I like to keep things positive when chatting about books, films, music etc if only because there’s just so much negativity available on the internet, and I often get the sense people find it much easier to rip on stuff than talk about something they really love.
On the other hand – it’s great fun. And maybe can tell us more about our tastes. So the Bernhard book got me thinking – what are people’s least favourite books/authors? Who do you think is overrated? Why?
Why? Why are you writing like that?! Stop referring to your hair as your “rug”!
Some of mine from the last few years (sorry if I’ve named anyone’s favourites. You’re mileage will definitely vary and anyway, it’s all just, like, my opinion man):
- Martin Amis (Money). Why? Why are you writing like that? Stop referring to your hair as your “rug”! I knew how his dad felt when he threw this book across the room.
- John-Paul Sartre (Nausea). Terribly, terribly overrated. Calling yourself an existentialist doesn’t magically make your fiction profound. Writing about drug trips, in the hands of anything but an excellent writer, is very very boring and reveals nothing about the universe. Actually Sartre’s a villain for lots of reasons, but probably the worst thing is somehow he’s managed to eclipse the talents around him (Simone de Bouvoir and Camus)
- Ayn Rand. Every prejudice, everything bad you have heard about her style is totally justified. Absolute worst example of the “literature of ideas”. Ironically has most in common with the Soviet literature that she left behind.
- Jordan Peterson Just feeble. Typically when you read someone you have a principled disagreement with (e.g. rampant misogyny) you have to be on your guard for rhetorical tricks, bad premises etc. But this is so hilariously weak you can just laugh through it. Astonishing he ever held a job in a university. “Humans are just like lobsters”. Here’s another theory: no they’re not.
- A (dis)honourable mention, as he’s not so bad really (and apparently is a really fine poet): Boris Pasternak (Doctor Zhivago). Hello, this is the twentieth century calling! What do you mean, writing a sweeping historical yarn filled with stock characters might look dated? Incredibly this was hailed as an achievement in the 1950s – history aside, it feels a hundred years older, and not in a good way.