into Film" class

Not only did I have to read that wretched novel, I had to watch that overlong film several times for the class.

YUCK!

[tjdee]

51. I'm so so sorry.

I had a class like that too, and we had to sit through Daisy Miller, by Henry James. And read it. Cybill Shepherd was Daisy. It was very, very bad.

At least the rest of his work is readable. Can't imagine sitting through Beloved multiple times. Eww.

[laura888]

74. wow... I LOVED "Beloved" by Toni Morrison

It's one of the most beautiful books I've read.

[BigMcLargehuge]

60. oh man was Beloved Be-awful

was forced through that one in college.

It's a ghost story, big whoop. I had it figured out in less than twenty pages and ever single sentence from then on was exactly what I thought it would be.

SNORE.

[terrya]

36. John Updike. Boring, overrated drivel. eom

[devilgrrl]

143. Thank you!!!!!

You beat me to it.

[tjdee]

40. Does Ayn Rand count?

I don't know how highly respected she is, but I sure can't stand her writing and her philosophy!

The Fountainhead made me want to find her and hit her over the head with it. I literally threw it to the other side of the room when I was done.

[AVID]

41. James Joyce

everything after "Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man" and "Dubliners"

"Ullysses" is tiring . . .

[hyphenate]

43. Anne Rice

is one, but there are few of today's novelists in general that I can stand. I'm into SF, fantasy and mysteries, but some of the pop novelists suck. I remember reading the intro to one awhile back and thought what a bunch of crap--I could write better than that.

Jackie Collins, for another, and any one who writes "romance" novels for a living. I want to throw up when I see that kind of stuff.

[liberalpress]

44. Stephen King

[testing123]

75. I am with you on that

I like some of his stuff but not all of it.

[DivinBreuvage]

88. Whoa! When has Stephen King ever been respected or highly regarded?

The critics hate him, because he makes millions and doesn't play the "kool kids game of literature". I don't think he's a Melville or a Mark Twain, perhaps, but he's better than "The Establishment" gives him credit for.

[saracat]

129. Excuse me? King won the top literary award last year

and the O Henry Award years ago.

[DivinBreuvage]

146. What top literary award? The Nobel Prize for Literature?

Please understand I'm not running him down. I like him and I think he's a good writer, very strong especially in characterization.

But unless things have changed over the past few years (which they well may have), he is still scorned by the literary elite. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[saracat]

159. This Award

National Book Awards 2003


Stephen King
Winner of the 2003
DISTINGUISHED CONTRIBUTION TO AMERICAN LETTERS AWARD

[Mrs_Beastman]

109. Ditto

[annonymous]

45. Thomas Pynchon and Tom Robbins.

I never liked any of their books. Truly pretentious crap.

[Kickin_Donkey]

48. Hemingway and Steinbeck are the first to come to mind ...

Sue me, I find Hemingway's writing too simple. I don't get anything out of it. I think his fame is more due to the legend/character he built up around himself, rather than his writing.

I don't get anything out of Steinbeck either, despite his great name.

I have to respectfully disagree with some of the posters on Melville and Twain. I think they are geniuses. While not easy to read, their works have withstood the test of time, and they aren't part of the "American canon" without good reason.

[LiberalTechie1337]

49. Jane Austin

I had to read "Pride and Prejudice" my senior year. ARGHHH!

[NightTrain]

50. Marcel Proust.

Like I give a fuck about the French aristocracy!

[DivinBreuvage]

73. You have balls, NightTrain, to say such a thing!

I have mixed feelings about him. If I were a happier, more affluent person with as much leisure as I could desire I think Proust might be my favorite writer. Let us sit, Marcel, and have a lovely chat while I sip my tea and nibble at my madeleine. (That's his famous thing, you know)

But I am not that way. I'm pissed off and unhappy and I need lots of blood and rage in my literature!

[Character Assassin]

52. alice walker. she's.................................................. poo

[Zomby Woof]

94. lol

Although I don't completely agree, I will disclose that a final exam essay I wrote on 'The Color Purple' in college garnered me a 4.0 for the lit class, which may or may not influence my refusal to disregard her out of hand.

