Most overated author?

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Originally Posted by Virgil

People are going to hate me for this. I'm going to list a few authors who I think are over rated. Now that doesn't mean they don't have value, just that their reputation exceeds my estimate of their merit. And let me emphasize, my estimate.

Mark Twain
Ernest Hemingway
ee cumings
Norman Mailer
Allen Ginsberg
Kate Chopin
Ayn Rand
Joseph Heller
Arthur Miller

I stayed from contemporary writers, since it takes time for reputations to settle in. And by coincidence I see I picked only American writers, which probably means I don't feel comfortable with knowing the reputations of foreign writers.

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I have one book by Chopin (The Awakening), which I have not finished up till now. If I'm not mistaken, it's one of her bests. So yes, I agree that she is overrated. About Hemingway, well I enjoy Snow of Kilimanjaro and The Fisherman..., but perhaps due to my lack of taste in literature, I find them good... but not that good. While for Heller, Catch 22 is one of my all time fav books!

J.K Rowling would have to be my choice, I'm afraid. Her ideas are great but her writing isn't.

i agree with you kop princess.
arthur conan doyle stands in much the same relation to the previous century as does rowling to our age.

Charles Darnay is spot on IMO. This argument that JK Rowling is a great writer - it is just NOT TRUE - fact! I don't think you can over rate Miller. Great playwright.

Oh and the above two posts agree - excellent - let's put this JK Rowling = Worthy Author thing to bed! Great if it gets kids reading - end of!

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Originally Posted by Pendragon

Perhaps this is heresy since he is my favorite classic author, but Twain is slighly overrated. He came to live on his reputation, not his writing towards the end of his life, and a lot of it lacks the wit and spark that made Twain who he was.

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I disagree. I think the best thing he wrote was his last - The Mysterious Stranger.

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Originally Posted by Unspar

Ultimately, I think you can make a case for any author being overrated. A work has to stand alone, and often more credit is given to the person than the work, and it's sometimes unbalanced.

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Maybe I'm just dense, but, uhh, these works don't write themselves, or just spontaneously appear. Every great work of literature was written by an author, and all credit and acclaim given to that author is completely just and deserved.

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Originally Posted by Ryduce

It appears that everyone hates Dan Brown.Why so?I never read any of his books,but I've been meaning to get the Da Vinci Code.It seems pretty popular to normal folks, but serious literature fans hate it.

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I hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated that book. So horribly written. Cliched, vacuous, and inane. It's a shame because I think the subject matter is interesting, but I just can't get past the terrible writing.

Comment on the Tolkien is over-rated subject: I think we can blame Peter Jackson for that. I think that Tolkien was in a comfortable place on the bookstore shelves before the LOTR movies. Those who enjoyed good fantasy books were often pointed towards his works, but other than that - there was never much hype about Tolkien.

the strange thing is, in one interview, dan brown didn't even hesitate at all to broadcast the formula of a successful. it's, like, why continue using a formula when a book will only end up cliched?

anyway, i have to add c. s. lewis to the list. everyone loves the narnia chronicles, and while i did enjoy some of the characters, the books are pretty bad from a literary standpoint. the writing style is horrible, and lucy is one of the first mary sues.

over-rated for me are mostly modern writers who had their works made into movies, which I personally find discomforting. I agree with everyone who put Dan Brown and Rowling on their list...even Tolkien and Lewis' Narnia Chronicles have been fancied by bedtime readers but are only popularized and over-rated because of their movie versions, they have such artistic ideas though...

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Originally Posted by Charles Darnay

Comment on the Tolkien is over-rated subject: I think we can blame Peter Jackson for that. I think that Tolkien was in a comfortable place on the bookstore shelves before the LOTR movies. Those who enjoyed good fantasy books were often pointed towards his works, but other than that - there was never much hype about Tolkien.

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I think that's very true. It never occured to me to read Tolkien before I saw the previews for the movie but the previews looked good and I wanted to read the book before I saw the movie and I was hooked. And his style varies so greatly between books, The Hobbit is a very light hearted, simple tale, Lord of the Rings is much darker, more complex and The Silmarillion is so very formal, it reads more like a history book than a novel and his short stories are somewhat uneven so if you like one of his books and read another expecting more of the same, you're going to be disappointed.

All my friends were really big fans of Tolkien way before Peter Jackson's movie. He is probably the father of fantasy, he influenced a lot of fantasy authors all over the world. I'm not saying that everybody must read LOTR, but if you like fantasy you certainly do. It's arguably the best fantasy book ever.

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Originally Posted by subterranean

About Hemingway, well I enjoy Snow of Kilimanjaro and The Fisherman..., but perhaps due to my lack of taste in literature, I find them good... but not that good.

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The Fisherman... do you mean "The Old Man and the Sea" ?
Yeah, Hemingway is simple, unlike so-called serious literature.
For me he is among the best and thus deserves every bit of recognition he received and still will.
It didn't make him much happier anyway...

Steinbeck is another God-like writer.
And then, moving into more serious literature, I like to read Henry Thoreau:
powerful messages in prose that reads like poetry.

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Originally Posted by Charles Darnay

Comment on the Tolkien is over-rated subject: I think we can blame Peter Jackson for that. I think that Tolkien was in a comfortable place on the bookstore shelves before the LOTR movies.

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I finally got around to seeing the movies a few weeks ago. Most people I know read and loved Tolkien's books years ago. Peter Jackson did an amazing job putting much of LOTR into film, but it is a completely different experience to watch the movies than it is to read the books. I doin't think that Peter Jackson did anything to raise anyone's opinion of Tolkien, except among people who were led to read Tolkien as a result of seeing the movies.