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Debate Score:18
Arguments:15
Total Votes:22
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Most Overrated Classic novel?

Give us your choice for the biggest disappointment of a novel that you have ever read!

That is...your pick for a time when you picked up an alleged classic and well known novel....say...Moby Dick...and instead of finding it worthy of its reputation as a timeless classic...found it to be very disappointing. In any way....maybe it was boring, too long, unbelievable, terribly written, hopelessly dated...whatever!

This is your chance. Defy those so-called literary experts and tell us all how you Really Feel about that piece of steaming doo doo that was supposed to be a Classic literary Achievement.

Thank you for your well thought contributions.
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2 points

The Bible. The protagonist was all over the place and the stories were disjointed.

1 point

Well, the Bible is most decidedly NOT a novel as I asked for, but I'm gonna let that slide. Since I agree with you.

Emphatically.

I cannot for the life of my understand how the Jews do it. That is, get any sort of inspiration out of that blood soaked, confusing, hopelessly obsolete and irrelevant Old Testament. What they call the Torah.

The NT is often just as full of lies and contradictions, and most of it too is absurdly implausible. But at least there are a few good quotes from Jesus.

And some of the Psalms and proverbs or OK.

Much of the reason the Bible is so maddeningly confusing and erratic and incoherent is due to the simple fact that it was NEVER meant to be one single cohesive work.

Rather, it's a compilation of dozens of books by many different authors and was written over the span of some ten decades! Most of those fables were passed around the Middle Eastern peasants orally for many years before they were ever set to scrolls. And when they were finally written it was done so by mere mortals who had their own biases and agendas.

I find the Bible all but useless in trying to apply it for answers or help of any kind in today's world. Much of it sounds simply psychotic. So yes! In that sense it IS one of the biggest disappointments in literature the world has ever seen.

The fact it is the most read book ever is scary...and does not bode well for the intellect of homo sapiens.

They say the Tao te Ching, the holy book of wisdom for the Taoists, may be the second most read re!igious book ever. Though I don't think of it as religious at all. More philosophy for navigating thru lifes vicissitudes.

I personaly find it more useful and satisfying than the bloody Bible by several orders of magnitude.

And I posit that if as many people followed it and used it to justify their deeds as do with the Bible, the world would be a far better and less violent place to live.

Thanks.

0 points

How is it not a novel?

Novel: fictitious prose narrative of book length, typically representing character and action with some degree of realism.

Is it because it is longer than other books, or because there is absolutely no realism to it? Hehe.

The Bible is not used for finding guidance. The guidance wanted is determined and the passage in the Bible is found that matches the guidance wanted. Since it is a compilation of many people and very vague, you can pretty much find anything you want to say in it.

2 points

I had a big disappointment with The Odyssey, thought I'm not sure if it fits into the novel genre.

Odysseus is a hero?

Well yeah, I don't have the culture of the Ancient Greeks, but he does barely nothing in the entire story. His journey is just based on a quarrel between the gods.

Who-worships-me-the-most?

This guy annoys me, so I'll make his life impossible.

I love this guy, he always offers me sacrifices, so I'll help him with everything.

Another problem that I had is that it is really repetitive - understandable, since it is a poem - but that doesn't make it less annoying to read:

Now when the child of morning, rosy-fingered Dawn, appeared. - Used a million times to start a new scene. I cringe when I read this.

2 points

Great post...and I agree.

I had a really tough time with Homer and The Odyssey as well.

I tried it once back in undergrad school for an English Lit class. Gave up about one third thru and went to my trusty Cliffs Notes!

Then I heard later that a movie I love, Oh Brother Where Art Thou? Was loosely based on the Odyssey.

Gave the tome another shot. And after about halfway began skimming to the end.

Yes...it is considered a novel though it really is one long narrative poem. The syntax is difficult for us modern Westerners, the pacing is brutal and there's a lot of repetitions as you said.

A lot of literary scholars say it's much better and flows easier in the original Greek it was written in.

It is said you have to like and care about a novels protagonist in order to like it. I too had trouble caring about or liking Odysseus.

I cannot really call it overrated though...since I am not sure I got it all. I admit it may have been simply over my head.

Thanks.

1 point

I have found myself extremely hard-pressed to get through anything written by Dickens. More so than any other author. But I tend to greatly dislike fiction, so I'm sure it wasn't so much his fault as it was the genre's fault.

Shakespeare is pretty dull too at times, but he has some excellent publications.

0 points

No no, Pamta. It's not just you!

I too have always found Dickens to be chore to read.

Very verbose. To Nick a line from one of my favorite films, Amadeus.......Too Many Notes!

Didja know that back in Dickens day a lot of those writers got paid by the word? This explains a lot!

I enjoyed Oliver Twist and David Copperfield.

A Tale of Two Cities took me three attempts to finally finish.

I cannot call him overrated, however. Not any of his novels.

That cat CAN write!

Thanks!

1 point

A Tale of Two Cities, actually, was the one which I did enjoy.

I wanted to like Hard Times - my second, after Oliver Twist - and Little Dorrit but just couldn't suffer the reading.

The two I have always wanted to read but have never got around to are Nicholas Nickleby and The Old Curiosity Shop. I believe I have those lying around somewhere, mixed up with my thousands of other fiction books.

Meh, I think I'll keep with my non-fiction.

I dislike this word, classic. It implies something timeless and wonderful, but most of the works which we refer to as classics are merely the works of the 19th century regardless of merit. Certainly a noble word, but one which has been damned by repetition and misappropriation. Some definitely deserve the classification - The Three Musketeers, Ivanhoe, The Moonstone (by Dickens's friend Wilkie), The Red and the Black, and the works of Goethe. However, many others - specifically anything by Henry James, Thomas Hardy, or Edith Wharton - are disappointingly overrated.

When it comes to the 20th century, I think Graham Greene deserves recognition far more so than Steinbeck or Hemingway, to authors whom I have tried on multiple occasions to read but almost always give up with agitation that they can be heralded so highly for so little reason.

chairs(67) Banned
1 point

12th number

0 points

I guess I should offer a couple of my own picks as Most Overrated Novels, eh?

OK....I have long said, in debating with book nerds that my top pick is Gabriel Garcia marquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude.

All the English proffs wet themselves over it. But I found it tedious in the extremis. What's up with all those Names being the same? All the boring and pointless genealogies? And it was way too long and slow paced. I get that it was one of the first books in the genre of Magical Realism, but even that aspect of it was tame and not worth reading thru the rest of the boring parts to get to.

A close second is F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.

This one is hopelessly outdated. With a protaganist that comes across as a whiner and is hard to like. It was all about wanting to live a life you can't have, and the phoniness of high society. And unrequited love. Maybe for its time it was cutting edge stuff but since then this topic has been done much better and more interestingly.

Best book on the phoniness of society is, of course, my all-time favorite novel, period.........The Catcher in the Rye

Thanks.