It’s the question that everyone has an answer to. What is the most overrated book of all time? The three titles most often cited are Ulysses, The Catcher in the Rye, and the Bible.
That was the case two years ago, when readers of A Commonplace Blog named their least favorites. And it was the case again yesterday, when fourteen writers and editors told Slate the books they didn’t really like. Elif Batuman and Daniel Mendelson both admitted to Ulysses, while Tom Perrotta and Jonathan Rosen came up with The Catcher in the Rye. Matt Weiland, a senior editor at Ecco, tried to be funny by offering the book of Genesis (“its style is so sloppy and varied it seems almost to have been written by committee”). Get it? Critical scholarship has changed our estimation of the Bible for all time! Ha ha.
The only real surprise was Francine Prose’s choice. (Prose continually surprises. That’s one mark of a writer worth following.) Beowulf was her choice. “I felt nothing when Beowulf was killed,” she said. “Mostly, I was grateful that the poem was almost over.” Far more interesting was why she was reading the Old English poem in the first place: for a course on representations of evil. Now there’s a reading list I’d like to have.
On Twitter afterwards, I added to the confusion by challenging friends and other writers to name their most overrated novel. John Podhoretz suggested A Farewell to Arms; Max Boot, The Naked and the Dead; Rachel Abrams, Everything Is Illuminated; David Harsanyi, Infinite Jest; Sam Schulman, The Death of Virgil (a book I suspect Schulman of having invented). More than one person offered One Hundred Years of Solitude and Midnight’s Children (“we already said One Hundred Years of Solitude,” Schulman complained). My own choice is well-documented.
But what’s the goal of the game? I believe in pricking overinflated reputations as much as the next critic, but too often the game can edge over into mockery and envy. The goal should be to encourage readers to put down bad books and pick up better ones—books that succeed where the overrated books fail. John Podhoretz recommended Evelyn Waugh’s trilogy Put Out More Flags (1942), Officers and Gentlemen (1955), and Unconditional Surrender (1961) instead of Mailer’s Naked and the Dead. Mario Vargas Llosa’s Conversation in the Cathedral (1969) is a better choice than One Hundred Years of Solitude.
In the end, though, what matters is the quarreling and the debate—the partisanship for some books and against others. Down with reading circles, book clubs, and bubbling uncritical enthusiasm for the latest reads!
The Death of Virgil is by Hermann Broch? Did I miss a joke or context?
ReplyDeleteProbably both, Daniel. I was chafing anyone who considered Broch’s novel famous enough to be overrated.
ReplyDeleteah HA! I get it!
ReplyDeleteAnything, and everything, by Pynchon.
ReplyDeletejdallen
I'd argue for James Gould Cozzens's Guard of Honor over The Naked and the Dead any day. And if you feel the need to get closer to combat that Cozzens's account of war-as-work does, then Irwin Shaw's The Young Lions would do. Or, for the middle ground--not without some reservations, I should note--James Jones with From Here to Eternity.
ReplyDeleteUlysses and In Search of Lost Time are my two favorite books and both have long sections that are interminable and annoying. I have "yelled" at both authors - James, stop the stunts; Marcel, shut up already about Albetine. I can understand why anyone reading either book cover to cover might be tempted to call them "overrated" and in some ways they are.
ReplyDeleteBut like people you love, i come back to them again and again.
D. Roberts
I agree with the choice of Everything is Illuminated as a top overrated novel from the past few years; I found it impenetrable (my wife loved the parts of the book set in the present and disliked the more mythical parts; I hit the mythical parts and decided I couldn't waste my time). I found Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow to be surprisingly enjoyable and entertaining, although that may have been due to the circustances under which I read it -- speed reading it on a Loyola University quad bench under an elm tree before my final exam rolled around. If I had given the book more time, I might not have enjoyed it as much, I think. A fairly recent book which gave me tremendous pleasure and which I can unreservedly recommend is Mordechai Richler's Barney's Version, which didn't have any dips or lulls at all--pure delight and laughter all the way through.
ReplyDeleteI've never understood the acclaim for A Passage to India. It was never clear to me how Fielding could be so certain that Adela's account of what happened in the caves was false. I understand the history of racism in India, but nothing was presented about Adela's history or character that would give Fielding a basis for taking a side. The portrayal of the episode in the cave was not convincing.
ReplyDeleteIs Matt Weiland talking about Genesis in the Greek translation, the English translation, or the original Hebrew (more properly Bereshis)? Unless he means the latter, his criticism has more to say about the translators (which in both cases were, of course, committees) than about the work itself. He might also want to try one of the better modern English translations, such as the Living Torah by R. Aryeh Kaplan zl'. - ahad ha'amoratsim
ReplyDeleteAnytime I find myself confronted with ANY novel that's considered a classic, I always try to take into account the fact that it's considered a classic. For me, it seems that the book/story/play etc. must have at least some merit, if for nothing other than it's status, and should be approached as so. The Catcher in the Rye may be overrated compared to say, To Kill a Mockingbird, but I don't think it would ever be considered overrated when compared to Twilight.
ReplyDeleteOh dear God; Moby Dick.
ReplyDeleteWell, I would have to say "Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man" followed in quick succession by "Fifty Shades of Grey."
ReplyDeleteMy tastes are nothing if not Catholic...