April 28th, 2012 / 2:52 pm
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Meta
What to Expect When You’re Expecting
Heartbreaking Work of Faggering Genius
The Bible
A Winter’s Tale or whatever. By Haplperin somethijng. Shit was awful.
The Things They Carried
If someone doesn’t mention Franzen soon, I won’t know if I’m on the internet anymore.
everybody poops. house of leaves. 1984. the corrections.
Most of Shakespeare
Dude, nice.
Game of Thrones (and the whole A Song of Ice and Fire series). For the life of me, I can’t undertstand the evangelical zeal around it.
Lolita
Nope, not me. Where’s the rake? Yeah, like twenty-seven years ago. More like shoulda been the rejection.
the most overrated anything is always going to be the highest rated. regardless of the highest rated thing’s actual quality, it’s always going to be subject to hyperbole that nothing can ever live up to. and saying a book is “overrated” is never truly a judgement of the book itself. it’s only a judgement of the discourse surrounding the book.
so, no fucking question: the bible.
For some reason I hated An American Dream by Norman Mailer. Don’t know how rated it is, if rated at all, let alone over, but that was the most recent fail, anyway.
the bible is also the most under-read book in the world
lol@ the Bible being overrated. Tell that to Faulkner and Melville.
I LIKE THE WAY ‘PAMPHLET’ LOOKS WHEN CAPITALIZED, MMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
“We The Animals,” Justin Torres. Book was absolutely terrible. I have no idea why it was so hyped.
Maybe the one this guy has between The Age of Lincoln and The Partnership.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/58372028@N00/6966685512/lightbox/
Ethan Frome!
I loved that book though it was rude
Franzen, but then again it’s Blake’s site.
Gaggering Stinkus
100 years of solitude. Like most of the rest of ggm, though.
Pride and Prejudice
the beatles
I like that book. Although I admit that it’s partially because of the film adaptation with Liam Neeson
i love the beatles jk
What?? That book rules though!
I agree with all the words in this sentence.
Holden Caufield.
Catcher in the Rye definitely, but I’m pretty sure this has already been established by everyone except shitty advanced english teachers at public high schools.
I second that.
Total disagree.
If “most overrated” means ‘greatest difference between hype and reality of effects’, sacred literature – like the Old and New Testaments – would have to be a strong contender.
Both parts of the Christian Bible have parts that are as enduringly provocative as any literature has proven to be; arguments for the literary quality of many books and episodes are frequently made and easily defended. At the same time, vanishingly few people read the whole thing, and, while anthropological (and, sure, theological) interest can burn without calculation to luxuriate in or be challenged by the boring parts, it’s not so easy, it seems to me, to find much agreement that, say, all of the Lord spaking unto Moses in Leviticus and Numbers is beautiful literature.
(–which is an argument many could defend – I would – for ‘Homer’, Virgil, Milton, etc. Where, Horace, does ‘Homer’ nod??)
But the ‘overrating’ of sacred literature consists of something else: these texts – books, song, oracle, and so on – are not just “texts” — they are the ‘words of God’, the direct, unmediated speech of ultimate reality. It’s not even that sacred literature represents ‘ultimate reality’; sacred literature – its self-understanding goes – is ultimate reality communicating directly in its own language.
That’s a lot of hype to live up to.
I agree. Tell it to Buk and Jim Harrison too. They read and re-read psalms and proverbs for the pure bad-assness of the lyricism. The Bible we can debate forever–but it is well written.
It’s also why so many Southern writers are noted as stylists–so many of them grow up in a culture where they read and study the Bible constantly. The lyricism in Barry Hannah’s work, for instance, is clearly influenced from close study of the Bible.
Probably Truce at Bakura. Shadows of the Empire was amazing, though.
It had its moments. I don’t know what it was, just couldn’t get that into it for some reason.
My unpublished one.
that’s a good short story. If it were written now it’d be called Tom Cruz Goes To War and be written by someone in muu muu house.
