who is the most overrated writer ever?

[escapologist]

Oh come on. Since when was ambiguity such a bad thing? Mystery is what keeps things beautiful. If Joyce had not written in such a radically different way, literature would not be what it is today. New percpectives always create new horizens for creativity. I suppose Shakespeare and Dante too are overrated since they've been written about for well over three hundred years.

I'm not saying he's a bad writer, I'm saying he's made to sound more complicated than he really is. I don't see the point in analysing every little word in Ulysses. It ruins the beauty of the book. The point of literary criticism isn't to dissect works of art.

[DanielBenoit]

Yes!

The man was an abysmal writer... god alone knows why he stays so popular. I can only assume it has something to with noteriety...

I think James Joyce is vastly overrated; so is Hemingway the novelist although he wrote some fine short stories.

Joyce.

What is UP with all this hate towards the modernists? Is it because they're difficult?

[escapologist]

I think you'll find Lawrence and Joyce aren't the only modernists . Plus, 'overrated' doesn't mean that they aren't good, just that there's a lot of inexplicable hype around them.

[Scheherazade]

Is it because they're difficult?

Yep, you have figured us out: Since we cannot understand the literary works of great depths, we just go nasty on the authors... Kind of a defence mechanism.

[DanielBenoit]

Yep, you have figured us out: Since we cannot understand the literary works of great depths, we just go nasty on the authors... Kind of a defence mechanism.

I think you'll find Lawrence and Joyce aren't the only modernists . Plus, 'overrated' doesn't mean that they aren't good, just that there's a lot of inexplicable hype around them.

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.

[Lokasenna]

What is UP with all this hate towards the modernists? Is it because they're difficult?

Trust me, 1000 year old skaldic poetry is a thousand times more difficult than Lawrence or Joyce. It is also far more enjoyable!

[neilgee]

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.

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.

[mal4mac]

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.

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.

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

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...

[escapologist]

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.

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.

[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?

[DanielBenoit]

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?

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.

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.

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.

[escapologist]

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?

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.

[kiki1982]

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.

[escapologist]

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.

[neilgee]

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.

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.