Huffington Post: The 15 Most Overrated Authors

[yekim54]

Originally Posted by Joonbug1

What a great article.

Wow.

Here's what I get for that link:
An error (500 Internal Server Error) has occured in response to this request.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by yekim54

Here's what I get for that link:
An error (500 Internal Server Error) has occured in response to this request.

I just tried it again...working fine here.

[JeremyR]

I wish I had gotten a 500 error.

What a pretentious list. Not surprising given the source, though...

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by JeremyR

I wish I had gotten a 500 error.

What a pretentious list. Not surprising given the source, though...

[Bani]

That criticism of Amy Tan is as dramatic and full of generalizations as her writing is. It's a shame because I wouldn't mind reading some good criticism of Tan's work.

[JSWolf]

The list is garbage and should be deleted.

[Joonbug1]

Actually, he brings up too many good points if you knew who those authors (and a poet) are. He was right on the nose about Amy Tan and Billy Collins, especially.

[odiakkoh]

Lol I feel like an idiot. Took me a bit to realize the slideshow was part of the article. I was sitting there wondering where the heck the rest of the article was. Tan's Joy Luck Club is one of my favorite books (though it's the only one by her that I've read) and Foer's Everything is Illuminated is on my "to read" list (liked the movie). I have no idea who the rest are.

[Joonbug1]

LOL, I agree that the slideshow style of article presentation was distracting and difficult to figure out at first. Do other news sites utilize that feature or is it just HuffPo?

[Xanthe]

Only author mentioned that I had heard of was Amy Tan and I had to laugh at this:

Ruined minority/ethnic fiction by pouncing upon a made-for-success formula of family secrets wrapped in the multigenerational saga--East and South Asian writers have been doing little else for 20 years

because, dang, if that didn't read true.

Makes me glad that I'm mainly an genre reader. It's pretty easy to tell good writing from pretentiousness in those formats. Just reading those opening sentences given as examples of the various authors in that article was making my mind shut down - lol. Life's too short to waste my eyesight on someone else's navel gazing, taboo issues, and mindless meanderings. Entertain me or get out of the way.

Sounds like "Fiction" needs some critics from the real world, and not from the MFA programs.

[astrodad]

I can't stand THP either. And I suppose these are authors with which the average Huffingtonian would be familiar. No wonder I haven't heard of any of them.

[straygator]

I'm familiar with about half of them. Some seemed spot-on (Jorie Graham) and some not so much (Jhumpa Lahiri). I did wonder, though, after his complaint about "lack of historical or political context," that he cited Oscar Wao as an example.

[Joonbug1]

Originally Posted by jplumey

I can't stand THP either. And I suppose these are authors with which the average Huffingtonian would be familiar. No wonder I haven't heard of any of them.

Uh... all the authors criticized in that article are some of the biggest names in literature and their books are being taught in high school and college English courses. Just because their names aren't "Dan Brown" or "Stephen King" doesn't mean they're obscure at all. The fact their names are the ones being targeted in the article is because their works are so big and influential, when their actual merit and talent is mediocre at best. In other words, they're overrated as hell. If they were obscure authors, they wouldn't be on the list, period. Not that I'm defending any of the mentioned authors, but come on. That's like if someone said "Well, I personally haven't ever heard of Aaron Sorkin or Rod Serling, or The Dark Knight. I suppose these are names only the average film school nerd must be familiar with." It's like, dude: Maybe you're just living under a rock in this particular subject... Not trying to sound mean, but this is real-talk. The article goes after all the big names in contemporary literature (note: not "genre fiction" such as thrillers, etc).