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Overrated novels
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?
Posted by Tyler Cowen on June 28, 2007 at 06:32 AM in Books | Permalink
Comments
Gravity's Rainbow -- It's as if Pynchon read Slaughterhouse Five and decided to make it as long, boring,
and confusing as possible. I wouldn't try to read this again without a Ritalin prescription to keep me
focused, and even with that I'm not sure I could do it.
Posted by: Tucker at Jun 28, 2007 7:09:37 AM
Ulysses
Posted by: Rue Des Quatre Vents at Jun 28, 2007 7:31:05 AM
Portnoy's Complaint
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Posted by: Keith at Jun 28, 2007 7:45:36 AM
I recognize anything by dan brown is too poor to even make a "bad" list. You know, I could never get through Don Quixote ... twice I stopped halfway. I'm embarrassed to admit it, but at the same time consider the novel pretty over-rated.
Posted by: glenn at Jun 28, 2007 8:20:05 AM
Harry Potter
it's no wonder people can't appreciate joyce and pynchon when this stuff is so popular.
Posted by: walter at Jun 28, 2007 8:30:41 AM
Salinger is top notch, Franny and Zooey and Catcher in the Rye certainly have a place among the most significant works.
To Kill a Mockingbird is a good pick as most overrated, and I second the nomination of Pynchon and Barth. Barth especially, but I don't think he's been that highly esteemed anyway. I would further nominate John Steinbeck, Milan Kundera, William Burroughs, Salmon Rushdie, William Gaddis, Don Delillo.
Posted by: John Goes at Jun 28, 2007 8:34:15 AM
Glenn maybe your just not into poo jokes. :) I guess I never grew up so I love Don Quixote.
Posted by: a guy at Jun 28, 2007 8:47:17 AM
I can understand why people find Joyce hard to read and why people think Finnegan's Wake is nonsense, but his short fiction and Ulysses really are a phenomenal achievement, even in the purely material sense that Dublin is alive in the work. It is a bit dense and one may need time to understand his style (though I wouldn't bother about getting all the allusions), but there is a quite simple story underneath that is not insignificant.
Pynchon, though, seems to be a constructor of elaborate literary gadgets made of ego. I classify him with Barth. I think Joyce had a predilection for this too, but I think he has a classic storyteller in him that trancends this.
As a genre, the metanovelistic structure is a tired theme.
Posted by: John Goes at Jun 28, 2007 8:49:20 AM
Nabokov considered Don Quixote overrated, until he actually read the book and wrote a highly interesting meditation on it. I suggest you read Don Quixote first, then if you're curious, you may like to read Nabokov's essays on it.
Posted by: John Goes at Jun 28, 2007 8:50:59 AM
Over-rated Brits? Thomas Hardy, E M Forster? Amis the Younger?
Posted by: dearieme at Jun 28, 2007 9:01:43 AM
To Kill a Mockingbird is overrated?! This was the only novels we had to read in high school that students actually liked.
If you don't like Catch-22, avoid Heller's Something Happened like a radioactive plague.
I'm noticing a trend here and this is something I've been thinking about for a while. A lot of post-war novels don't seem to hold up very well. Heller, Pynchon, Salinger and even Vonnegut seem far less accessible today than 19th century authors like Dickens, Austen and Eliot.
Posted by: Ted Craig at Jun 28, 2007 9:03:08 AM
I'd disagree that Gravity's Rainbow is overrated, but only because I had so much trouble understanding it that I couldn't give it a fair shake. Going along the lines of defining overrated as receiving so much good attention to not merit the level of a certain book's quality, I'd say Atlas Shrugged would be up there. It's not a bad book, it's just that IMHO the book's quality is not on par with all the good attention I've noticed it happens to receive.
Posted by: Rafael Corrales at Jun 28, 2007 9:11:04 AM
Oh and Tyler how about a post on underrated novels???
Posted by: Rafael Corrales at Jun 28, 2007 9:12:24 AM
I had to read two or three novels by James Fenimore Cooper in college - you can't imagine my relief when I discovered Mark Twain's essay on his "literary offences."
Posted by: Our Bold Hero at Jun 28, 2007 9:14:17 AM
Catch 22 is absolutely awful.
Posted by: josh at Jun 28, 2007 9:16:23 AM
Ayn Rand being overrated is a given, it should be tacitly understood.
Posted by: John Goes at Jun 28, 2007 9:19:31 AM
Mrs. Dalloway
Posted by: Will Perkins at Jun 28, 2007 9:23:48 AM
Amen on Gravity's Rainbow. And I'd say a lot of Faulkner qualifies. Few writers managed to be both so great (Absalom, Absalom; Go Down Moses) and so bad (fill in any number of works here). A lot of Hemingway doesn't hold up that well, either. He wrote like no one else, at the time, and captured in an unpretentious way the same ideas that Sartre turned into unreadable tripe. But a lot of his work reads like riffs off the same theme (and, yes, I'm aware that you could say that about a lot of writers).
Posted by: Tim Gray at Jun 28, 2007 9:29:45 AM
Will Perkins, why not throw in all of Virginia Woolfe? Good pick.
It would be nice to see a post on underrated novels, as well.
Posted by: John Goes at Jun 28, 2007 9:33:43 AM
It'll be decades at least before we can really tell what's overrated and what stands the test of time. Despite so much being done in "internet time", literature is one of those things which can be evaluated IMHO only in hindsight. The best book I've read in the last couple of decades was Neal Stephenson's CRYPTONOMICON, which was fodder for lunch time conversation for weeks once I got my friends to read it. But will it stand up in 2057? Maybe not. Hard to tell what people will still be reading. But I suspect they may still be reading Harper Lee's book. (I'm a fan of movie soundtracks, which I think are the equivalent of today's operatic scores. I wonder if John Williams will be performed live in 2107. While he's not my favorite composer, I think he'll stand the test of time.)
