who is the most overrated writer ever?

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Originally Posted by DanielBenoit

Well maybe I'm just projecting from experience. I have a friend who despises anything made in the 20th century, so I'm just too used to hearing people complain about Ulysses because it's a difficult book.

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Sorry Daniel but I don't think Ulysses is all that "difficult". Virginia Woolf said that the book was "immature" and I tend to agree with that. I really rate Woolf, I think she was a genius and her novels are far more complex and enjoyable than anything written by James Joyce.

Maybe it's Finnegan's Wake that gives Joyce the aura of complexity more than Ulysses, because he makes up words that only he truly understands in that one.

The measure of success in inventing new words is whether they are accepted into general usage and in that sense I would have to say Wake was a failure.

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Originally Posted by escapologist

Joyce is overrated, but that's cos critics are always waiting for a writer who's hard to understand, so that they can spend the next 987694375 years writing about them.

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If you read Ellman's biography of Joyce you will see that it is not critics who, initially, heaped praise on Joyce, but fellow writers, including 'popular' writers like Arnold Bennett and H.G. Wells, as well as modernists like Eliot and Pound. (When Bennett praised Joyce in a review, Pound cheekily sent him a note saying "You have heard your master's voice"!) In "Top ten", the best books as chosen by a herds of modern authors, Joyce also does well.

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Originally Posted by neilgee

Sorry Daniel but I don't think Ulysses is all that "difficult". Virginia Woolf said that the book was "immature"...

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Woolf was the only great writer to criticise Joyce (read Ellman's biography...) Every top writer has at least one other great writer who somehow manages to miss their genius -- Shakespeare had Shaw & Tolstoy (and even Shaw praised Ulysses!) Just because you are a great novelist doesn't mean you are a great critic, in fact Joyce admitted to not being a great critic...

Because Woolf was an English snob, or at least hung around with a bunch of English snobs, she was exactly the right person to get Joyce wrong... Not a critic to be trusted here...

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Originally Posted by DanielBenoit

Well maybe I'm just projecting from experience. I have a friend who despises anything made in the 20th century, so I'm just too used to hearing people complain about Ulysses because it's a difficult book.

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I don't blame you... There's nothing I hate more than people stuck in 19th century literature, afraid to try reading something outside their comfort zone, cos that would require the use of a brain.

Do you honestly believe that the best 19th century literature doesn't require the use of the brain... or that it is inherently easier to read? How easy is Mallarme? Rimbaud? Dickinson? And what of 18th, 17th, 16th (etc...) century literature? Are Donne, Dante, Spenser, Milton, Sterne, etc... easy reading?

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Originally Posted by stlukesguild

Do you honestly believe that the best 19th century literature doesn't require the use of the brain... or that it is inherently easier to read? How easy is Mallarme? Rimbaud? Dickinson? And what of 18th, 17th, 16th (etc...) century literature? Are Donne, Dante, Spenser, Milton, Sterne, etc... easy reading?

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I'm definitley not saying that. I find all of those names to be just as complex as any of the literature made in the 20th century, and in some cases even more so.

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Originally Posted by neilgee

Sorry Daniel but I don't think Ulysses is all that "difficult". Virginia Woolf said that the book was "immature" and I tend to agree with that. I really rate Woolf, I think she was a genius and her novels are far more complex and enjoyable than anything written by James Joyce.

Maybe it's Finnegan's Wake that gives Joyce the aura of complexity more than Ulysses, because he makes up words that only he truly understands in that one.

The measure of success in inventing new words is whether they are accepted into general usage and in that sense I would have to say Wake was a failure.

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I think I remember Woolf saying about Ulysses "how I wish I could write like that", though maybe I'm thinking of what she said about Proust, I'm not sure.

Either way, to each his own.

Also, Finnegan's Wake is not complex just because Joyce "makes up words that only he can understand", it's because both it and Ulysses brought about an understanding of language recently explored in philosophy by Wittgenstein and later by Derrida. Having read Finnegan's Wake I do not think Joyce wrote it with a big evil grin on his face thinking "oh how I'm going to confuse everyone". Rather, he was pushing the limits of the medium.

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Originally Posted by stlukesguild

Do you honestly believe that the best 19th century literature doesn't require the use of the brain... or that it is inherently easier to read? How easy is Mallarme? Rimbaud? Dickinson? And what of 18th, 17th, 16th (etc...) century literature? Are Donne, Dante, Spenser, Milton, Sterne, etc... easy reading?

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I was talking about prose, I think poetry is a medium of its own, so I wasn't talking about the Symbolists or the Metaphysical poets. I would, however, argue that Vonnegut is a lot more difficult to read than Dickens or Hardy. That was what I was aiming at.

