Who Is The Worst Writer Ever?

[EricP]

Ayn Rand.

[Genie]

J.K Rowling's books are an utter bore. Her Harry Potter book series, is just too non-sequitur, in my opinion.

Tolkien may be an imaginative writer, but his ideas bore the hell out of me as well.

I also might add I found Orwell to be a bore. I still recognize that his ideas were phenomenal, but I guess I can't manage to enjoy his writing.

[Equality72521]

I love Ayn Rand. Hence the user name....lol

J.K. Rowling book were okay at first, I really did like, them, love them actually, then they became overrated and all I cared about was seeing if in the 7th book Harry would be like tripping on acid or something. I was hoping it was all some elaborate hallucination. Well, hoping isn't the word, fantacising with a bunch of my friends at the wakiest endings possible.

Tolkein and Orwell are actually writers that I enjoy, Orwell more than Tolkein, but both are good in my opinion.

[Pillowmint]

Personally, I really didn't like the book that Richard P. Feynman wrote. I respect him a physicist and all, but I would his writing incredibly boring. I am sure there are weaker writers out there then him though.

[clumsy angelle]

I have to say Nora Roberts. Well, she is a well-known romance author but I just don't like her works. Her novels are full of erotism...

[GatsbyTheGreat]

I grew up on the Frank Herbert Dune novels, and I fell in love with Paul which was a neat trick since he doesn't have an ontological existence, so I cannot pan them too badly, but now that I'm grown up, there is a difference between fictional ambiguity and finding out that there is no Moby Dick, even after you've been chasing the whale for over a thousand pages.

I am not saying Paul should have had *powers* like graphic novel heroes, but the Reverend Mothers terror over having a male born like themselves never quite seems realized. You do not get a foreboding about *The Scattering* in the first Dune, and in Dune Messiah there is no clear cut reason why Paul has to topple himself. Yes, he realizes his children will surpass him, but we never really see how LetoII rules.

I do not deny there are shadings, but exactly why is he a Tyrant? What was so terrible about this nearly all powerful worm child? Then the Mothers come back into the picture and reunite with the renegades--and then Chapterhouse Dune sort of just tells the reader that Herbert has a love affair with his own take on visionary Judaism. Bravo, but I wanted all these deaths and conflicts between the mothers and aliens of various skills to offer me some slight degree of coherence.

The series just doesn't interweave very well, and some characters become appendages for no reason that I can see. LetoII's sister just seemed to be around so Leto wasn't an only child in Children of Dune.

I am not trying to be too harsh, and still remember my early enthusiasm, but there is better science fiction, even when it depends on mythical tropes.

!@#SPOILER ALERT#@!

















Hmm... I'd have to disagree that "there is no Moby Dick". A lot of readers seem to view Paul and his monstrous son as typical heroes. Even the movies portray Paul as a man turned God rather than a man playing god. Herbert can to some extent be blamed for this, as the novels did not make it perfectly clear that the Atreides were anti-heroes, and many readers followed the atrocious deeds committed in their names with the same fanatical enthusiasm as the Fremen they manipulated (myself included). Together they reduce a proud, powerful, age old warrior culture to dust in a matter of millenia (not such a long time through the eyes of the farsighted inhabitants of Herbert's world), massacre countless people on countless planets, ensnare the known galaxy in a dictatorship that lasts some 3500 years and ultimately fail in their endeavor, leaving a civilization with its teeth pulled to contend with the wild ravages of the masses returning from the scattering. There is your Moby Dick.

As for you other points, I could contend some and concede others, but I'd be going on for pages and pages so I'll just tell you I respect your opinion. Unless you think Brian Anderson... I mean, Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson have done a better job telling the story than the creator... that just grinds my gears, they are both horribly sophmoronic in style (sp error intentional). One thing I will say is that, unlike a lot of people it seems, I felt "Dune" wove, flowed and unfolded beautifully once I got on friendly terms with the millenia-long background story. Just my op

[Equality72521]

I have to say Nora Roberts. Well, she is a well-known romance author but I just don't like her works. Her novels are full of erotism...

I concur...Add Julie Garwood to that!

[Melmoth]

Who is the worst writer ever? And to make it interesting rather than have everyone say Dean Koontz, who is the worst writer ever who is considered to be literary?

I'd nominate either Matthew Gregory Lewis, Theodore Dreiser, or Owen Wister.

M.G. Lewis???? Are you serious???? Have you read The Monk???? Do you know he was scarcely 20 when writing it? Come on!!

I always thought Hemingway was really overrate.... though I don't specially dislike what I've read by him...

As for Kafka... I believe the same things he says in 200 pages could be equally said in 100... it seems to me his style might be 'counter-effective' -if you allow me the expression- at times... take, let's say, The Process as an instance.

[Melmoth]

Who is the worst writer ever? And to make it interesting rather than have everyone say Dean Koontz, who is the worst writer ever who is considered to be literary?

I'd nominate either Matthew Gregory Lewis, Theodore Dreiser, or Owen Wister.

M.G. Lewis???? Are you serious???? Have you read The Monk???? Do you know he was scarcely 20 when writing it? Come on!!

Oh Gothic Readers from the world, ARISE!!! He he...

I always thought Hemingway was really overrate.... though I don't specially dislike what I've read by him...