Posted by: Chip Overclock at Jun 28, 2007 9:34:21 AM
The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway requires a high threshold for nonsense.
Posted by: Zahid Avi at Jun 28, 2007 9:36:01 AM
Zahid Avi, fiction is fantastic. That's sort of what fiction is.
Posted by: John Goes at Jun 28, 2007 9:46:09 AM
Why do Joyce zealots often rely on the "You're stupid" defense of aesthetic value?
John Goes claims of Ulysses, "It is a bit dense and one may need time to understand his style."
The preferences of an intellegent few are of no interest to me, unless that intellegence correlates with something else like the preference for beauty or wisdom. Remember, crosswords and Sudoku are complicated, dense and require time. Whole systems of medieval thought are dense and require time. And indeed the people who loved these useless frameworks were probably intelligent.
Posted by: Rue Des Quatre Vents at Jun 28, 2007 9:47:51 AM
Most overrated: Slaughterhouse Five, which is just a ridiculous book.
Posted by: wph at Jun 28, 2007 9:57:39 AM
I don't understand how many people hold "Brave New World" in higher regards than "1984." Orwell's work is more entertaining and more powerful than Huxley's. This is no knock on Huxley though.
Posted by: charlie at Jun 28, 2007 10:07:03 AM
Ted Craig: Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying" has to be in the running for this prize. But thanks for mentioning "Go Down, Moses." I will give WF another chance with that book.
Posted by: jult52 at Jun 28, 2007 10:19:41 AM
Enduring Love, Ian McEwan.
Underworld, Don Delillo.
Independence Day, Richard Ford.
Posted by: ricardo at Jun 28, 2007 10:27:01 AM
Rue Des Quatre Vents, the point I made is that despite its density there is a very simple story being told. The layers of style and the so-called "experimental" nature of the literary techniques used in each of the styles are different aspects of this same simple story. I think some people get overwhelmed trying to understand every detail and miss the essential ones, like the man in the macintosh, Molly's central role in the story and Bloom's convinction that she is cheating on him, the twin-dream sequence, etc. I think it takes at least two readings to flesh out all the details and see the actual story. That's the point I was trying to make. Unlike some modern surrealist writers, Joyce has a concrete story to tell, though he uses the many unusual lenses. It's certainly not overrated.
Posted by: John Goes at Jun 28, 2007 10:40:27 AM
After the whole Oprah debacle, I read The Corrections just to see what all the hubbub was about. It very much reads like someone that envisions himself to be the next Roth, without any of the skill.
Posted by: Luke at Jun 28, 2007 11:01:58 AM
Passage to India - Forster.
Posted by: Brad at Jun 28, 2007 11:08:28 AM
(1) Mistrust anyone who says that the problem with Catch-22 is that it should have read more like an Ayn Rand book.
(2) Woolf's To the Lighthouse is a masterpiece; mistrust anyone who says otherwise.
(3) Concur w/ TC about Portrait of a Lady -- after reading James's late works, one finds it almost tedious.
(4) People who don't actually care for literature, but just want stories they can read, should recognize that their opinions on Pynchon, Joyce, etc., are dubious.
(5) Jult, if you haven't read Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!, please try it. The quintessential Faulkner work.
Posted by: Anderson at Jun 28, 2007 11:10:02 AM
Ethan Frome
Posted by: Kate at Jun 28, 2007 11:13:44 AM
Patrick Suskind: Perfume
Posted by: Nicolai Foss at Jun 28, 2007 11:23:40 AM
I wrote a somewhat long post on the subject of Catch-22 and overrated novels. In the post I also point out that whether you consider something "overrated" depends in part on whether you're referring to critics/academics or the general public; from reading the comments here, it sounds like many posters are heading toward one side or the other without explicitly declaring which they're criticizing.
Posted by: Jake at Jun 28, 2007 11:30:35 AM
Hemingway. Short choppy sentences = lack of writing ability, not superior writing ability.
Emily Dickinson, though a poet and not an author. She lived in an attic and never came out. I have long held that her "amazing/insightful/what-have-you" use of dashes was simply an utter lack of understanding of proper punctuation.
Posted by: Marina at Jun 28, 2007 12:00:40 PM
All of Norman Mailer.
Posted by: ricpic at Jun 28, 2007 12:22:44 PM
White Noise by Don Delillo
Posted by: opine at Jun 28, 2007 12:23:56 PM
What novel by Barth is over-rated? No one has said. *The Sotweed Factor* is one of the funniest novels ever written. Barth is not difficult; he is a first-rate story-teller. I've read just about everything he's done. *Giles*, *Sinbad*, *Tidewater* and on and on. It may help if you're a Marylander, as I am - the miraculous Chesapeake Bay plays a leading role in almost everything he writes. But don't let all the English profs prattling on about his "post-modernism" scare you: try it, you'll like it.
Posted by: kevin quinn at Jun 28, 2007 12:33:14 PM
Heart of Darkness.
Posted by: JewishAtheist at Jun 28, 2007 12:35:48 PM
I'm glad someone else thinks that To Kill a Mockingbird is overrated.
I disagree about The Portrait of a Lady, though. I think it is a nearly perfect book.
Posted by: frml at Jun 28, 2007 12:42:25 PM
Most over rated "Atlas Shrugged". I enjoyed parts but found most of it tedious.
Posted by: Floccina at Jun 28, 2007 12:46:35 PM
I concur with Brad. Reading a Passage to India may have ended my desire to be an English Major. Just awful.
I haven't read Catch-22, TKAM, or Joyce's A Portrait of The Artist... since high school, but I still consider them classics. Perhaps I like A Portrait... because I had a teacher who taught it passionately.
