Over-rated/Under-rated
Blogsurfing lazily as usual, I came upon the inevitable annual book lists. And also something a little different: lists of the most over-rated/under-rated books of the year. I don't see anything special about the year, so at a venture, imagining writers as gladiators...
Thumbs down: Martin Amis, John Updike, Salman Rushdie, Gunter Grass, Jorge Luis Borges, Samuel Beckett, Ian McEwan, Derek Walcott, Percy Shelley, Ezra Pound, Charles Reznikoff, Charles Simic, Alain Badiou, Bertrand Russell, Ayn Rand, Robert Bly, Billy Collins, Anthony Hecht, Stephen Spender, Andrew Motion, Sharon Olds, Jorie Graham, John Berryman
Thumbs up: Jane Austen, P.G.Wodehouse, Anthony Trollope, Wilkie Collins, George Ade, James Branch Cabell, Ambrose Bierce, William Shakespeare, John Webster, Andrew Marvell, George Herbert, John Skelton, Christopher Smart, Russell Edson, Frank Kuppner, Lyn Hejinian, Rae Armantrout, Lorine Niedecker, May Swenson, Phyllis Webb, Sandro Penna, Miroslav Holub, Tomas Transtromer, Francis Ponge, Jacques Roubaud, Robert Walser, Leo Perutz, Flann O'Brien, Ronald Firbank, Henry Green, J.L.Carr, R.K.Narayan, Fernando Pessoa, Alexander Mccall Smith, Ruth Rendell, H.C.Bailey, Edmund Crispin, Donald Barthelme, Richard Brautigan, Laurence Sterne, Lewis Carroll
Thumbs down: Martin Amis, John Updike, Salman Rushdie, Gunter Grass, Jorge Luis Borges, Samuel Beckett, Ian McEwan, Derek Walcott, Percy Shelley, Ezra Pound, Charles Reznikoff, Charles Simic, Alain Badiou, Bertrand Russell, Ayn Rand, Robert Bly, Billy Collins, Anthony Hecht, Stephen Spender, Andrew Motion, Sharon Olds, Jorie Graham, John Berryman
Thumbs up: Jane Austen, P.G.Wodehouse, Anthony Trollope, Wilkie Collins, George Ade, James Branch Cabell, Ambrose Bierce, William Shakespeare, John Webster, Andrew Marvell, George Herbert, John Skelton, Christopher Smart, Russell Edson, Frank Kuppner, Lyn Hejinian, Rae Armantrout, Lorine Niedecker, May Swenson, Phyllis Webb, Sandro Penna, Miroslav Holub, Tomas Transtromer, Francis Ponge, Jacques Roubaud, Robert Walser, Leo Perutz, Flann O'Brien, Ronald Firbank, Henry Green, J.L.Carr, R.K.Narayan, Fernando Pessoa, Alexander Mccall Smith, Ruth Rendell, H.C.Bailey, Edmund Crispin, Donald Barthelme, Richard Brautigan, Laurence Sterne, Lewis Carroll
posted by Cheshire Cat at 9:48 AM
6 Comments:
Two Thumbs Up for your Thumb-Downs. Most of them anyway. But easy now, how can you drop Borges and Beckett in the same bag as Rand and Russell ? I am right now picturing some enraged nihilists and maybe Berryman too (may God rest his soul) coming after you. You might want to protect your thumbs.
I actually like Borges and Beckett, I like them a lot, but I still think they are over-rated. Maybe it wasn't a good idea to lump them with people like Amis and Bly, to whom I'm downright allergic.
And why is a certain someone right at the end if you weren't going to give him his own line?
Oedipal complex?
most of the thumbs up seems to have in common the good taste in having stayed dead for some time now, without producing something from the grave. wodehouse, austen, holub, shakespeare (?!!).
and why so many poets in the thumbs down?
The world of poets is crowded - there is more sniping, more anxiety there. It's frustrating to see someone like Billy Collins receive much acclaim when there are so many others who are genuinely good.
Those who are dead are in need of being resurrected, some of those who are living (Martin Amis, I'm pointing right at you) need to have their reputations razed to the ground.
As for Shakespeare, yeah, I do think he's under-rated :)
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