That being said, welcome back, however briefly, from your work-induced hiatus.

[tigereye]

113. aw you aren't serious are you?

She is a beautiful writer.

[NashVegas]

54. John Kennedy Toole

There go my hipster creds down the drain.

Lovely prose, I just had an antipathy for Ignacious.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

56. Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe

[ForrestGump]

57. Well,

I have never read a single thing by Hemingway (perhaps he's so repellent to me that negative vibrations prevented me picking up a book of his). I tried over and over to read Faulkner's Go Down Moses but never managed to, so I guess you could describe my reaction to his writing as an aversion. Same with Tolkein, when I was younger -- couldn;t get past the prefaces. maybe that'd be different now, but I can't be bothered finding out.

Also, The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton, was prescribed for a university literature class that I took but I couldn't even bear to read the first few pages -- I lost points on the final exam rather than read that thing. S'okay, 'cos I still came in with the highest grade possible. :-)

Anne Rice is annoying to me. I've read two books of hers, Interview With The Vampire and the one about the castrati (Cry To Heaven?), and I find her style and her substance to just be really annoying. Bleh.

[BigMcLargehuge]

62. you read one Wharton book, you've read them all

all love triangles. All extremely annoying doomed characters who almost beg the reader to slap the shit out of them.

If you think The Age of Innocence was bad, The House of Mirth is a crime against humanity. I had to read about 20 pieces of hers in college, short and long form... it was the same story over and over and over and over and over and over again.

[ForrestGump]

78. I guess I'm lucky, then...I got the same effect from just a few pages

I feel your pain, though. I am very sorry.

[MiddleRiverRefugee]

65. Camille Paglia

And that was before Molly Ivins opened up the can of whup-ass on 'er.

[MissAnnThrope]

137. Wait...

I thought we were supposed to be naming respected authors.

[TXvote]

79. Robert Frost

choe the wrong path in the woods.......*shudder*

[curse10]

97. I can't stand Frost!

He's awful.

[Ediacara]

CHARLES DICKENS

Good God people! How come this pathetic hack hasn't been mentioned 50 times already!

I mean honestly!

[curse10]

98. Because Dickens is genius!

And really funny! So there! Nyah! :P

[Susang]

126. See my post below

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=105&topic_id=1378383&mesg_id=1388774&page=

Most of what I wrote (with the exception of the whole female author thing) applies to Dickens as well. I'm amazed at how how people do not get the humor in his (or Austen's) work, when they're really hysterically funny!

[Angelus]

81. Shakespeare.

Melville
Elliot
Hemingway
Faulkner

List goes on and on...

[DivinBreuvage]

83. Melville himself called Shakespeare overrated

Not meaning that Shakespeare was a bad writer by any means, but simply that his reputation had been artifically exalted to the point that it would be impossible for any future writer to be allowed to approach him, no matter how good.

BTW, you suck for including Melville in your list (just kidding!)

[cheezus]

148. Shakespeare was a hack

Freud : Psychologists :: Shakespeare : English Lit Majors

[Ediacara]

89. Hemmingway :-)

I have a funny perspective about him :-)

Some time ago I went on a few dates with his grandson Eddy, who is a fantastic artist, and someone I wish I'd kept in better touch with. Anyway, in the course of our late night ramblings, we talked about his grandfather, and he pointed out two things to me:

1) His poetry is attrocious, and was only written because his publisher thought it would be a good idea. We actually spent over an hour reading and making fun of it.

2) Old Man and the Sea isn't about Jesus. What you see is what you get in the story. Period. No deeper meaning. Seriously.

[PittPoliSci]

92. ann rynd

hate her.

[Panono]

100. I wouldn't call Ayn Rand highly respected. She was just good at...........

....getting idiots to follow her.

[tigereye]

114. Ayn Rand, says Ms. Lit major

and everyone (I did) goes through a stage of loving her ( or at least being fascinated by her) and then being horrified by her elitism and fascism. There is one of her short novels that I liked a lot, but I can't remember the title.


