who is the most overrated writer ever?

[aeroport]

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.

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.

[Jane's Nemesis]

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.

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.

[ben.!]

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.

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!

[SirRaustusBear]

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.

[islandclimber]

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..

[Quinn_]

-----

[Dori]

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

[stlukesguild]

I think Melville is overrated...

You think wrong.

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.

[lauren!]

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

[JBI]

I think Melville is overrated...

You think wrong.

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.

As Harold Bloom has put it, The Wasteland is just a rewrite of "When Last in Door-yard Lilacs Bloom'd".

Whitman is critically regarded as perhaps the greatest American poet by many scholars. All subsequent modern poetry bears at least some resemblance to him.

As for egotistical, he for the most part, rarely means what he says, or says what he means. He is a huge ironist, and also famously praises all of humanity. "Song of Myself" which I assume you are talking about is, as he put it, a song of himself, and therefore shows his true identity as he sees himself.

[HotKarl]

As for egotistical, he for the most part, rarely means what he says, or says what he means. He is a huge ironist, and also famously praises all of humanity. "Song of Myself" which I assume you are talking about is, as he put it, a song of himself, and therefore shows his true identity as he sees himself.

I agree with IslandClimber in the sense that Whitman is egotistical. Like all the other Transcendentalists, he loves to project his own identity on other people and vice-versa. He thinks he understands everybody's soul. But regardless of what Big Wally thinks, he can't take on another's identity; he can only empathize with him/her. Sorry Walt, you aren't the slave escaping the hounds, you aren't the soldier dying on the battlefield, you aren't the wife enthusiastically making babies (his image of woman, which I think proves my point.)

But don't get me wrong. What he did with verse is extraordinary. He's an excellent poet, and most poets (and writers in general) are egotistical.

[aeroport]

I found this kind of humorous, and thought I would contribute it to the WW discussion:
"You came to woo my sister, the human soul....But for a lover you talk entirely too much about yourself. In one place you threaten to absorb Canada. In another you call upon the city of New York to incarnate you, as you have incarnated it. In another you inform us that neither youth pertains to you nor "delicatesse," that you are awkward in the parlor, that you do not dance, and that you have neither bearing, beauty, knowledge, nor fortune. In another place, by an allusion to your "little songs," you seem to identify yourself with the third person of the Trinity....We find art, measure, grace sneered at on every page."
--Henry James's review of Leaves of Grass

[Sir Bartholomew]

Here is the OP:
This thread was made for the dead.

I see. Oh well.

[Prometheus]

J.K. Rowling, easily. I've read up to the fifth, albeit being a ten-year-old, I thought they were crap.

[stlukesguild]

I found this kind of humorous, and thought I would contribute it to the WW discussion:
"You came to woo my sister, the human soul....But for a lover you talk entirely too much about yourself. In one place you threaten to absorb Canada. In another you call upon the city of New York to incarnate you, as you have incarnated it. In another you inform us that neither youth pertains to you nor "delicatesse," that you are awkward in the parlor, that you do not dance, and that you have neither bearing, beauty, knowledge, nor fortune. In another place, by an allusion to your "little songs," you seem to identify yourself with the third person of the Trinity....We find art, measure, grace sneered at on every page."
--Henry James's review of Leaves of Grass

Of course it is always possible to discover critical opinions by great authors that suggest the failings of another master. I almost would have expected as much of James. In almost every way Whitman's poetry goes counter to the highly ornate (some might say overwrought) perfectionism of form, the Baroque, excessively Latinate and even obscurantist language, as well as the sense of reserve... with regard to an open display of feelings... especially sexual... as favored by James (How's that for a Jamesian sentence?) One can imagine James turning up his nose at this crass and unsophisticated country bumpkin who would be poetic visionary. Of course H.G. Wells is no less favorable in his opinion of James... and his critical opinion is direct and to the point... unlike James own criticism of Whitman, referring to his prose as something akin to a "hippopotamus laboriously attempting to pick up a pea that has got into a corner of its cage."

Personally I am able to admire both writers greatly.