I agree with Jake's point about the critic/public dichotomy. I 'study' some books as a purely intellectual exercise, like I study modern architecture. For example, touring Corbusier's Villa Savoye was a great experience but I would never want to live in it.
I plan on reading Gravity's Rainbow with the same intent.
This is stating the obvious but it really is a matter of taste.
Finally, John Goes had a good idea about doing an underrated thread.
Posted by: WillG at Jun 28, 2007 12:49:25 PM
Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown
Posted by: Keith at Jun 28, 2007 12:51:22 PM
To the extent that people claim it is the best novel that was ever written, To Kill a Mockingbird is overrated.
I guess the quality of a novel depends on whom is reading it. For example, Pride and Prejudice is certainly a good novel, but, for me, it is not a good read. Toni Morrison is considered a great author, but I cannot get through her books, even Beloved. I simply do not identify with her characters. So, for me, any Jane Austen or Toni Morrison novel is vastly overrated.
Objectively, my vote would go to any of James Joyce's books, which are simply unreadable.
I would say that the most telling aspect of whether an author is overrated is whether their books sell well 20 to 25 years after they are written. If the books were bad, why would people still buy them?
Posted by: Allan at Jun 28, 2007 12:51:24 PM
1984 by George Orwell - A brilliant satire and intellectual examination of totalitarianism- a complete failure as a story.
And I'll stick up for To Kill a Mockingbird- one of my favourites.
Posted by: gabriel at Jun 28, 2007 12:55:02 PM
It doesn't seem to me that Barth is overrated, because no one really rates him that highly anymore. Perhaps 20 years ago when he was portrayed as the savior of the novel and a required read, he was overrated. The people who like him these days generally acknowledge he's an acquired taste, a taste they admire greatly. When you say something is overrated, it's different from saying how much you dislike him. You have to figure out how highly it's rated AND what it's rated for, and then figure out the difference between the ratings and what the novel delivers. So, Ulysses, which people usually say is overrated, doesn't seem to me to be overrated. The people who rate it highly rate it for its crazy quilt pattern of prose, density of allusion, and memorable characters. It objectively earns those ratings. Obviously, it's also pretty boring and in parts very difficult to figure out. But few people say that it isn;t.
Posted by: R Moroney at Jun 28, 2007 1:03:00 PM
I've been embarking on reading great novels of the past lately. Some of my thoughts:
Wuthering Heights was almost unreadable for me, but Pride and Prejudice was highly enjoyable.
Brave New World was horrible, and is extremely dated.
The Old Man and the Sea wasn’t bad, but I’d have to disagree that it’s one of the best novels ever.
Charles Dickens might be the best novelist of all time.
Modern writers are all lightweights compared to those of the past.
Posted by: pawnking at Jun 28, 2007 1:15:25 PM
"Lord of the Small Things", ofcourse.
Posted by: ponmel at Jun 28, 2007 1:38:11 PM
If the books were bad, why would people still buy them?
Because they have been overrated.
Posted by: spongeworthy at Jun 28, 2007 1:42:18 PM
The Immoralist is overrated but The Counterfeiters + Journal is a pretty interesting work about the maze of consciousness.
Posted by: bob mcmanus at Jun 28, 2007 1:45:11 PM
I thought Catch-22 was overlong; it bogged down in the second half. The first chapters are nearly perfect though.
Most of the books people have nominated in this thread as "most overrated" (at least as far as I've read them, and I've read most of the ones mentioned so far) don't deserve the honor.
The "Reader's List" at Modern Library is a joke: three books by L. Ron Hubbard in the top ten and four by Ayn Rand? Puhleeze.
I personally would put The Great Gatsby at the top of my "Board's List," if I had a board. Most of the Board's top choices are reasonably sensible, if a bit safe; it's when you get further down that the real clunkers surface (e.g., Catcher in the Rye at #64).
However, near the top of the list you see Brave New World and The Grapes of Wrath. These are so widely assigned to high school kids in America and so stunningly awful and dated that I'd nominate them for the "Most Overrated" prize.
Posted by: DaveL at Jun 28, 2007 1:49:10 PM
Novel? I dunno. Book? How about Mary Pipher's Reviving Ophelia, which most people (at least women and teachers) seem to adore and I find a reactionary, ill-argued, morally nauseating muddle?
Posted by: Andromeda at Jun 28, 2007 1:53:42 PM
Faulkner and Joyce are overrated in exactly the same way, their shorter stories are excellent, but their later novels make me want to pluck my eyes out.
Posted by: Sebastian Holsclaw at Jun 28, 2007 1:58:35 PM
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Posted by: A.S. at Jun 28, 2007 2:22:12 PM
i love the books proposed as overrated that don't really even merit ratings (there's no risk dan brown or perfume gets onto any 100 best lists).
and overrated books seems a dime a dozen -- i can't think of much that holds up, things are critically well received for how they reflect on their times. once that time's past, they don't resonate very well. e.g., the rabbit books? no, thx. same with books from just a couple years past. the corrections? ummmm, no. absurdistan? please. the adventures of K&K? the last 1/4 is embarassing. etc.
even great books are overrated. checking the top 100 list, is lolita really the 4th best book in english? do people still find much of value in roth? i'claudius is great, but seems a little lite to be so highly regarded. the magus? a little hokey.
Posted by: dj superflat at Jun 28, 2007 2:26:02 PM
One Hundred Years Of Solitude: A large host of non-characters engage in a bunch of meaningless nonsense. Maybe I'd be more moved if I could read it in the original Spanish, but I doubt it.
Ayn Rand is the most overrated, if we're to judge by the excessive zeal of the people who defend it.
