Most overrated writer?
I say Salman Rushdie. Just finished 'the Satanic Verses' by Salman Rushdie, what a pile of crap. Shalimar the clown was ok...kinda. 'anger' (think it's translate like that) was a complete ripoff of Sartre's Nausia, and a horrible one at that. Why is he considered a good writer, I don't get it.
opinions?
Re: Most overrated writer?
Edit: oops i was wrong, maybe confused him with someone else...
Last edited by Rodion Romanovich; 03-05-2006 at 17:28.
Under construction...
"In countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia and Norway, there is no separation of church and state." - HoreTore
Re: Most overrated writer?
Yes he is overrated, becuase of the Ayatollah jazz that advertised for him, i'd say they sold him more books than he would ever be able to if he advertised for himself. (don't ask how i got the book, some people would still kill me for reading it)Originally Posted by Fragony
I say Salman Rushdie. Just finished 'the Satanic Verses' by Salman Rushdie, what a pile of crap. Shalimar the clown was ok...kinda. 'anger' (think it's translate like that) was a complete ripoff of Sartre's Nausia, and a horrible one at that. Why is he considered a good writer, I don't get it.
opinions?
Texas is Gods country! - SFTS
SFTS =The rest =
Re: Most overrated writer?
Not that I have personally read any, but Dan Brown is getting some serious flak lately...
I actually thought Anne Rice's 'interview with a vampire' was horrible and one of those rare instances where the film was better than the book. Although I have to admit, that was a long time ago and havent read any more since.
"England expects that every man will do his duty" Lord Nelson
"Extinction to all traitors" Megatron
"Lisa, if the Bible has taught us nothing else, and it hasn't, it's that girls should stick to girls sports, such as hot oil wrestling and foxy boxing and such and such." Homer Simpson
Re: Most overrated writer?
JK Rowling.
Re: Most overrated writer?
JD Salinger. I still believe that you need to have the correct mix up of hormones to enjoy it.
www.thechap.net
"We were not born into this world to be happy, but to do our duty." Bismarck
"You can't be a successful Dictator and design women's underclothing. One or the other. Not both." The Right Hon. Bertram Wilberforce Wooster
"Man, being reasonable, must get drunk; the best of life is but intoxication" - Lord Byron
"Where men are forbidden to honour a king they honour millionaires, athletes, or film-stars instead: even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison." - C. S. Lewis
Re: Most overrated writer?
I couldn't name any that have not already been named... JK Rowling, JD Salinger and Dan Brown would all certainly be near the top of my list. Perhaps J.R.R. Tolkien also...
It was not theirs to reason why,
It was not theirs to make reply,
It was theirs but to do or die.
-The Charge of the Light Brigade - Alfred, Lord Tennyson
"Wherever this stone shall lie, the King of the Scots shall rule"
-Prophecy of the Stone of Destiny
"For God, For King and country, For loved ones home and Empire, For the sacred cause of justice, and The freedom of the world, They buried him among the kings because he, Had done good toward God and toward his house."
-Inscription on the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior
Re: Most overrated writer?
William Shakespeare...
Re: Most overrated writer?
Tale that back, Reenk. Big Bill is the man.
I'll throw down for James Joyce. Finnegan's Wake should be enough to put him in the highest pantheon of the overrated.
Re: Most overrated writer?
I'll never understand anyone's appreciation for Vonnegut.
Re: Most overrated writer?
Dickens
Re: Most overrated writer?
gasp.....evil, evil!
"England expects that every man will do his duty" Lord Nelson
"Extinction to all traitors" Megatron
"Lisa, if the Bible has taught us nothing else, and it hasn't, it's that girls should stick to girls sports, such as hot oil wrestling and foxy boxing and such and such." Homer Simpson
Re: Most overrated writer?
YES! VONNEGUT IS THE MOST OVERRRATED WRITER! SLAUGHTER HOUSE V is terrible....
GoreBag: Oh, Prole, you're a nerd's wet dream.
Re: Most overrated writer?
Well, she isn't exactly critically acclaimed, is she ?
You could probably say that any one of the 'great' writers is overrated, but heck, I'll throw in Melville mostly because I read half the first page of Moby Dick and didn't understand a thing he had written.
Yes, Iraq is peaceful. Go to sleep now. - Adrian II
Re: Most overrated writer?
Noone mentioned Michael Crichton yet?! Why?!
...Oh, right, you can't be overrated if everyone knows you're a hack.
Re: Most overrated writer?
