I like him, but for me, it’s Stephen King, a lot of his stories he goes off on a twenty page non-relevant rant.

Though, the ones where he keeps that to a minimum, are great.

Then there’s Mr. Marketer James Patterson who markets out his name to other authors making it look like he wrote the book when it was obviously someone else.

  • The-literary-jukesBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Here is a controversial one - James Joyce.

    I have heard college lecturers suggest that Ulysses (and some other Joyce and modernist texts) may not be in the “canon” in a generation because it was written to be obscure for a specific intellectual audience and never had a popular readership. It was canonized almost immediately by the literary professionals of the day (which were the only ones who could attempt to understand it and who, let’s face it, Joyce was attempting to impress/confound).

    A generation from now there will have even less popular readership and the points and historical references he was trying to make will have become so obscure that only those who purposely study his book like some biblical text will understand it.

    Not sure whether this view is correct, but I certainly get it. If no-one reads a text (and those who do generally don’t understand it), how does it remain relevant?

    The books prior to modernism (WWI) that are part of the cannon (I know what is or is not “canon” is controversial but I am not sure how else to describe classics that are still relevant) all had wide popularity in their day - and most are still wonderful to read. Starting around 1900 English literature became a university study - so the professors and literary elite of the day formed the “cannon.” Around this time literary modernism came into vogue and some (certainly not all) of the texts written at that time were simply dropped into the canon without ever having been popular with the public. So it’s an interesting argument - all texts prior to modernism (from Iliad to Middlemarch) had been blessed by the public - while afterwards some texts were simply anointed by the elite and dropped into the classroom - some of James Joyce works being part of them. Will that stand for long?

    It’s an interesting and controversial argument for Joyce and some others basically being overrated.

    Now let’s hear the blowback from the modernist fans.