Bad Reviews for "Classics"

[Jazz_]

I recently read a few reviews that seemed to "stand out". I know every work is bound to receive some bad reviews, but a couple of these made me laugh ;)

Jude the Obscure
"The village aesthetic brooding over the village idiot" - Milton Shulman

Ulysses
"In Ireland they try to make a cat clean by rubbing its nose in its own filth. Mr. Joyce has tried the same treatment on the human subject" - George Bernard Shaw

Finnegans Wake
"Obvious schizophrenia" - (unknown psychiatrist)

On the Road
"That's not writing, it's just typing" - Truman Capote

Our Mutual Friend
"To our perception, the poorest of Mr. Dickens' works. And it is poor with the poverty not of momentary embarrassment, but of permanent exhaustion." - Henry James

[DanielBenoit]

The Finnegan's Wake quote was said by Jung when he evaluated Joyce's schizophrenic sister and considered Joyce to be the same too.

How about this one by Oscar Wilde concerning Dicken's novel The Old Curiosity Shop:
"One would have to have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without dissolving into tears...of laughter."

[Pryderi Agni]

I forgot who said it, but I distinctly remember a famous author's review of Pride and Prejudice saying that he (the author) wanted to dig up Jane Austen's body and take a rock to her skull for writing something like 'this'. That to me was the funniest review ever written on a book.

[mal4mac]

The Finnegan's Wake quote was said by Jung when he evaluated Joyce's schizophrenic sister and considered Joyce to be the same too.

It was Joyce's daughter, Lucia, who became schizophrenic. All his sisters were eminently sane. In fact one his sisters provided useful support by looking after Lucia for a time. Jung did not think that Joyce was schizophrenic, he said that certain aspects of Ulysses might lead one to suspect the author was schizophrenic. But other aspects of Ulysses, and his knowledge of Joyce, indicated to him that he certainly was not schizophrenic.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/2084586/Jung-and-Ulysses

I've just read Ellmann's biography of Joyce. I think that any professional analyst who declared Joyce to be mad would have destroyed his career (hence "unknown psyciatrist"!) Joyce's reaction to the forces around him is extremely sane, if sometimes extreme, and he had the backing and support of major intellectuals who could have destroyed Jung in print if he had said anything too extreme about Joyce himself -- the critical comments on Ulysses were viewed with amusement by Joyce. He took negative criticism sanely and used it as useful feedback, even if it revealed a sad lack of understanding in supposedly bright minds.