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Great books and rotten reviews // Literary immortals can be deadly wrong
From: Chicago Sun-Times
Date: 19861116
Author:Henry Kisor
In 411 B.C. Aristophanes called Euripides a "cliche anthologist" and "maker of ragamuffin manikins." Things since then have just tumbled downhill.
In 1662, Samuel Pepys saw "Romeo and Juliet" and dubbed it "the worst that I ever heard in my life."
In 1807, Samuel Johnson's Dictionary was to Noah Webster "the greatest injury to philology that now exists."
In 1897, Mark Twain established a benchmark with this opinion about James Fenimore Cooper's The Deerslayer: "In one place . . . and in the restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offences against literary art ...
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