Most overated author?

[Jozanny]

I have no means to justify this other than my taste in literature, but I can't get through anything Kerouac has written without falling asleep or my mind wandering. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not one who's in need of constant action and dramatic stimulation to enjoy something, but this man somehow manages to numb my brain. Does anyone else find him just as boring?

I must caution I only know segments of Kerouac's work. He does capture, fairly, that by the late 1950's the American frontier was nothing but an echo of what it once was, but beyond that, boomers who treat him as a demi-god run a tiresome treadmill. The narrative voice can hold your attention, but seems to hover between Hemingway's immediacy and Woolf's stream of consciousness, burning out before it ever hit full throttle.

On The Road isn't a bad book necessarily, just a styled period piece. As a writer Jack pretty much flared out after that.

I would pick Annie Proulx, which I know isn't fair, since she is a successful contemporary, but Amazon has over 1000 owners of The Shipping News who are seemingly eager to be divested of the title--and I don't see her attempts at regionalized humor as very original.

[kelby_lake]

I'll say Harper Lee, although she's not really an author as she only wrote one book which was hardly 'wow'. Is 12 Angry Men a book? If so, then it's so much better.

[Joreads]

I'll say Harper Lee, although she's not really an author as she only wrote one book which was hardly 'wow'. Is 12 Angry Men a book? If so, then it's so much better.

12 Angry men is actually a play by Reginald Rose. I have to agree is a great movie one of my top 10.

[stlukesguild]

Is 12 Angry Men a book? If so, then it's so much better.

How on earth could you make the claim that "12 Angry Men" is a book that is so much better than "To Kill a Mockingbird" when you don't even know if it was a book? To offer an opinion that one book is so much better than another would seemingly assume that you have actually read both. As movies... both are good, but I personally prefer Mockingbird... which I think is a good book, although not great.

[JBI]

Twelve Angry Men is even worse than To Kill a Mockingbird. I have seen the play, and have seen the movie version of Twelve Angry Men, and have read To Kill a Mockingbird twice now.

Twelve Angry Men has the advantage of being shorter, and not require reading if you see the play or movie, whereas To Kill a Mockingbird suffers by forcing a reader to push through 300 pages of a novella-length story out of Twain completely, with very little character, and less growth.

As for Twelve Angry Men, that work has essentially archetypal characters from society, with a predictable plot, and the most bizarre plot, of truly no depth or intelligence I have seen. Come on, one can doubt everything, I think it was Socrates who first said that. We don't need a play about people who dwell on "what ifs" to the point that they let a killer off the hook. The profound statement the play tries to suppose is that, "There are always gaps in narrative, therefore no one should be prosecuted." I guess it caters to the semi-informed unlegal type, who believe this is actual 'justice' and that this is what actually happens in court.

That being said, feel free to make up your own minds on both of these works. They are better than some of the stuff out there, but Twelve Angry Men can only really be stomached well once (I don't know how I got it down twice) and can only be read as a piece of suspenseful drama, though a very predictable and stupid one at that. Then again, the Academy seems to have liked the movie, so perhaps it isn't as bad as I pretend.

[coolestnerdever]

I'd have to say Salinger is slightly overrated. Don't get me wrong, I loved the Catcher in the Rye, but at the same time I just don't think his writing was comparable with the other great authors.

[kelby_lake]

Is 12 Angry Men a book? If so, then it's so much better.

How on earth could you make the claim that "12 Angry Men" is a book that is so much better than "To Kill a Mockingbird" when you don't even know if it was a book? To offer an opinion that one book is so much better than another would seemingly assume that you have actually read both. As movies... both are good, but I personally prefer Mockingbird... which I think is a good book, although not great.

I was pretty sure it was a book and I could tell from the direction and tone of each one. 12 Angry Men showed prejudice better because it was slowly revealed that the jury member said the man was guilty because of his own prejudices, not solely racism. Mockingbird is said by some to be an important book about prejudices but only the courtcase is worth reading and that's only about 40 pages because it is cut off by annoying Scout who basically says at the end 'racism is scary but i have my dad so it's okay'. Using a child narrator to make the book seem original was a stupid idea because it hindered the book.It would be like a fish narrating a shipwreck but it could only hear half of the good stuff because it needed to eat some seaweed.