Hope you had a better day. :hi:

PS Read some real literature, like Tolstoy or Dostoyevski, Gabriel GArcia MArquez, etc., anyone would be a much better use of your time.

[fujiyama]

120. It's funny

you mention everyone going through a stage of being fascinated by her.

I almost got caught in that my freshman year of college after hearing people call "Atlas Shrugged" or the "The Fountainhead" their Bible or some other such nonsense.

I bought Atlas Shrugged but never did read the damned thing. Fortunately, I spent maybe a dollar on it at a street book seller in India.

[tigereye]

144. I think it is a rite of passage

there is something very compelling about her work that fits with the excitement and vision of youth, plus she is a "utopian" on a very scary and elitist level. I slogged through a lot of her books, it would probably be instructive to revisit them and see what it looks like from the vantage point of older and more experienced!

[Panono]

95. Thomas Mann

[curse10]

96. James Joyce and Steinbeck!

Blech on both of them!

[Reverend_Smitty]

99. Hemingway

For that generation of writers, Fitzgerald could write circles around him...Also Joice makes me want to rip my hair out with the exception of Portrait of an Artist.

Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre put a bad taste in my mouth for that author as well. Had to read that one for senior english and hated every page

[Elidor]

104. John Irving & Faulkner

I liked Garp well enough. Then I pick up Hotel New Hampshire and here's this same old shit about the dancing bear! I don't give a flying fuck about the stupid damn dancing bear. Kill the fucking thing already. The characters did absolutely nothing for me. Bring back the girl with no tongue! (Ellen James? I forget.) Someday I may try Cider House, but I'm reluctant to fork over money to a writer who has pissed me off once already.

Tried to read Faulkner's Sound & Fury. Ugh. Kill me now, get it over with, just don't make me read this shit.

[Burma Jones]

106. Gertrude Stein

Not using punctuation does nothing to improve your writing.

[Nalgenelover Snort]

107. Dunno if it counts...

But I thought "Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus" was the most idiotic, sexist piece of drivel I've never had the pleasure of not reading. I was honestly offended when I read it, and it takes a lot to offend me.

As for Literature, I can't stand James Joyce. I had to read "Finnegan's Wake" in high school and it was unintelligible. The whole point of writing WELL is writing so that people can actually understand what you're trying to say. If it takes you an hour, a thesaurus, and the Oxford Guide to Allusions to get through one sentence, then the damn thing is just poorly written. I don't care if you ARE a snotty Irish writer popular enough to get away with being obnoxious.

[Hubert Flottz]

110. Bob Vila!

That is some bad sh*t!

[gorrister]

115. ok...

Maya Angelou.

[Beaker]

116. jane austin is/was a total hack.

nt

[Susang]

121. Incorrect use of the word "hack"

I have no problem with you disliking her writing, but let's critique accurately at least.

Her work at the time was original, few women were writing astute social satire disguised as romantic fiction such as she was. At the time, many male critics and fellow authors were positive that she, herself was actually a man writing under a pseudonym. They did not believe that it was possible for a woman to write as satirically as she did.

Unfortunately, since her targets were the foibles of the country gentry of the late 1700's/early 1800's, many modern readers do not understand how funny her characters were considered at the time, and still are.

[Lavender Brown]

141. What she said...

and it's Austen, not Austin. :P :)

[taxidriver]

117. hemingway...can you say Run On Sentences??

[JohnLocke]

119. Steven King...

[JSJ]

122. 2nd, 3rd, and 4th that! n/t

[Bat Boy]

124. e.e. cummings

Where do the sentences start? Where do they end? Is that someone's name, or just a word I don't know?

Jesus, did his Caps Lock button break and he couldn't afford a new keyboard...?

[JohnLocke]

150. No kidding!

He's awful!

