Friday, August 12, 2011

See if You Agree

Tom Perrotta, Francine Prose, and others on "great books" that aren't great

Link via SF Signal.

5 comments:

Lawrence Person said...

I'm gratified to find others that hate Holden Caulfield just as much as I do...

Dan_Luft said...

Now I know why the Yale Review never accepted my WIlliam Carlos WIlliams poetry ripoffs

Todd Mason said...

The YALE REVIEW guy sounds like he'd be better off at, say, PEOPLE. Maybe TYR would be, too.

I don't hate Caulfield as much as Lawrence does (nor at all, but it is rather a whiny piece), but do dismiss RAGTIME as thoroughly as the contributor does, a rare point of agreement between myself and Greil Marcus. What a piece of shallow claptrap.

The non-cult items, all twelve of them, on the popular list are at least as impressive as most of the Modern Library board list...WISE BLOOD is only on the popular list, while some ridiculous bubble gum is on the board (bored?) list.

Bud said...

The authors of the given entries have exquisite literary judgement on the books listed, since they coincide exactly with my own 8-)
Imho, you just can't pile on Catcher in the Rye too much!
In James Joyce's defense, I don't think he's ever been given enough credit for "playing" his readers in much of his stuff. But I have to say "Finnegan's Wake", the folk song, beats "Finnegan's Wake", the book, hands down!

George said...

Shakespeare was out of favor for a hundred years. I think works of art rise and fall depending on the tastes of the public.