I agree with some of the above. Has anyone read Stanley Elkin’s genius essay “Some overrated Masterpieces”?
agree agree agree bible is so fucking overhyped
people who hate holden are such goddam phoneys
hey man the bible on average is HORRIBLY written. even if you put together psalms, proverbs, song of solomon, job, ecclesiastes, revelation, that’s not even half the Bible. there are pages & pages & pages of instruction manuals re: temple building, & elaborate genealogies, there’s so much fucking padding in there.
also just because the bible has positive literary qualities @honoredguest doesn’t mean it’s not way overrated. if people only talked about the bible re: its writing, i wouldn’t say it’s overrated, but people actually believe that shit & try to legislate it too.
in another 1000 years they’ll look at our “god” the way we looked at zeus
ALSO just because anyone can turn the shitty bible into some good work of art doesn’t make the bible any less shitty. like if a sculpture turned a big pile of shit into art, the art can be good, but the shit it’s made of is still just shitttttttttt
did i mention btw fuck the bible
yeah parents raise your kids baptist if this is the kinda shit you want your children writing on saturday night
lol god
god thank you
nah that essay’s totally overrated
such a great n64 game too
such a small percentage of people are readers anyway that even if we’ve all only read 1% of the bible it’s more read than any other book
and Numbers and Deuteronomy and 1st & 2nd Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles!!!!
all of them
Me too. My god. Once I was on a twelve hour bus ride, trapped in the backseat with this book. Even after four hundred pages, numerous same-named partially-related characters and eight hours of boredom, I still couldn’t understand the hype and opted to sleep the last four. Apparently GGM prefers his prose when translated into English. Mysterious, no?
i see you’re a heartbreaker
¡and job and daniel!
king lear?
bell jar
The best story in that collection is “How to Tell a True War Story.”
In the category of “Overrated By The Zealots Who Adore It”, I think The Bible would face some pretty stiff competition from Atlas Shrugged.
Personally, though, I’m going to have to go with The Cat In The Hat. I adore Dr. Seuss but that book, despite being one of his most popular, is definitely one of his weakest. On Beyond Zebra and The Butter Battle Book out shadow it so far that their shadows stretch all the way around the planet and poke its shadow in the ass.
No way! I was trapped on a bus with only this book as well. So I feel like I made a really good attempt. But yes, sleep turned out better.
take also into account the numbers of bibles sold vs. number of regular books sold. the number of gideon bibles readily available unread.
Aynt is an excellent call, especially defined sharply as you’ve done. ‘Zealotry’ is the engine of a kind of “overrating”, and the gulf between evaluations of her books by her supporters and by almost everybody else is comically wide.
(Some of the disparity is due to political-economic differences in world views, but supporters seem to think Atlas Shrugged is well-written, and it’s as an artistic failure that many haters hate it.)
Are you sure it isn’t overfamiliarity that’s caused you to say such a vile thing about the mighty, flighty, don’t-be-uptighty Cat’s tale?
No way man! WHO IS JOHN GALT!? Plus genius and smarts and railroads!
I’m glad you were able to get this out of your system, though it’s a silly, juvenile post that’s not worth a serious response. Let me save you some words: “CHRISTIANITY IZ BAD!!!!!” A few quick points–1) It’s silly to lump all Christians in one group (ALL CHRISTIANS ARE ANTI-GAY, PRIMITIVE BAPTISTS WHO HANDLE SNAKES AND HATE THE GAYS!!!!); 2) Christianity’s influence on liberal movements, like, you know, the one that gave African-Americans equal rights, is undeniable (MLK was a Baptist Preacher, last I checked); 3) Stop watching Bill Maher–he’s a moron. There are more intelligent spokespersons for Atheism and Agnosticism than this fool; 4) Dismissing the Bible’s influence on literature is dumb, and I really shouldn’t have to explain this to you, assuming you have a shred of historical perspective and have read books that were published before 2000.
hey man you seem kinda angry feel like maybe you should pray about that
Hey man, you seemed pretty angry yourself in your first post. Using religious insults (“better pray about that”) doesn’t make you seem any less angrier, petty, or immature.
aw man this piece of shit hasn’t left yet
i think the website you’ve been looking for is
http://tyndale.com/00_Home/index.php or maybe www.focusonthefamily.com ? they will be more receptive to your slut-shaming as well
hi man
I once saw a bumper sticker that said “Who is John Galt?” inside of a Jesus fish. I almost threw up.
Do you mean published in the Tulsa World or the Coos Bay, OR, World? I can recall reading only articles, not books, in those newspapers.
where is the dislike button
Nah, I’m not fond of fundamentalism, but thanks anyway.
amen
nonsense
not just lolita, all the russians suck dick. shakespeare. moby dick. to kill a mockingbird.