[Susang]

125. This thread is depressing the hell out of me

Great works of literature reduced to critiques like "Melville sucks", "Jane Austen's a total hack" or "Toni Morrison's work is show-offy". :wtf:

I'm going to go read one of the three books I purchased today and leave before my brain expodes out of sheer intellectual frustration. :-(

[InvisibleTouch]

127. Gotta say Hemingway as well.

I remember being introduced to his work in high school literature class, and thinking, "You've got to be kidding. This is one of our 'great writers'?? I write better than this guy." And call me silly, but I still stand by that. What can I say, I prefer poetic and descriptive language to the driest, laziest, barest-bones sentence fragments you can possibly get away with. I just can't see any talent or imagination in that.

[nickgutierrez]

128. Bill O'Reilly

'nuff said.

Also, Tom Clancy and his generic storylines (soviet terrorists set nuclear bomb in *insert state here*) always seem to make me somewhat dizzy.

[saracat]

131. O'Reilly isn't an "aclaimed or respected author.

or did you list him because he "claimed to be"? lol

[nickgutierrez]

132. He thinks he is.

:)

[saracat]

130. Boris Pasternack

I never made it through Dr.Zhivago. I think I don't like the Russians.I hated Guleg Archipeligo and Anna Karenina as well.So much for Tolstoy!

[saracat]

133. I also hate James Burke.

He is clever to be clever alone. Gag.Overdone discription.Sometimes there just isn't a new way to depict a sunrise!

[Robeson]

135. JRR Tolkien

Sorry if I upset all you Hobbit fans, but he is one overrated yawner.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

154. Tolkien is great..my only bitch with him is he uses way to many adverbs

and i must agree with those who choose Hemmingway and Joyce

[MissAnnThrope]

136. There are so many!

Norman Mailer
Gore Vidal

Are two who weren't mentioned. I've read them both, but I find them utterly forgettable in the long run. Great literature is remembered.

Of the ones who were mentioned, here are my feelings:

Anne Rice - As soon as she stopped drinking, she started acting like she was being paid by the word, instead of with fat contracts. How many times does an author have to give the same description in different chapters?

Ayn Rand - Gave misfits with no social skills whatsoever reason to feel superior to all the people who wouldn't talk to them in HS and promoted selfishness as a virtue.

F. Scott Fitzgerald - Who cares about all those new money types anyway?

John Steinbeck - Just really boring and overrated.

Ernest Hemingway - Anyone have time for a four hour diatribe about how I feel about him? Didn't think so.

James Joyce - Incoherent drivel. A writer who should have put DOWN the bottle.

Virginia Woolfe - Flowery drivel for pseudo-feminists who really want to be dominated.

Tom Wolfe - Just wrong.

[Robeson]

138. Mailer, Agree....

....Vidal, don't agree. Some of my most memorable books are from him, especially the historical novels Julian and Creation.

I find Mailer tedious.

You are right that there are so many. Especially from some college professors I remember who had their personal favorites, which weren't necessarily mine.

[jdonaldball]

139. Q: Why did Ernest Hemingway cross the road?

A; To die. In the rain.

[LWolf]

140. R.L. Stine.

Ann M. Martin.

I don't know if they are highly respected/regarded, but they've sold way too many really bad books.

[Zolok]

145. Ditto Hemingway...

reading Hemingway is like chewing on hot sand....
Tasteless and annoying...

www.chimesatmidnight.blogspot.com

[roguevalley]

147. some of these writers are products of their times and the styles of their

times. Take the plot out and you will see it still is relevant. There are only, what, three plots anyway.

[NorthernSpy]

151. Annie Dillard, post- Holy the Firm; Madeleine l'Engle

Terrible: Annie Dillard after she lost the spirit and turned all smug and twee. Before that, she could be kind of amazing.

And talking about smug... Madeleine l'Engle has never written anything worth reading. Nothing quite so tiresome as her very special books and the very special characters who populate them.


Mary


(fixed typo)

[theivoryqueen]

152. Charles Bukowski

and Noam Chomsky

[MisterP]

158. I like most writing, but for Arthur C. Clarke, I'll make an exception

he has the grasp of human nature of a marmoset, and I tramp mightily on his numerical books! Fie and bah!