As for Kafka... I believe the same things he says in 200 pages could be equally said in 100... it seems to me his style might be 'counter-effective' -if you allow me the expression- at times... take, let's say, The Process as an instance.

[johann cruyff]

As for Kafka... I believe the same things he says in 200 pages could be equally said in 100... it seems to me his style might be 'counter-effective' -if you allow me the expression- at times... take, let's say, The Process as an instance.

The same way the trial itself could have been over in a day, ending with a meaningful verdict for Jozef K., but it dragged on and on instead?

That's bureaucracy for you - what can be done promptly usually takes 10x more time, usually with the ending that you hadn't exactly hoped for. Having said that, I think the book was written in a perfect way, fulfilling its purpose of showing a man tangled in red tape.

[Melmoth]

The same way the trial itself could have been over in a day, ending with a meaningful verdict for Jozef K., but it dragged on and on instead?

That's bureaucracy for you - what can be done promptly usually takes 10x more time, usually with the ending that you hadn't exactly hoped for. Having said that, I think the book was written in a perfect way, fulfilling its purpose of showing a man tangled in red tape.

As an (un)civil servant I know what bureaucracy is about... perhaps that's why I find Kafka sometimes dense... I suppose I need to have a try at any of his other works and see what effect it has upon me... any suggestion, Johan?

[johann cruyff]

As an (un)civil servant I know what bureaucracy is about... perhaps that's why I find Kafka sometimes dense... I suppose I need to have a try at any of his other works and see what effect it has upon me... any suggestion, Johan?

No problem... The Metamorphosis is often immediately recommended, but I'd wait with it until you have read The Castle and some short stories first. Also, there's Amerika, but that's the least kafkaesque work of the lot, so I'd read that once you're done with everything else, because you wouldn't really get to know the real Kafka through that novel.

As for the short stories, you can probably find a complete collection, but if you're only looking for the cream of the crop, I suggest In the Penal Colony, A Hunger Artist, A Letter to the Academy, A Little Woman, The Judgment, and, although often considered to be one of his lesser works, Description of a Struggle. Then again, you know what? Read them all, every short story of his is worth reading.

[kelby_lake]

Is it just me or is The Judgement exactly like Amerika?
There's no one quite like Kafka

[Melmoth]

No problem... The Metamorphosis is often immediately recommended, but I'd wait with it until you have read The Castle and some short stories first. Also, there's Amerika, but that's the least kafkaesque work of the lot, so I'd read that once you're done with everything else, because you wouldn't really get to know the real Kafka through that novel.

As for the short stories, you can probably find a complete collection, but if you're only looking for the cream of the crop, I suggest In the Penal Colony, A Hunger Artist, A Letter to the Academy, A Little Woman, The Judgment, and, although often considered to be one of his lesser works, Description of a Struggle. Then again, you know what? Read them all, every short story of his is worth reading.

Thanx for the recommendations, Johan. I'll have a go with them.

[Carpalim]

I'm aghast that Kafka's name has even appeared in a thread devoted to bad writing!

And I wonder if some of the dissatisfaction comes from Kafka's rejection of the realistic psychological novel in favour of dream-like parable. The characters and their thoughts are bizarrely - but absolutely deliberately - two-dimensional, or even one-dimensional (consider how Gregor Samsa doesn't once ask himself how he came to be turned into a beetle - it's one of the story's most disturbing, yet hilarious, ideas). In place of characters we can 'relate to', Kafka dangles strange puppets, rigid marionettes dancing ridiculously before the Great Mystery ('The Trial' goes beyond mere matters of red tape or state tyranny!). This strategy provides an astonishing and utterly compelling vision of the absurdity of existence not achieved by any writer before or surpassed since. A more valid contribution to the pool of human thought and expression there has never been.

And plus it's funny!! I mean, some of the funniest writing extant! (the homeless K attempting to live with his girlfriend and his two assistants in a makeshift tent in the middle of a school classroom, with the class and hateful schoolteacher present). There are stories of Kafka crying with laughter while reading out his work to friends. His sense of the absurd alone secures his reputation as one of the greatest writers of all time.

But... if you are comfortable in your own skin, and are sure a loving God will look after you for eternity, and you like characters you can really 'get to know', then it's odds on Kafka's not for you. But for me, he's the only author I've re-read five times ('The Castle', and I'm still not finished with it), so eternally nourishing do I find him.





Over-rated classic authors: can't really think of any - there's Hemingway, I suppose. Over-rated commercial writers: thousands, of course, but the guy who perpetrated that Angels and Demons and DaVinci Code drivel deserves special mention. The bloke's barely able to put a sentence together. And when he does, we get gems like: 'Her smile was magic,' and 'But it was too late' (he likes this one; he uses it over and again). Makes James Herbert look like Joseph Conrad. His 'work' combines the deathliest cliches with the deadest language conceivable, like: 'I'm dreaming, he told himself. Any minute now I'll be waking up.' Only as consciously camp trash could the following ever have any value for humanity: '... Vittoria dropped effortlessly to the ground. Every muscle in her body seemed tuned to one objective - finding the antimatter before it left a horrible legacy.' But he's serious, apparently... Pulp writing doesn't have to be this bad; the fellow should pick up an Ian Fleming novel and get a lesson in craftsmanship.