Posted by: MRP at Jun 28, 2007 2:44:39 PM
Anderson, the sad thing is that making Catch-22 more like an Ayn Rand novel would be an improvement.
Posted by: Anthony at Jun 28, 2007 2:45:50 PM
John Goes -
I agree Ayn Rand is a given, but that doesn't preclude Atlas from being the most overrated novel. She deserves a shot at first place in this one.
Disliking a novel because the characters don't interest you is one thing, and says nothing about the correctness of others' opinions about the novel. Unless you believe the protagonists aren't interesting in general and everyone is wrong, which would be a very difficult argument to prove. It seems to me that the best candidates for this prize would be the weaker novels of notable authors, seeing as how those are most likely to be considered on the strength of something other than their writing. On that note, I do nominate Rand because I find her insipid.
People bashing Joyce for perplexing them remind me of creationists bashing science they clearly don't understand - be it a lack of effort or a lack of ability.
Posted by: johnw at Jun 28, 2007 2:48:23 PM
Anything by Joyce qualifies. Technical prowess is not a sufficient condition for a great or even good novel.
Posted by: Anonymous at Jun 28, 2007 2:50:14 PM
Man, I love most of these classics that everybody's trashing. "The Historian" and "Life of Pi" are two recent hits that were vastly overrated. "The Historian" is badly written, overlong, and every character has the same voice. "Life of Pi" is basically an M. Night Shyamalan movie, in book form.
Posted by: Courtney at Jun 28, 2007 2:51:52 PM
"White Noise" by Don DeLillo. All of Pynchon. I tried, I tried, I really tried to understand what profound truths about American and the world that the authors were imparting and found zippo.
I loved reading "The Corrections" by David Franzen but never got why it was billed as an informed comedy/satire about our times instead of a great yarn about a screwed-up family.
Harold Bloom has a scathing takedown of the "Harry Potter" books that's easily found online.
Posted by: Chris at Jun 28, 2007 2:57:31 PM
JohnW sez: People bashing Joyce for perplexing them remind me of creationists bashing science they clearly don't understand - be it a lack of effort or a lack of ability.
The more a novel depends on its complexity for its greatness, the more likely it merely a signal: it tells others that you are willing to devote 12 hours to useless problem solving all because some long dead and exiled irish man has succesfully leveraged his name into brand.
Posted by: Rue Des Quatre Vents at Jun 28, 2007 3:12:13 PM
Atlas is bad, but Ayn Rand is underrated as a writer. We the Living is especially good, and The Fountainhead is at least no worse than The Grapes of Wrath. I will say that Ayn Rand is underrated partly because of her own behavior and that of her followers, who still try to push Atlas as her best work, when it's clearly her weakest by far.
In addition, Rand's insights about human nature and the tendency of people to just mouth whatever they hear and Rand's more strident statements about the virtues of individualism tend to go underappreciated.
As I've read up on prediction markets and group decisionmaking, it becomes pretty clear that groups make good decisions when individuals have some incentive to form accurate beliefs and when individuals report their own actual beliefs. As the old story in The Wisdom of Crowds goes, when you take the averages of many people's beliefs about the number of jelly beans in a jar, you get an accurate number. That occurs because people are doing their best to report their own honest belief.
When people respond to social pressure and do not truthfully report their beliefs, then group decisionmaking processes can become quite awful.
On the jelly bean example, imagine how bad an answer you might get if you put people in a room and asked them sequentially. Imagine how much worse the answer would become if there was a person in the room who wanted the answer to come out a certain way (especially if that person were "higher" in some group hierarchy) and started using cues of social approval and disapproval to elicit their favored answers.
People (often those people are called "attorneys") often use such manipulation to distort group decisionmaking processes in order to achieve a desired end.
Thus rabid individualism (in terms of forming accurate beliefs and then reporting them without regard to social pressure) is the highest social good, because it makes more group decisionmaking processes accurate and less manipulable.
This is also why prediction markets are so grand, because they incentivize individuals to be informed and truthfully report their beliefs.
But when you have nonmarket decision settings, Randian individualism is a moral imperative (at least to the extent you morally value good decisionmaking by the group).
Posted by: Keith at Jun 28, 2007 3:13:20 PM
Ethan Frome and Atlas Shrugged.
Posted by: Bob Montgomery at Jun 28, 2007 3:19:18 PM
Rue-
That only holds if all complexity is equal, and hence equally useless. Some complexities are genuinely innovative and clever, and therefore enjoyable for those concerned with the technical aspects of narrative. Some stories are complex where complexity adds little: perhaps quality of the story must merit the complexity in these cases. Some stories offer complexity that interests readers on its own. It would be more accurate for you to say you found the complexity of Joyce's works tedious, instead of saying that his complexity was generally worthless, which it is not.
Sometimes problem solving is enjoyable in itself.
Keith, you should pick up Caplan's book. It disproves everything you just said with evidence garnered in the real world. You should also look up Mancur Olson's work on collective action problems, which offers a more theoretical (and accurate) rebuttal of your argument that rabid individualism always functions as a social good (and it would have to universally function that well in order to become a moral imperative). Rand just isn't compelling any more, although her prose captivates on the first listen (at least, it did to me).
Posted by: johnw at Jun 28, 2007 3:28:55 PM
That last post came out odd, and I blame work.
Posted by: johnw at Jun 28, 2007 3:31:07 PM
"Keith, you should pick up Caplan's book. It disproves everything you just said with evidence garnered in the real world."
Actually, that sentence just shows you don't understand Caplan's book, Olsen, or my argument. And my argument is based in the real world. The average of many guesses of jelly beans in a jar is far more accurate than individual guesses.
I think you need to read my post more carefully.
