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Terrible, well renowned novelists

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a pack of wolves:
I was going to post this as a reply in the remakes thread but it was getting too long and becoming far too much of a derailment. Hence, a thread for discussing those novelists who have a significant reputation and why you think they're awful. And yes I realise this doesn't make for the greatest thread but it would have been a worse reply in an existing thread and I just couldn't resist.


--- Quote from: Joseph on 04 Aug 2009, 12:43 ---He's definitely written some poor things, but 'Money' and 'Time's Arrow' are quite excellent.  He doesn't attempt to play around with grand ideas, but his style definitely works wonders in a few cases.

--- End quote ---

I never read Time's Arrow. Money I got bored with after a while and didn't finish but I seem to remember it being at least better than London Fields. I've never finished that either, but the sickening level of hatred towards the British working class he spits out in that novel genuinely appalls me and I wonder at how few people comment on his bigotry. And unlike TS Eliot for example where there is truly superb writing to be appreciated along with the small-minded hate Amis is terrible. He writes turgid prose, overblown sentences that bludgeon you with their clumsiness and tedium. Just try reading the first few pages of London Fields, they basically sum up everything that's wrong with British fiction. Basically, the man hates me, my family and most of the people I know and dear god would I love to do serious physical harm to him.


--- Quote from: Joseph on 04 Aug 2009, 12:43 ---Which book do you think is his best?  I can't recall which is his shortest, but I'll guess at 'Cosmopolis', which I haven't read.  But you really don't think that 'White Noise' offers anything of value?  And though 'Underworld' is something of an overwhelming mess at times, there are passages which are engulfing and rather incredible.  Certainly though, he tends towards being a tad overobvious with his ideas, especially in his plays.

--- End quote ---

I was thinking of The Body Artist. A ghost story where the artistic and intellectual petite bourgeoisie are haunted by the spectre of the working classes, even having their own dead consumed and projected back at them through the lower class? Now that's interesting. Thing is, I'm not at all convinced that's the novel Delillo attempted to write. It's in there so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, but I suspect it might have been something more along the lines of White Noise that he was intending to produce.

For me, White Noise suffers from the same problem as a lot of American fiction: it is labouring under the delusion that Nabokov's Pale Fire wasn't utter crap. It's a bit comic and there are middle class American academics... by this point due to the collected efforts of Delillo, Auster, Nabokov and their ilk dear god do I never want to hear about American academics having issues ever again. Will the book be a bit absurdist and maybe have an occasional nod to magic realism but in a very postmodernist way? Oh it will what a shock. American academics whose wives cheat on them and who are always obsessed with death and invariably have vast amounts of time to very unrealistically sit around the house (the body artist's protagonist appears to be the world's richest performance artist) and who live lives curiously divorced from things like work and class. There are things of value in reading white noise but they're mostly points of attack against self-indulgent middle class navel gazing. As for Underworld I very possibly never got to the well written bits because, well, it's massive and uninteresting (not unlike nearly everything Salman Rushdie's written in the past twenty years).

scarred:
I feel like this thread is gonna start some blood feuds. That being said:

Ernest Hemingway.

He's not absolutely terrible, he did write some good shit ("The Short and Happy Life of Frances Macomber," "The Snows of Kilimanjaro"), but all of his "renowned" works are really, really poorly written. "All Along the Western Front" is basically one giant run-on sentence. I mean, really? Semi-colons don't count, you hack.

John Irving.

I've only read "A Prayer for Owen Meany," but it put me off reading any more Irving ever. It would have an interesting, moving, well-written chapter, and then it would leap 30 years into the future where the narrator would lament about how pointless his life is for 30-odd pages before he had another flashback to his childhood with Owen. And none of it would relate to the larger themes of the book. Ugh. "Prayer" is one of those books that's around 600 pages, and should be 200. At most.

That's all I've got. I'll wait for someone else to start the Ayn Rand discussion.

Ikrik:
Christopher Moore

If I have one more person tell me that his stuff is the most hilarious thing they've ever read I might have an aneurism.  I tried reading Lamb and I believe something about vampires. It was absolutely horrible and not even all that witty.  A comedy about jesus' brother is something that a really funny novel could be written about.  Unfortunately Christopher Moore doesn't seem to use any of that concept to any potential.

->scarred

We might have a blood feud if you don't put Old Man and the Sea in the good shit that he wrote.  That book broke my heart.

And I believe it was Officer Barbrady who summed up Ayn Rand the best

"Yes, at first I was happy to be learning how to read. It seemed exciting and magical, but then I read this: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I read every last word, and because of this shit, I am never reading again."

JD:
Stephenie Meyer: 'Nuff said

scarred:

--- Quote from: Ikrik on 05 Aug 2009, 00:44 ---->scarred

We might have a blood feud if you don't put Old Man and the Sea in the good shit that he wrote.  That book broke my heart.

--- End quote ---

I don't feel like I have the authority to make official comment on the Old Man and the Sea, seeing as how the last time I read it, I was A) in 7th grade and B) hated it on principle for being a required book. That being said, I don't really have a desire to revisit it. It's definitely not a work I would use to showcase his deficiencies.

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