Worst famous writer of your country?

[Zack]

Well I can hardly think of any American authors either. I guess Mark Twain. Kurt Vonnegut. Stan Lee. That's about all I can think of off the top of my head.

Wasn't meant to be glib. I honestly can't. I don't really know many authors that aren't American or English off the top of my head. It's more an admission of ignorance on my part than an insult of Canadian literature.

 

[sophie]

Well I can hardly think of any American authors either. I guess Mark Twain. Kurt Vonnegut. Stan Lee. That's about all I can think of off the top of my head.

Washington Irving, Herman Mellville, J.D. Salinger, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Steinbeck, Don Delillo, William Faulkner, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ernest Hemmingway, Edgar Allen Poe, Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Philip Roth, Harper Lee, Ray Bradbury, Truman Capote, Joseph Heller, Stephen King, L. Frank Baum, Arthur Miller, Ken Kesey, Jack Kerouac, Jack London, Maya Angelou, Sylvia Plath, Henry David Thoreau, T.S. Eliot, Sinclair Lewis, Langston Hughes...

...need I go on?

 

[KMRblue1027]

If we count any old writer who makes books that get big not academically important novelists than there are way way to many to choose for the US. The only modern popular writer who I really think deserves his fame is King. He's maddeningly inconstant in the quality of his works but sometimes produces absolute gems.

Anyway if we go with only academically important writers I'd go with Twain personally. I know it's probably heresy to say this but I personally haven't enjoyed a single thing he wrote. I've tried because they are supposed to be so damn important but I just cannot enjoy it.

 

[Verbose]

So do you really find their writing bad? Or might it be that you just disagree with their political views(they are/were both quite a bit to the left).

If it's the latter, it's not necessarily a bad thing imo.

I've worked with Larsson. Briefly, and a long time ago, but still. Guillou's politics? Ego, ego, ego - as far as I can tell.

 

[Zelig]

Wasn't meant to be glib. I honestly can't. I don't really know many authors that aren't American or English off the top of my head. It's more an admission of ignorance on my part than an insult of Canadian literature.

I didn't take it as an insult, I just don't consider nationality of an author a particularly relevant point to my reading books. To me, "Worst famous writer of your country" is like "worst famous writer of your skin colour" or "worst famous writer who likes potatoes".

Washington Irving, Herman Mellville, J.D. Salinger, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Steinbeck, Don Delillo, William Faulkner, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ernest Hemmingway, Edgar Allen Poe, Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Philip Roth, Harper Lee, Ray Bradbury, Truman Capote, Joseph Heller, Stephen King, L. Frank Baum, Arthur Miller, Ken Kesey, Jack Kerouac, Jack London, Maya Angelou, Sylvia Plath, Henry David Thoreau, T.S. Eliot, Sinclair Lewis, Langston Hughes...

...need I go on?

I've heard of probably half of those, none of whom I specifically know to be American.

Honestly, most books I read I don't bother remembering the author, it just isn't important information to me.

Same as tv shows/movies. I don't bother knowing the studio/network/writer/director/producer/actor names. All I need to know is the name of the show/movie.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

In your defense, I can't think of any Canadian authors.

It wasn't until high school when my reading/literature/English classes started making a point of whether or not an author was Canadian. The first time I read a book knowing the author was Canadian was in Grade 10, when I read The Serpent's Coil and Never Cry Wolf. I've read quite a few since then, in various genres, in fiction and non-fiction.

Never read anything by Margaret Laurence, though.

 

[muhtesem insan]

With no doubt it's Elif Şafak for Turkey.

 

[Traitorfish]

We have William McGonnagal, who is famous for being the worst poet ever published

Perversely, he's become something of a local legend in Dundee. Give a provincial town a terrible poem about their bridge, and they'll love you forever...

I'd agree. Like Salinger did a good job of making Caulfield feel like a living breathing teenager, which is a credit to his style and tone of his prose in that book. The problem is that means you have to sit there and listen to a precocious teenager whine about this and that for several hundred pages. Which makes the book...kind of unpalatable.

I certainly remember getting about half way through and realising, "Holy Christ, this guy is just me". Then, "holy Christ, this guy is better than me, because he can flirt with girls and get served in bars".

Chilling, I'll tell you that for nowt.

 

[Flying Pig]

I thought the point of The Catcher in the Rye was that he is just a teenager moaning for a whole book, but you can see that what he's moaning about is absolute rubbish, and feel quite sorry for him having to put on this persona to deal with what causes him to be discontented in the first place.

 

[NovaKart]

John Knowles. I hated A Separate Peace.

Steinbeck admitted that he didn't deserve his Nobel Prize, though later it turned out that his only serious competition had been Robert Graves.

We have William McGonnagal, who is famous for being the worst poet ever published:

I came across his poem about the collapsing bridge in a literature textbook recently. At first I didn't realize why it was supposed to be that bad but then I realized the rhyming scheme was very amateurish.

Paulo Coelho is literature for the semi-illiterate. I could write better than him on High School, and I don't mean this as bragging. He is just terrible.

Curiously he was a pretty decent rock lyricist in the 70's. All of the best Raul Seixas songs were co-written by Paulo Coelho. He should have stuck to that line of business. Though I suppose making books for idiots did make him a billionaire...



Steinbeck is indeed bizarrely overrated.

I tried reading Paulo Coelho and after a couple chapters thought it was just a bunch of new age crap.

 

[luiz]

I tried reading Paulo Coelho and after a couple chapters thought it was just a bunch of new age crap.