Rand is actually very compelling where she discusses the cognitive processes by which people fail to try to form accuare beliefs and/or fail to report their actual beliefs. In The Fountainhead, I think she does a pitch perfect job outlining how people's need for status and approval often leads them to deviate from forming and reporting their actual beliefs.
I think there are some interesting reasons why she doesn't get her deserved due. At least some of these reasons have to do with her own behavior and that of her more rabid followers.
But it's funny how the things I've seen in the world have actually increased my estimation of Rand over the last few years. The degree to which people instinctively lie or omit truth in order to avoid disapproval is overwhelming and is likely the biggest cause of institutional failure.
Posted by: Keith at Jun 28, 2007 3:47:24 PM
ANYTHING BY JAMES JOYCE: Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist... I haven't read Ulysses.
Posted by: Clara at Jun 28, 2007 3:49:19 PM
I know lots of people who are mad about The Brothers Karamazov, but I was incredibly disappointed when I read it. All that hype... and I didn't enjoy a single page of it.
Posted by: C at Jun 28, 2007 3:51:48 PM
I am far to ignorant to knock it, but any Joyce fnas out there care to defend Finnegan's Wake? Does that book make any sense at all?
Posted by: josh at Jun 28, 2007 4:12:33 PM
"I am far to ignorant to knock it, but any Joyce fnas out there care to defend Finnegan's Wake? Does that book make any sense at all?"
Flip daddy punch bowl rulemaking.
Posted by: Keith at Jun 28, 2007 4:18:43 PM
Keith - please explain how I misinterpreted your post, Olson, or Caplan. My understanding of your argument is that you believe people generate false reports due to cognitive defects arising from social considerations in a group environment. The jellybean example pertains to an experimental environment free of those considerations, and not to any real world, nonmarket scenario (and hardly to the market as well, or hedge funds and private equity would be out of business - it's like asking blind people to count jelly beans, which leads me to believe that your social good would be rather ineffective given the public's inability to price market goods correctly: I would even argue that the social considerations you list are necessary because, at least in markets, they allow individuals to weight the opinions of others according to their perceived expertise, revealed by how people vote with their feet (dollars) by investing in some vehicles and not others, which of course is not always perfectly accurate but probably as about as good as you get in the real world). Olson's work focuses on how actors who correctly discount social considerations or who are unaccountable in this sense will behave in group scenarios, and, in most cases, these actors will imperil collective action to the extent that they rationally pursue their self-interests, producing a suboptimal outcome. In either case, Randian's often claim that the real world corresponds to their beliefs in some way, but they fail to offer a compelling solution. Note that the story of Atlas Shrugged describes the implementation of her beliefs, but one can hardly be less than incredulous. Please do not take me for some anti-individual socialist fool, but I cannot help but express extreme skepticism as to the viability of those beliefs, and when their claim to truth rests on some supposed viability in the real world, I must also question the truth of those beliefs.
I did like the Fountainhead much more.
Sorry for the derail.
Posted by: johnw at Jun 28, 2007 4:18:52 PM
I agree with the above posters: One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Posted by: a guy at Jun 28, 2007 4:34:20 PM
The most painful novels (maybe not most overrated) are the ones that offer just enough promise to keep you reading, even though they are awful. I nominate two road trip books, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and On the Road.
Posted by: Jim at Jun 28, 2007 4:45:25 PM
The most painful novels (maybe not most overrated) are the ones that offer just enough promise to keep you reading, even though they are awful. I nominate two road trip books, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and On the Road.
Posted by: Jim at Jun 28, 2007 4:45:32 PM
The most painful novels (maybe not most overrated) are the ones that offer just enough promise to keep you reading, even though they are awful. I nominate two road trip books, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and On the Road.
Posted by: Jim at Jun 28, 2007 4:46:19 PM
finnegans wake is all that, you just have to realize there's no literal meaning to decode, it's to be read for effect, humor, etc. that is, put down the notes and just read it, preferably somewhere you have no other options (i read it on a hiking trip), and read it aloud, even if only in your head, because there are tons of puns you won't catch otherwise.
as for those others trying to take down joyce, you can say joyce isn't to your taste, but it's hard to argue with the consensus. i grant it's somewhat stupid to read something you won't necessarily get the first or second time, but for those so inclined, ulysses is all that too. put another way, objections to complexity are no different from objection to length. yes, great russian novels tend to be way long. but that doesn't mean they're not great, even if you don't have time for them. similarly, do you really question whether shakespeare is great just because the language is kinda tricky if you're not that familiar with it? no, that'd be idiotic.
(as for life of pi, total disappointment in the end, --SPOILER -- i can't stand "and then i woke up" resolutions to anything.)
Posted by: dj superflat at Jun 28, 2007 5:19:45 PM
Atlas Shrugged is worse writing than 100 yrs of solitude, but I think GGM is much more widely acclaimed than Rand, so I'd say 100 yrs of solitude is the most overrated.
Posted by: bjartur at Jun 28, 2007 6:09:46 PM
I loved reading "The Corrections" by David Franzen but never got why it was billed as an informed comedy/satire about our times instead of a great yarn about a screwed-up family.
The author's name is Jonathan Franzen.
The family portrayed is beset by ordinary internal frictions and is in fact more orderly and its members more able than is the case with most families in this country today.
The author's attempt to situate the familial drama within a matrix composed of narratives about markets, technology, politics, and culture has its successes and failures.
Posted by: Art Deco at Jun 28, 2007 7:47:00 PM
Have to second the Kerouac nomination.
Also, I'm totally with Keith on Rand:
Atlas is bad, but Ayn Rand is underrated as a writer. We the Living is especially good, and The Fountainhead is at least no worse than The Grapes of Wrath. I will say that Ayn Rand is underrated partly because of her own behavior and that of her followers, who still try to push Atlas as her best work, when it's clearly her weakest by far.