I would agree about Dickens, although others would disagree. ut I can totally not agree with you on Hardy. Hardy is not as easy as he comes across.

That's ok, all I'm saying is that some 20th century writers are more difficult to read. Of course, 'easy' and 'difficult' are completely subjective adjectives when it comes to literature.

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Originally Posted by DanielBenoit

Also, Finnegan's Wake is not complex just because Joyce "makes up words that only he can understand", it's because both it and Ulysses brought about an understanding of language recently explored in philosophy by Wittgenstein and later by Derrida. Having read Finnegan's Wake I do not think Joyce wrote it with a big evil grin on his face thinking "oh how I'm going to confuse everyone". Rather, he was pushing the limits of the medium.

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I can't remember who said that Finnegan's Wake was Joyce's revenge on the English Language for what they did to the Irish language so I suppose the comment doesn't count if I can't identify it, but I picked up on the awe that surrounded Joyce's work as I was growing up as well as the sense of incomprehension that clung to Wake [in Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar for example].

I respect you more as I read more of your comments, Daniel [that's not to say that I don't respect everybody else - he hastens to add!] though like you say it's each to their own and we'll agree to disagree on Joyce.

I think you're right about Joyce pushing the limits but he wasn't the only one and I don't think he did it the most effectively, but he was certainly rated the most highly when I was growing up, though you don't hear it as much nowadays.

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

If you read Ellman's biography of Joyce you will see that it is not critics who, initially, heaped praise on Joyce, but fellow writers, including 'popular' writers like Arnold Bennett and H.G. Wells, as well as modernists like Eliot and Pound. (When Bennett praised Joyce in a review, Pound cheekily sent him a note saying "You have heard your master's voice"!) In "Top ten", the best books as chosen by a herds of modern authors, Joyce also does well.



Woolf was the only great writer to criticise Joyce (read Ellman's biography...) Every top writer has at least one other great writer who somehow manages to miss their genius -- Shakespeare had Shaw & Tolstoy (and even Shaw praised Ulysses!) Just because you are a great novelist doesn't mean you are a great critic, in fact Joyce admitted to not being a great critic...

Because Woolf was an English snob, or at least hung around with a bunch of English snobs, she was exactly the right person to get Joyce wrong... Not a critic to be trusted here...

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So I'm not to be trusted either because I agree with her :)

Seriously is this biography you recommend as educational about the literary establishment as it seems to be because I might add it to my reading list if it is as obviously I don't know as much about that fecund period of history as I would like to, but as I've already said I'm not the biggest Joyce fan in the world.

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Originally Posted by neilgee

I respect you more as I read more of your comments, Daniel [that's not to say that I don't respect everybody else - he hastens to add!] though like you say it's each to their own and we'll agree to disagree on Joyce.

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Why thanks :blush:

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I think you're right about Joyce pushing the limits but he wasn't the only one and I don't think he did it the most effectively, but he was certainly rated the most highly when I was growing up, though you don't hear it as much nowadays.

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Yes, there were plenty of other writers during Joyce's time who were revolutionizing the medium; Faulkner, Proust, Hemingway, etc.

@Neilgee and Mal4mac:

The question, too, is if critics are to be trusted... There have been several critics who had their own agenda and criticised literature for its melodrama and other features because it didn't fit their theory... I have serious doubts about that. Who criticises a writer for his writing style or his style of telling a plot? Clearly then you have missed the point because a writer does not write if it isnot necessary. But then agan, their theory was probably threatened or something.

At any rate. Joyce has his supporters and his enemies. I am of the opinion that a writer should convey his message. How does he do that? By language. If he cannot write language (as in some passages of Ulysses where he relinquishes punctuation or where he just adopts the most horrendous annoying writing style with short sentences that not even a baby would dare to use) he fails in his profession of writer. A carpenter will also not make good things if he has no skills, or chooses not to use them. That said, he could write properly when he started.

Woolf, a snob.. She belonged to a higher class than Joyce, that is true. Whether she was a snob is another matter. Woolf specialists might have more to say on that, but it is not because one moves in the highest intelectual and cultural circles that one is a snob. The word has a very clear meaning and I don't necssarily agree wth it.

Daniel I love William Faulkner, he was an inspired novelist. I'd forgotten that he was writing about the same time as Joyce.

Kiki I recently heard a recording of an old radio broadcast by Virginia Woolf and I was shocked to hear how posh she sounded. Why she makes the Queen of England sound common!

Of course as you point out that doesn't necessarily make her a snob [although it is known from her diaries that her attitude towards "servants" was not particularly liberal] and she did write what's regarded as one of the earlier works to champion women's rights in A Room of one's own.