Oh, I like debates

[JBI]

To Kill a Mockingbird is a bildungsroman, not a book about racism. Some critics fail to realize that, but the court case is meant to be used a backdrop for the coming of age of Scout. I didn't like the book, but I think the reason its reputation is so great is because people fail to realize the racism is backdrop, and not actually THE STORY. The story is how her brother broke his leg, and the setting is in a racist south.

12 Angry men on the other hand, I doubt can be read, except for politics, which of course, are rather flimsy. Seriously, the play, or book, or whatever you wish to calls it doesn't justify that the suspected killer is innocent, it merely states that one can unravel any truth because one cannot even prove the existence of others. It is saying essentially, "We didn't witness the murder, how can we take testimony of people who did not see every single detail. How can we take into account anything from anyone who isn't omniscient." The verdict isn't really that he was innocent, but seems to imply that god will act as the judge, being that he is the only person fit to give out any law, being that no one knows everything.

A truly moral-less story, loaded with pseudo answers, dependent on an unstated plot, and loaded with the most deus ex machina revelation of events I have yet seen.

The audience is revealed to the "flaw" in the evidence only when the person is about to acknowledge it. It is as if we are too stupid to be on the jury ourselves, and they need to keep editing what we know as it comes. It reads more, then, like a mystery than a drama, and has no coherent structuring. It is as if the viewer, or reader needs to be fed additional testimony in order to realize he ACTUALLY HASN'T SEEN THE CASE. The plot is the revelation of facts, and how they change the verdict, not the revelation of character, and how that changes their morality. It is backwards to the core.

[Drkshadow03]

To Kill a Mockingbird is a bildungsroman, not a book about racism. Some critics fail to realize that, but the court case is meant to be used a backdrop for the coming of age of Scout. I didn't like the book, but I think the reason its reputation is so great is because people fail to realize the racism is backdrop, and not actually THE STORY. The story is how her brother broke his leg, and the setting is in a racist south.

Although the story is a coming-of-age story, it is also about racism. I don't think it's a matter of "either/or," but rather it is about both. Part of the story and her coming-of-age if I remember correctly is Scout trying to make sense of the racist south. The two themes tie-in together.

[JBI]

Racism is a theme. The story is about Scout, not the death, or trial of Tom Robinson. The first half of the book doesn't even contain the trial. The trial is what brings about change (though not really, as the narrator never seems to change) to the setting of the first half, and creates a plot in which the character of Scout can grow. Innocence is a more central theme than racism in the book. Racism just overpowers it because it is a more popular discussion topic, and because the novel is mediocre, but culturally significant because of its handling of racism.

The other themes get overpowered by the obvious theme for the simple reason that the prose is mediocre, and it causes everything else to seem insignificant, despite its prevalence in the novel. The book says very little beyond almost plagiarizing from Twain on anything but the trial.

[slobone]

I have a problem with this topic, because I don't think it's fair to rate a book I haven't read. And if I don't like an author, I'm not going to read them. So there are very few where I feel qualified to say they're overrated. Certainly I have no problem putting Dan Brown and JK Rowling on that list.

Technically, I suppose any author could be over-rated, if they have an unsustainably high reputation. Certainly Shakespeare has been overrated at times, especially by Harold Bloom.

Among contemporary writers, I've only read one book each by Pynchon, Ishiguro, and DeLillo, but none of them tempted me to read further.

Virginia Woolf I think is somewhat overrated. I've enjoyed some of her books, but I don't know if she belongs on the absolute top shelf of great authors. Same with Forster and Hemingway. Edith Wharton (who I also enjoy) probably doesn't either, but I don't think too many people have put her there.

A tough topic, though.

[kelby_lake]

To Kill a Mockingbird is a bildungsroman, not a book about racism. Some critics fail to realize that, but the court case is meant to be used a backdrop for the coming of age of Scout. I didn't like the book, but I think the reason its reputation is so great is because people fail to realize the racism is backdrop, and not actually THE STORY. The story is how her brother broke his leg, and the setting is in a racist south.

And this is such a boring idea that we have to have some racism thrown into the
mix.

And to be fair to 12 Angry Men, it was in a time when a lot of people were ignorant and prejudiced. A lot of people in the Deep South still are racist. And I liked it because everyone was racist and they were quick to condemn him purely on his race but the 'ringleader' was most strongly prejudiced because of his own son.

[noheroes13]

vonnegut
kerouac

[Sir Bartholomew]

even though i love jane austen like i can read her books over and over till i die, i think her overrated.

[ctalerico]

Stephen King -- unless success is measured solely in dollar $igns. How do you spell repetition?