In addition, Rand's insights about human nature and the tendency of people to just mouth whatever they hear and Rand's more strident statements about the virtues of individualism tend to go underappreciated.
and
Rand is actually very compelling where she discusses the cognitive processes by which people fail to try to form accuare beliefs and/or fail to report their actual beliefs. In The Fountainhead, I think she does a pitch perfect job outlining how people's need for status and approval often leads them to deviate from forming and reporting their actual beliefs.
I think there are some interesting reasons why she doesn't get her deserved due. At least some of these reasons have to do with her own behavior and that of her more rabid followers.
But it's funny how the things I've seen in the world have actually increased my estimation of Rand over the last few years. The degree to which people instinctively lie or omit truth in order to avoid disapproval is overwhelming and is likely the biggest cause of institutional failure.
I think she's unique in the annals of literature though, like others, I hated Atlas.
Then again I enjoy DeLillo and he's getting lots of play in this thread. It can be argued that his style isn't incredibly original but I like his dry tone. I can see why others don't.
Last point: I'd like to nominate everything by Eggers. Ugh.
Posted by: fustercluck at Jun 28, 2007 9:32:59 PM
Ulysses
Portrait of a Lady
I thought that Atlas Shrugged was badly in need of an editor. The Fountainhead was much better.
I thought Catch-22 was hilarious, and the Harry Potter series was/is excellent (consider the audience!!)
Posted by: Doug at Jun 28, 2007 9:50:56 PM
DEFENSE OF FINNEGANS WAKE. What makes great art? (1) mastery of craft (2) emotional depth (3) intellectual height and (4) a brand new audience effect.
3 and 4 separate the very few from the rest. In addition to being one of the greatest writers and having a profound emotional understanding, James Joyce was easily one of the commanding intellects of the 20th century. And as he told his family and friends, Finnegans Wake was his most important work.
Because Joyce finally found a new audience effect. To experience this, you have to read it visually, while it is being read aloud.
If you do that, it gives this effect: it is obviously moving forward, it doesn't quite make sense, it is emotionally clear as a bell, and there appears to be something underneath of it.
This is the same feeling you get when you are asleep, and having a dream. This was Joyce's explict aim, and he succeeded.
Finnegans Wake is one of the greatest works of art in the 20th century, far greater than Ulysses, and Joyce's only peers in English, (and again I think he knew it,) are Shakespeare and Milton.
Unfortunately Joyce died soon after finishing it and didn't have the time to explain the book, as he was certainly about to start doing. We know that marketing was part of his talent. As it was, the European war and death came swiftly.
Seventy years later we are beginning to get the outline. It is a dream, (although a very special kind of dream,) of a simple man who feels guilt because he has committed a sin during the daytime. It may not have been much of a sin, although it turns out to have profound emotional consequences. We are not told this fictional daytime story, at least in any direct fashion.
But the dream is about his guilt, and because he is unable to handle it, he spins his own dream persona into everyone else in history who ever did anything wrong, and tried to come up with reasons and a defense. There is only one character in the book, although he has thousands of names. First he splits into male and female parts, then they split again into their children, then into the neighbors, then into everybody else.
In other words, Finnegans Wake is a single book-length interior monologue of a one sleeping human being. With one additional twist: it is a very special kind of dream. It is not realistic at all; it is Rabelaisian. What hasn't been pointed out, I think by anyone yet, is that Joyce invented the idea of something like the "collective unconscious" at the exact same time as Jung did. Of course this is not unheard of; Newton and Leibnitz independently formulated the idea of the calculus.
Unlike Jung, (and rather disdaining him because Jung didn't like Ulysses at first,) Joyce didn't see this as a real thing, but rather as the necessary artistic result of the various intellectual streams that came through the Enlightenment from thinkers like Nicholas of Cusa, Giordano Bruno, and most certainly Giambattista Vico, up through and including modern science and psychology.
You could go on about Finnegans Wake nearly forever, because Joyce has about 6 or 8 other major frameworks upon which the book is structured simultaneously. He sticks to these rigorously. This is a very severe classical approach that was needed because, at the top end of it, he decided that the dream-effect would require the dissolution of the language.
It reads aloud as English although there are roots from 50 or 60 other languages. Like the night's progression of a dream, some few times it is perfectly sensible, and a few other times it deliberately, completely, forever opaque, having parts that are not meant to be deciphered.
There are also a few different games on which the language itself is structured. Most notable is that Joyce is producing a symphony of the alphabet. The first letter of almost every word signals the archetype which at that moment is rising to the surface of the dream. HCE is male (and also, and this is my own theory, D-Dublin, F-Finn and W-who what when where why,) ALP is female (and also N-Nancy and R-river,) S's are the yin/yang twin boys Shem and Shaun (the disreputable artist and the officious bureaucrat,) and I and V are the little daughter Issy, who of course is a virgin. It actually goes on from there and becomes even more involved.
Why read Finnegans Wake? It is one of the most remarkable statements of the human condition, a single emotional arc which explores the human mind and the intellectual currents of modernity in a fascinating way. It has passages of astounding poetic beauty, unmatched by any but the greatest artists. It is a great classical tragedy. Yet despite this, it is one of the funniest things ever written.
Posted by: Lee A. Arnold at Jun 28, 2007 10:14:51 PM
No offense, but a lot of you sound like the old drunk sods at the local watering hole who constantly belch "they don't make rock like they used to".
Overrated: Dave Eggers.
Underrated: Salinger.
Should never be rated: Joyce. The premier literature of do-nothing intellectuals.