Troll, or idiot?
Reading TROPIC OF CANCER for the first time right now. What a fucking slog.
And that story would be called, “experimental,” while TOB’s story that basically breaks every “rule” of fiction writing would be called “traditional heteronormative realism.”
That book broke all of my heart.
“there’s so much fucking padding in there”
lol
I love Catcher in the Rye. That book is hilarious.
No. All those books and authors you listed kick ass.
The most overrated book is The Great Gatsby. It’s pretty good though.
“raise high the roofbeam carpenters”–I mean, damn, peanut butter and jam! that beat is correct.
It was the Naked Lunch of its time. Only sold because of the obscenity trial. Easily Millers worst work. Have you read Colossus of Maroussi or Big Sur? Pretty dope reads.
Seriously? Caulfield’s voice is one of the most perfectly realized I’ve encountered thus far. The prose is beautiful, the dialogue excellent. Forget about the nonsense those English teachers tell you – about teenage alienation, etc. – and focus on the writing itself and how Caulfield functions as a character and keep the dead brother in your mind at all times.
Holy shit, I read both of those. If we’re going to go into Sci-Fi fan-fiction, Imzadi was way overhyped as well. How could someone fuck up Troi and Riker meeting for the first time THIS BADLY.
the youtube video of the dog w/ the cupcakes
History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell.
I’m going to regret this, but that story is every realist’s favorite “experimental” story/exemplar to assign to 10th graders.
I usually don’t worry about the “experimental/non-experimental” binary, because it doesn’t really exist, so I don’t know what you’re talking about. I do know that the book, as a whole, does a lot of innovative stuff: genre hybridity, meta-fiction, progressive critiques of gender, modular plot. Perhaps it’s not “experimental” though because it’s popular and not published by some independent press.
It bored me before I knew what an independent press was. I guess I think the book is fine, but it didn’t hold up on a second reading (for me). I also don’t think it’s doing anything innovative that wasn’t done 30 years before, or 300.
Yeah, if you were to simply isolate the techniques, but no one had written a book like that about Vietnam, or even war. As a genre, realism is highly experimental. Any genre that denies its artifice is obviously experimental.
i think it’s explained by “the general population have terrible taste”
Have a look at the poetry of George Seferis, whom Miller calls Seferiades (Seferis’s real (family) name) and whom Miller meets more or less when he’s introduced to Katsimbalis (the Colossus). Seferis is a great writer – his criticism is also a pleasure to read – , and his epyllion Mythistorima (a mini-epic of 24 short poems) is a peer of The Waste Land and The Heights of Machu Picchu (or whatever you like).
“like, you know, the one that gave African-Americans equal rights”
I think it was George Carlin who mentioned this is one of the biggest brainwashing techniques of government because bro and/or girl, we were born with those rights. As was everyone else. As that is kinda what the Bible is getting at, among other things. Now back to your original discussion.
Obviously, it–the Civil Rights Movmement–shouldn’t have been necessary. But that’s beside the point, because I was simply acknowledging an historical reality.
This is a funny question. Anything well known enough to be the most overrated in the world has probably already begun to tip into rating defilement.
I get the Bible being overrated, but most people don’t revere it as literature anymore, so it doesn’t seem overrated at this time. Yet, that book is still the basis for countless stories and tropes in both film and literature, so it occupies a position that’s nearly unimpeachable. It’s like it’s lased in our circuits whether we read it or not (“we” is loose). I think some folk tales, fairy tales are similar. “Overrated” seems a feeble word to describe what some think the question is asking.
Totes Jonathan Franzen yeah.
Hi Flavors,
Have you read most of Shakespeare (that is, more than half of his work)?
of course they do taylor. and war and peace is really fucking awesome too.
true, if you’re an adult and not 5. theres a reason no one has ever heard of his “adult” stuff.
thats silly talk, 100 years kicks ass.
i liked it a lot, found it very enjoyable to read
Every book imaginable
anyone who thinks lolita is overrated is either crazy or not crazy enough
that shit is parked outside of my office RIGHT NOW
what is it like to be you
Alice Munro ==> BORING but everyone’s is like 8==D~~~
Alice Munro ==> BoRiNg but everyone is like 8==D~~
nabokov
hahahahahahahaha