Poorly written new age crap.

I could read weird nonsense if it's well written. But Paulo Coelho writes like an untalented child. His success is one of the great mysteries of our age.

Maybe he was the pioneer in mixing esotericism with self-help? Two deplorable genres, but both immensely popular.

 

[Flying Pig]

I came across his poem about the collapsing bridge in a literature textbook recently. At first I didn't realize why it was supposed to be that bad but then I realized the rhyming scheme was very amateurish.

It's more the scansion, often forced and frequently with no regard for arithmetic, and the unbelievably large gulf between the emotional level of the poem and its subject matter.

 

[Kyriakos]

Poorly written new age crap.

I could read weird nonsense if it's well written. But Paulo Coelho writes like an untalented child. His success is one of the great mysteries of our age.

Maybe he was the pioneer in mixing esotericism with self-help? Two deplorable genres, but both immensely popular.

To an extent 'esoterism and self-help' are significant parts of Hesse's work too. But obviously there is no relation between the two in regards to actual ability to write (while Hesse is not one of my favorite authors, i do love a number of his shorter stories, and mostly The End of Dr Knelge, and Strange news from a different Star)
Demian was not that fun to read, due to the strange mixture of esoterism with something like 1900s psychology, along with an overall bizarre tone.

 

[cybrxkhan]

Anyway if we go with only academically important writers I'd go with Twain personally. I know it's probably heresy to say this but I personally haven't enjoyed a single thing he wrote. I've tried because they are supposed to be so damn important but I just cannot enjoy it.

I like Twain's idea and wit but not his actual writing per se. I guess maybe because I secretly don't like 19th century writing? Well, actually I don't mind random sarcastic Twain quotes, but his novels I can't really deal with.

Anyhow, for what it's worth, Mark Twain did say something along the lines of "A classic is something everybody wants to have read, but no one wants to read."

I thought the point of The Catcher in the Rye was that he is just a teenager moaning for a whole book, but you can see that what he's moaning about is absolute rubbish, and feel quite sorry for him having to put on this persona to deal with what causes him to be discontented in the first place.

When I read the book for the second time a few years after I graduated high school, I definitely felt more pity for him than I did when I read the first time. Actually when I read the book the second time it was a different experience for me somehow... but I don't remember exactly how.

It's more the scansion, often forced and frequently with no regard for arithmetic, and the unbelievably large gulf between the emotional level of the poem and its subject matter.

Scansion and rhythm and all that is definitely something crappy amateur poets (and maybe even writers in general) don't have a good handle on, I think. A good poet should make anything sound nice via rhythm and so on, even if the actual words are silly.

 

[Angst]

edit: you put "worst" in the thread title apparently. now i feel dumb for posting images. edit'd out.

 

[Kyriakos]

^I only recognise Kierkegaard (who i don't like either).

 

[Angst]

Edited all of it out, thought the title was just 'famous writer of your country?'.

The others were Karen Blixen and Hans Christian Andersen. I think Blixen sucks but she sold well in America.

Kierkegaard is my main inspiration in writing. There's a certain breadth and weight in his writing all while seemingly underwritten; I myself adore the angst and hopelessness in Diapsalmata and find Johannes of Diary of a Seductor so intriguing and cold while being so passionate about embracing the romantic experience of beauty. It's so intense to read his thoughts of Cordelia as if she were some bastardly crossing of a puppy, a muse and his daughter. I understand why one would dislike Kierkegaard; it's obvious the guy wants to get a philosophical point through and as such he continually references complex academic notions while musing in jargon; and in Diary of a Seductor you get the plot explained from the beginning. But his language is honestly beautiful in a way and if you're looking for plot twists as a fundament for your reading experience, I don't myself agree with your taste at all. It's a kind of writing which is always read as if you are rereading it, even the first time you touch it. I feel there is a kind of erotic sensibility to his writing and it's really what you are supposed to experience in order to enjoy it.

No one comes back from the dead, no one has entered the world without crying; no one is asked when he wishes to enter life, nor when he wishes to leave.

emooo

edit reads better in danish though but you don't understand it ofc.

Ingen vender tilbage fra de Døde, Ingen er gaaet uden grædende ind i Verden; Ingen spørger En, naar man vil ind, Ingen naar man vil ud.

the phrase "Ingen er gaaet uden grædende ind i Verden" doesn't fit modern grammar, and I try to emulate it all the time.

 

[Kyriakos]

^"Dear Symparanecromenoi"* was (iirc) Kierkegaard's opening address to some group of the time.

*It means "mutually turned dead".

 

[Ironsided]

Guillou's politics? Ego, ego, ego - as far as I can tell.

He used to be a communist (Maoist) but describes himself only as a socialist today. He has fought for the rights of Palestinians and is fighting against demonization of Arabs in recent times. If those politics equals ego ego ego as far as you can tell – that says more about you than him.

He is kind of full of himself though - I’ll give you that. I also disliked the Hamilton series so much I stopped two chapters into Coq Rouge. But I loved the Arn series – the medieval setting and ties to history. I also like Guillou’s columns because they make you think whether you agree or not because he does not shy from sensitive topics. I certainly don’t agree with all he says but to discredit him as our worst author is just silly.

I'm gonna do a di Leva on this thread and refuse to hate on an author and instead celebrate that we imo have had the best one anywhere and of all times: Astrid Lindgren. So there.

 

[Angst]

^"Dear Symparanecromenoi"* was (iirc) Kierkegaard's opening address to some group of the time.

*It means "mutually turned dead".

And I love it.