Posted by: alec at Jun 28, 2007 11:46:03 PM
Well Alec, Joyce made one of the things that led me to do this:
http://youtube.com/leearnold
Posted by: Lee A. Arnold at Jun 28, 2007 11:59:49 PM
Wow. I'm certainly at odds with this group on these matters. I find Joyce, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky nearly unreadable and therefore over rated (though, of course, I battled my way through these when I was young and pretentious... maybe I would enjoy them more today?).
On the other hand, quite a few of my top ten favorites are derided here as over rated, including To Kill a Mockingbird, One Hundred Years of Solitude, 1984 and Catcher in the Rye. OK, nix top ten... those 4 are in my top 5. Actually, they are my top 4, because I am having trouble coming up with a fifth to fit in with those. Maybe For Whom the Bells Toll, and Hemingway is also seen here as overrated. But in my view that book is not in a league with the other four.
Over rated... pthooey. I feel serious pity for those that cannot enjoy One Hundred Years of Solitude... they are missing out on one of life's great pleasures.
Posted by: Dave at Jun 29, 2007 12:06:52 AM
You'd put a book in your top 5 and not even know its correct title? Odd.
Posted by: fustercluck at Jun 29, 2007 2:27:34 AM
Another vote for 100 years of solitude, absolutely unreadable.
I think Joyce is extremely overated too, but parts of Ulysses are good.
Posted by: jb at Jun 29, 2007 6:23:28 AM
I am also a Joyce fan, but tired of defending him. Also read FW outdoors, mostly on a cliff near Santa Cruz. Joyce is not in the league of Hemingway or Faulkner; he is in the class of Einstein & Picasso. He was even smarter than we yet know. I am not yet sure we have read Joyce yet, I think he has important things to tell us about language, cognition,psychology, sociology that have not been extracted. We are still treating Ulysses and FW as puzzles, and have barely started with what he was trying to say.
But part of the point of FW is that the meaning of a single word of it may depend less on the intention of the author than the previous understandings and contexts of the readers. As puns & portmanteau words, Joyce once put all the rivers of the world in a section I think of Ulysses, so that a kid in Chile or Bangladesh would someday get a thrill. That is not just silly & sweet, but a redefinition of the purposes of language and literature.
Sorry, dudes, Joyce owns literature like Einstein owns physics. Everyone else is commenting.
Posted by: bob mcmanus at Jun 29, 2007 10:17:25 AM
Does it have to be a novel? Cause I'd nominate Collapse or Guns, Germs & Steel. Diamond likes to tell us his thesis in the first 20 pages and then back that up in such repetitive boringness that you can't read past page 100. But because he is rated so highly everyone feels that tinge of guilt for not finishing such a great book.
I like Atlas Shrugged in the same way I like silly Sci-Fi books and alternate histories. At the end of the day that's what it is, right? Just an overlong preachy beach novel. Hardly something to build your life on. And does anyone ever read that whole speech John has over the radio? Everyone I talked to reads about five pages and then flips through the next 50 to get back to the plot.
What I never liked about Catch-22 was what was Heller's solution to the Nazis then? Yes, the war was evil and awful but Heller seems to be saying we should of sat that one out because it is so bad. Anyone ever read the sequel Closing Time? Pretty rough...
Posted by: Mike at Jun 29, 2007 11:57:33 AM
Bob McManus, Absolutely. Although the rivers of the world are in the "Anna Livia Plurabelle" chapter of Finnegans Wake.
Posted by: Lee A. Arnold at Jun 29, 2007 12:51:49 PM
'Cien años de soledad', Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Posted by: Lucas at Jun 29, 2007 1:07:29 PM
I don't know how rated this is in the first place, but Iris Murdoch's "Under the Net" is on the Modern Library top 100, and I didn't get what was so great about it, though I really liked "The Bell."
Also:
Mao II
Crying of Lot 49
Marin Amis' Money
I love the Grapes of Wrath though, and every Dickens; novel that I've read
Posted by: Chris at Jun 29, 2007 1:17:13 PM
PS. This thread encouraged me to declare Jihad on James Joyce.
Posted by: alec at Jun 29, 2007 2:37:42 PM
I never cease to be amazed how someone picks up a novel they've heard is "great literature" ... can't get anything out of it ... and then they conclude the *book* is inferior.
Such well-insulated egos!
Posted by: Anderson at Jun 29, 2007 3:14:55 PM
Since nearly every other "greatest novelist of the 20th century" has been named in this
discussion, does nobody want to nominate either Proust or Mann? Hey, I've forgotten so much
of time past, I don't even remember what it is that I forgot...
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Jun 29, 2007 3:50:13 PM
Actually, as much as I dislike Atlas, it is at least no worse than Dickens's David Copperfield.
Posted by: Keith at Jun 29, 2007 5:25:55 PM
The Great Gatsby=waaaaay overrated. I even read it again last year just to see if I missed something back in high school.
Nope.
Posted by: dgm at Jun 30, 2007 4:10:54 PM
The Great Gatsby=waaaaay overrated. I even read it again last year just to see if I missed something back in high school.
Nope.
Posted by: dgm at Jun 30, 2007 4:11:24 PM
The Great Gatsby=waaaaay overrated. I even read it again last year just to see if I missed something back in high school.
Nope.
Posted by: dgm at Jun 30, 2007 4:11:30 PM
I am not yet sure we have read Joyce yet, I think he has important things to tell us about language, cognition,psychology, sociology that have not been extracted
Well, maybe, Bob.
Or maybe people just get that impression because his (later) work was so confusing.
When faced with apparent gibberish, we can either assume it's gibberish or assume there's a deeper level of meaning.
Joyce isn't plain gibberish, as witnessed by the decodability of most of it, but that doesn't mean there's yet another layer of deeper meaning in there.
(And "everyone else is commenting"? Well, you can think that. But it's just going to reinforce to everyone else that Joyce is overrated.)
