who is the most overrated writer ever?

Hardy overrated? Jane Austen overrated? Would you please KINDLY leave the dead alone?

Well everyone, all I can say is that I love Jane Austen and the only reason she would not get published today is because all the publishers accept is romance crap. I don't mean to pick a fight, but they are, for the most part, just movies on paper. Jane Austen, Shakespeare, and all the rest are the real writers.

w00t!!! I just made post #200!!!

JK Rowlings. She's richer than the queen because she told the same story 7 times.

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Originally Posted by Sir Bartholomew

Hardy overrated? Jane Austen overrated? Would you please KINDLY leave the dead alone?

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Here is the OP:

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Originally Posted by mister_noel_y2k

this is a thread for all the writers that we've been told are great and are in the classics range and constantly appear on 100greatestnovels lists and such like but we hate.

i say jack kerouac is the most overrated

die! on the road

:banana:

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This thread was made for the dead.

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Originally Posted by moose gurl

The most overrated author in my opinion? I'd have to go with Hawthorne. I've probably made a ton of enemies right then and there, but honestly, I just don't like his work. It's stale and repetitive. But that's just my personal opinion.

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Hmm, I don't know that I'd say he's "overrated", in the sense that not everyone's talking about him and making film adaptations, etc...
If you mean in an academic sense, there is a very good reason that Hawthorne is An Author To Be Dealt With - namely, he is the first good American writer who, to paraphrase Henry James's argument, did not have to leave his country to find a subject. He's a foundation, of sorts.
Of course, there was Washington Irving - an author with whom Hawthorne shared a mutual admiration - but Irving didn't write very much fiction, and, from what I understand, he doesn't figure as strongly in American Studies because he wrote "like an Englishman".
Okay, I'll end my little history lecture now. Sorry...
Anyway, I sure hope he's good - I'm about to read all of his works. :(

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Originally Posted by Morten

Well, that's self explanatory. Every work of art, however universal, could not have emerged at any other time than it originally did.


It's not so much that she's late 18th century as it is the fact that all her novels are tedious comedies of manners with only the characters and order of events altered. For future Austen readers: read Pride & Prejudice and call it a day. Everything else is...well, it's flat out the same.

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I don't think it's fair to say that all of Jane Austen's heroines are the same, or the stories the same either. The themes often recur, but that's something you see with other writers (Look at Charlotte Bronte...unrequited love appears in all her books). You can't say for example that Northanger Abbey, which is a sparkling parody of Gothic novels, is the same as the rather subdued Mansfield Park, which deals with heavier themes like the subjection of poor middle class women. The comedy of Emma doesn't have the same tone as the more poignant Persuasion.

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Originally Posted by Antiquarian

The prize for the worst writing I've ever read would have to go to Diane Johnson for Le Mariage. Most of what she wrote didn't even make sense. It sounded like a person who'd taken leave of her senses and was drunk and on speed all at the same time. I don't know if others works written by her share the same "scattered" quality. I have not read them and don't intend to do so.

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I have not read any works of Diane Johnson, but as a side-note it's interesting to know that she and Stanley Kubrick collaborated together to write the screenplay of the famous horror film The Shining.

I'm guessing Stanley Kubrick wrote most of it, if she is as bad a writer as you say! :p

Most overated in my opinion is Jules Verne. I'm all for fantastic adventures and whatnot but if the characters going on those adventures are unrealistic stereotypes who don't change at all throughout the book, then I don't care about them or their various trials that inevitably lead to a cheesy happy ending.

Seriously I just don't understand his popularity. I mean he was the first science fiction writer (along with Wells) but rather than make him popular I would think his writing would lead people to dismiss the genre as a failed experiment.

Jack Kerouac and the whole beatnik movement.. the worst thing that happened to poetry ever!

and hmm... I think Melville is overrated... and Poe... and Whitman is way overrated... Leaves of Grass... come on, besides the new style of poetry it is way to egocentric and in love with america, and quite mediocre compared to so many others..

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J.K. Rowlings, without a doubt. I don't really understand why people like her books.

I think Melville is overrated...

You think wrong.:D

and Poe...

As a poet, certainly.

and Whitman is way overrated... Leaves of Grass... come on, besides the new style of poetry it is way to egocentric and in love with America, and quite mediocre compared to so many others..

Mediocre in comparison to whom? Perhaps Dante and Shakespeare and a few others. Who are all these far superior poets? Looking at much of the vast array of 20th century poetry... not merely American and British but internationally... I would note that many of the greatest poets would seem to disagree with your dismissal of Whitman. Even T.S. Eliot, as much as he attempts to deny Whitman, is profoundly influenced by him. As much as I love and read poetry I would be hard pressed to name one poet since Whitman (American or otherwise) who surpasses him in influence or aesthetically.

Agreed, Dori. I can never get into her books.