Yet I think above all Woolf had an extraordinary talent for self-effacement in her novels. You rarely get a judgemental tone in Woolf. She lets you make up your own mind.

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Originally Posted by neilgee

Seriously is this biography you recommend as educational about the literary establishment as it seems to be because I might add it to my reading list if it is as obviously I don't know as much about that fecund period of history as I would like to, but as I've already said I'm not the biggest Joyce fan in the world.

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Many critics rate "James Joyce" by Richard Ellmann as the greatest literary biography of the 20th century, and it's certainly one of the most entertaining and interesting biographies I've ever read. It's definitely an education about the most admired writers from the early period of the twentieth century, and of the literary establishment - not altogether the same thing! It's also (perhaps surprisingly!) a very easy read. Also, Joyce had very interesting experiences, friends and family.

I wasn't the biggest Joyce fan until reading this, reading "Dubliners" and re-reading "Portrait" (the Wordsworth classics version is recommended it has "just enough" notes. The publishing event of next year might be the Wordsworth Classics version of Ulysses in early January. No money left after Christmas? It's only £1.99!)

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Originally Posted by kiki1982

@Neilgee and Mal4mac:
At any rate. Joyce has his supporters and his enemies. I am of the opinion that a writer should convey his message. How does he do that? By language. If he cannot write language (as in some passages of Ulysses where he relinquishes punctuation or where he just adopts the most horrendous annoying writing style with short sentences that not even a baby would dare to use) he fails in his profession of writer.

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Of course Joyce can write language! If anyone can. He can write "normally" when he wants - read Dubliners or some of his letters. I just read a passage in Ellmann of his without punctuation writing that is extremely beautiful and reflects the kind of stream of consciousness thinking that we all do without punctuation and sometimes we do baby sentences as he's just reflecting the way we think and not showing himself up as a bad writer as if but this kind of writing is very difficult just compare what I'm doing here with Joyce!

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Originally Posted by kiki1982

Whether she was a snob is another matter. Woolf specialists might have more to say on that, but it is not because one moves in the highest intelectual and cultural circles that one is a snob. The word has a very clear meaning and I don't necssarily agree wth it.

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She was being a snob when she called Joyce 'underbred' and Ulysses 'the book of a self taught working man'. She also called Joyce's editor Miss Weaver a 'woollen-gloved missionary for a book that reeled with indecency'. The (wonderful) Miss Weaver asked when a friend read this critique responded 'What is wrong with woollen gloves?" Exactly. Nothing is wrong with woollen gloves. It's just Woolf being a snob again...

Note I'm not saying Woolf isn't a great writer! My opinion hasn't been formed about that, and she may only be a snob now and again... I like several of her essays and must get round to reading her best novels someday...

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

Of course Joyce can write language! If anyone can. He can write "normally" when he wants - read Dubliners or some of his letters. I just read a passage in Ellmann of his without punctuation writing that is extremely beautiful and reflects the kind of stream of consciousness thinking that we all do without punctuation and sometimes we do baby sentences as he's just reflecting the way we think and not showing himself up as a bad writer as if but this kind of writing is very difficult just compare what I'm doing here with Joyce!

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Exactly, you illustrated what I mean: writing without punctuation is unnecessary and obscures the meaning of that writing just to obscure it. It has nothing to do with message, but, maybe, rather with snobbery (to me). Art for art's sake which i very difficult to understand, and maybe even ununderstandable.

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

She was being a snob when she called Joyce 'underbred' and Ulysses 'the book of a self taught working man'. She also called Joyce's editor Miss Weaver a 'woollen-gloved missionary for a book that reeled with indecency'. The (wonderful) Miss Weaver asked when a friend read this critique responded 'What is wrong with woollen gloves?" Exactly. Nothing is wrong with woollen gloves. It's just Woolf being a snob again...

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Correction: that is not being a snob, that is reflecting the ideas of society then. She came from a high-class family that occupied itself with art and intellectual knowledge. He came from a working-class family. There is a difference in perception of what is proper and what is deemed interesting. The woollen gloves might have had more to do with Weaver being a suffragette. I haven't been able to do enough research, but several accounts of suffregettes mention 'desguise' and woollen gloves as a part of that desguise. As women's hands were supposed to be small and delicate, they cannot have worn big bulky woolen gloves as that would have made their hands bigger instead of smaller. Not to mention the fact that by the 1920s gloves were hopelessly out of fashion. This was more or less the time when Woolf was speaking. If she was alluding to this then it is the question if she was a snob. People do not become snobs because they criticise someone's work.

Note that I am not saying that Joyce is in all his works a bad writer. He just got carried away at some point in my mind.