Barkley: Mann isn't so overrated, because nobody but English majors cares about him. If Mann had Joyce or Hemingway's "rating", I'd call him overrated in a heartbeat. (I couldn't push myself to read even a quarter of The Magic Mountain.)
Posted by: Sigivald at Jun 30, 2007 5:13:02 PM
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.
Posted by: SoupBone at Jun 30, 2007 9:50:20 PM
Sigivald,
Well, part of what is going on here is that almost all of the books under discussion were written in English (with that being a "sort of" for Finnegan's Wake). However, I remember reading and hearing more than once some decades ago debates over "the greatest novel of the 20th century," with the three leading candidates being Ulysses, The Magic Mountain, and Remembrance of Things Past, with the latter two originally written in German and French respectively (I realize Tolstoy and Dostoevsky have been mentioned also). Obviously Ulysses has been raked over the coals endlessly, but these other two have not been mentioned at all. Is it that nobody has read them or tried to read them, or, less likely, everybody has read them and agrees that they are the top of the top?
Regarding Mann, my own view is that Joseph and His Brothers is greater than Magic Mountain, although the latter has the rather cool aspect of encapsulating a vision of how Europe fell into WW I. As for Proust, well, either you love him or you hate him (and if the latter, you don't read him because he is just so damned long). Given the extravagant praise heaped by those who love him, I would certainly imagine Proust to be a candidate for being the most "overrated" by those who do not like him. But, again, my suspicion is that most commenting here have not done so.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Jun 30, 2007 10:02:21 PM
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! (-;
Posted by: kevin quinn at Jul 2, 2007 12:56:32 PM
kevin,
Buddenbrooks is the second most read and celebrated of Mann's novels. I would agree that Dr. Faustus is an underrated
gem, and I would add Lotte in Weimar to that list also.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Jul 2, 2007 7:02:28 PM
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.
Posted by: Rico at Jul 11, 2007 2:45:08 PM
If "nobody but English majors" cares about Mann, I must say am very sorry for the English speaking world... (But I am just hoping that the statement above is untrue.)
I would agree that Garcia Marquez as a whole, and "Cien an/os de soledad" in particular, is overrated.
Now, "overrated" to me means just that: praised above its actual accomplishment. It does NOT mean that it is "bad"; in fact, parts of it are magnificent.
As to more recent literature, one name immediately springs to mind: Houllebecq.
(I refuse to even try to understand the appeal of that tripe... Mostly because I *do* understand it. It has all to do with the sorry state of latter-days intellectuals, especially in the sack.)
As for "Harry Potter",I don't think it deserves mention among works of actual literature. As to the other "great wonder" of the early 21st century, I won't even mention its title - which, BTW, shows all by itself the extent of the author's endless ignorance about its subject... You can guess to which piece of work I am referring.
Posted by: Who Cares at Oct 10, 2007 3:20:31 PM
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.
Posted by: Miranda July at Jan 30, 2008 1:03:18 PM
D.H. Lawrence's 'Lady Chatterley's Lover'. He wrote 3 editions- the third while he was dying of T.B., which is the one I read, and is consequently the more rambling of the three. It rarely held my attention what with its tedious description of the Midlands mining industry and of the vacuous relationship between Clifford and Constance. It seems to be one that is read so people can say they've read it due to its once contraversial nature.
Anything by Tolkien. 'The Hobbit' was turgid and dry. Somehow I staggered to the end.
'Robinson Crusoe' by Daniel Defoe. The first English novel- unbelievably not the last. The worst book I've ever read yet preserved by the cannon purely on account of it being the first.
Posted by: Katherine H at Feb 14, 2008 12:17:21 PM
Posted by: 鑽石 at Apr 2, 2008 8:37:39 PM
tommorrow when the war began series - the reason i hated yr 8
Posted by: Kathleen at May 28, 2008 12:37:04 AM
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.
Posted by: Dan at Jun 29, 2008 9:27:57 AM
What good novels are some of you people reading? How can authors like Harper Lee, Joseph Heller, Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, JD Salinger, Philip Roth and F. Scott Fitzgerald even sniff a footnote in this discussion? Some of you should consider a list on literary elitism, not overrated novels. Dan Brown and Harry Potter haters should also find another list. They haven't earned 'rated' in the annuls of the serious novel and thus, can't earn 'overrated'. Be it a tragedy to you same elitists, there are much worse things on this planet than pop-literature.
I can understand Joyce being on here... he's difficult, obscure and out of context in present day. I personally think he's verbose and a little too high on his own intellectual prowess, but to put him on here for those reasons is unfair. Shakespeare isn't exactly a piece of cake to read nowadays either, with his renaissance allusions and medieval-referential jokes, but I highly doubt anyone would have him on an overrated playwright list.
The clear winner to this argument and probably the most mentioned novel on this thread is Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged". That 1100 page vacuum is an insult to creativity, characterization, imagination and the art of the fiction novel. It's bloated, repetitive, boring and pushy. Its characters are cardboard cutouts of what people may be like if they were simply caricatures of personality traits (i.e. greed, nobleness, ingenuity). She used the novel as a vehicle to sell her economic theories which alone in itself is a novel crime. There has been a movie battle for a few years in which Angelina Jolie is the biggest proponent of "Atlas Shrugged". That right there should be a good indication of why you should never pick this novel up. It sucks you in during the first 400, but by 800 you'll be so pissed off your only motivation to finish it will be so that you'll be able to go onto lists like this and warn others about Rand's alluring scent. As far as I'm concerned, her and Alan Greenspan can suck eggs.
The fact that that book is on so many noteworthy lists is a crime against the novel!
Posted by: Evan at Jun 30, 2008 1:46:24 AM