Well, in terms of classic writers, I harbour a burning hatred for Thomas Hardy, after having to study the dirge that is Tess of the D'Urbervilles in English Lit.
For more contemporary stuff, I would have to say JK 'too rich for editorial control' Rowling is up there. I never got why Frank Herbert was so well liked, either.
Co-Lord of BKS and Beirut's Kingdom of Peace and Love.
"Handsome features, rugged exteriors, intellectual chick magnets, we're pretty much twins."-Beirut
"Rhy, where's your helicopter now? Where's your ******* helicopter now?"-Mephistopheles.
Re: Most overrated writer?
Dickens, by a long, long margin -- though it's not entirely his fault since the idiot publishers were paying him by the word (what did they expect).
I like Rowling's series - frothy fun without having to work too hard. Cervantes or Twain it is not, I grant you.
I have heard that Dostoevsky and Tolstoy were even more depressing and monotonous in the original Russian, but lacking that language I cannot comment. They're certainly stultifying in English.
"The only way that has ever been discovered to have a lot of people cooperate together voluntarily is through the free market. And that's why it's so essential to preserving individual freedom.” -- Milton Friedman
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." -- H. L. Mencken
Re: Most overrated writer?
I tried. God knows I tried really hard to like his stuff. All the girlies thought he was cool, so I tried even harder, back in the 60's. He was Irish. He was Catholic. He was troubled. He was clever.
I was all those things too (I thought). But I just could not and can not get him. In the end, I realized, it was all a joke of his. Not his writing. The mere fact of his writing for pay, amused the hell out of himself.
I agree with Lemur, and enjoyed his 'highest - overrate' twist. :)
Be well. Do good. Keep in touch.
Re: Most overrated writer?
Jack Keroack. His books were supposed to be so "cool" and so "heavy" and it just seemed to me like he slummed around and ate out of trash cans then put it on paper. Exciitng.
And don't get me started on William S Burroughs, he can kiss my arse
Baby Quit Your Cryin' Put Your Clown Britches On!!!
Re: Most overrated writer?
Possibly Shakespeare...
Re: Most overrated writer?
lol
Common Unreflected Drinking Only Smartens
Re: Most overrated writer?
The only difference between Shakepsear and other writers of his time is that he got published. He was the Puff Daddy of his time, he sampled
Baby Quit Your Cryin' Put Your Clown Britches On!!!
Re: Most overrated writer?
Mark Twain is definately overrated, maybe not the most overrated writer, but definately one of the more overrated ones.
"A man's dying is more his survivor's affair than his own."
C.S. Lewis
"So many people tiptoe through life, so carefully, to arrive, safely, at death."
Jermaine Evans
Re: Most overrated writer?
The ghost writers for the bible.
Our genes maybe in the basement but it does not stop us chosing our point of view from the top.
Pape for global overlord!!
Re: Most overrated writer?
Trying to separate actually bad writers from people whose style I don't like (Dickens, Bronte, any stuffy Victorian types, some Faulkner).
Any writers of mass produced novels (Clancy, King, and Grisham) I'm not fond of. But the worst has to be Dickens, he's just boring and terribly predictable.
Gimmie Hemingway, Heller, London, and Kerouac
Sometimes I slumber on a bed of roses
Sometimes I crash in the weeds
One day a bowl full of cherries
One night I'm suckin' on lemons and spittin' out the seeds
-Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers, Lemons
Re: Most overrated writer?
I've read the first book of Tess in romanian, but I have no intention of reading the second. The Man That Laughs by Victor Hugo... oh god, I swear it SHOULD NOT take half the book for the plot to start advancing.
"Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite." - John Kenneth Galbraith
Re: Most overrated writer?
I'm not particularly fond of Nathaniel Hawthorne. I thought The Scarlet Letter had too much repetitive self-pity and "woe is me" scenes. I suppose his characters may have been acting accurately, but it still annoyed me at times.
As a matter of fact, the Romantic period stuff all seems a bit much. I didn't get the ending to "Bartleby, the Scrivener", and all the "Oh, the this" and "Oh, the that" of the writing doesn't work for me. I find Poe to be an exception, probably due to his interesting subject matter.
"Never in physical action had I discovered the chilling satisfaction of words. Never in words had I experienced the hot darkness of action. Somewhere there must be a higher principle which reconciles art and action. That principle, it occurred to me, was death." -Yukio Mishima
Re: Most overrated writer?
not a big fan of C.S. Lewis either.
Re: Most overrated writer?
Isabel Allende
Re: Most overrated writer?
read his philosophy books, they are very different from narnianot a big fan of C.S. Lewis either.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks