Shakespeare and Joyce don't belong in this thread.

Length can be a massive problem for some novels. The only excessively long novel I read that I felt warrented it was Anna Karenin. Although thre final chapter is still the greatest thing I've ever read, along the way I ended up knowing enough about the subtleties of agriculture to start my own farm.

I agree with Shakespeare, for the simple fact of Shylocks rant in The Merchant of Venice.

All in all, he is overrated though.

The Sadism is in the shock value, the things he says in this book are deliberate and horrible and nightmarish. With that extreme content he creates powerful satire. The quote I used is from Naked Lunch and I believe it to be a gross caricature of American narcissism and proud ignorance. If we look at the last line in particular “He plummets from the eyeless lighthouse, kissing and jacking off in the face of the black mirror…” In this passage he speculates on America’s downfall as a result of our unwillingness look inward, or look outward with any sort of real foresight or depth, we are blinded by an unyielding self satisfaction, because we are American, and extremely nationalistic and xenophobic. With the crass nature of his metaphor he brings over that same level of shock and disgust to the issue that he really is speaking on. So as unnerving as some of his material is, that’s how Burroughs wants us to feel about what ever his metaphor is supposed to be parallel for. So that sadism, that pleasure he gets in making people uncomfortable while they read the horrible hellish things that take place in his work, is there for a reason. He wants you to feel that horrible and ugly about the things that are taking place everyday in this world and if he has to use some ugly language to make his point .

But differnt strokes for different folks...

How are they overrated? What accolades to they receive that you feel are unwarrented?

I think RPoF is right in seeing William Burroughs as one of America's great satirists.

Well if you thought everything of importance happened toward the end (personally I beg to differ), then maybe just watch the movie version.

Maybe I should have phrased it differently. I don't feel that everything of importance happened near the end. I feel that the rest of the book took it's precious time explaining everything else and that the ending felt rushed.

sounds worryingly like me during sex.

see, i don't know, i can't be bothered with interpretations when i read a novel; i'd rather pick up a nonfiction book in social psychology, you know what i mean? maybe only with ulysses i've found it worthy to sit with the text and a reference book, but not to figure out "what joyce meant". otherwise-- meh!

notice however i haven't said burroughs is a bad writer; he was certainly good, it's just that he's not sooooo fucking woooonderful!!!! he did some curious things with text with his cutups, but i think his biography & public persona are more interesting than his prose. (same with kerouac.)

the highest archangel of the beat generation is by far allen ginsberg. but that's an unfair comparison, i know.

Burroughs is the only core member of the Beats that hasn't dated. All the others were great at reflecting their time but Burroughs (with the possible exception of Hubert Selby Jnr) still reads like he was writing five minutes ago.

I'm not hating I just like talking about this stuff, Burroughs for me even with out the analytical nonsense is intresting his prose just kind of floats like some ugly nightmare in and out. And that whole cut-up idea I think is responsible for loads of stuff, like that whole movies out of chronological order thing that seems tired and obvious now, burroughs was doing this in 1959! If anything he's underrated, and over looked because he was so crass at times...
Oh and Gibson, Vonnegut, and Dick are all amazing too.

I have a lot of time for Vonnegut and I love Dick (haha...innuendo), but I'd say Gibson wasn't worthy to sharpen their pencils even. He's pretty good, don't get me wrong, but he doesn't really get to the heart of the matter like Vonnegut and Dick do.

Don DeLillio is probably pretty overrated. I've only read White Noise to be honest but it was only OK at best and aggravating at times. Also, David Mitchell (Pynchon for Pre-Teens)

DeLillo is OK - I read Underworld and enjoyed it. You may be right though.

I agree with Dan Brown, although I've not read his books. You see, the only people who ever reccommend him to me always say "I don't read much, but..." and I read a fair amount so that statement holds no ground with me.

I know a lot of people that love Palahniuk, and I read 3 or so of his books, but then I realized they were all more or less the same, so I don't care for him.

I do like On the Road. In fact, I loved it. But that may be due to me loving road trips, driving, and all that. Doesn't matter, different strokes for different folks.

Someone mentioned Hemingway, and I didn't care for A Farewell to Arms and couldn't figure out why he was so loved after I read it. Then I read For Whom the Bell Tolls last week, and I enjoyed that a great deal, so I may try some more of his stuff.

As for the Vonnegut, Joyce, and Shakespeare comments, I'm not gonna touch those. I will say that I get to see Vonnegut give a talk in a few weeks, and I'm incredibly excited for it.

I knew it! While this thread is full of people railing against everyone from Shakespeare to Steinbeck, Kerouac to Joyce, I call Stephen King a hack and somebody has to defend him.

There is nothing wrong with his genre - there have been many great horror authors from Poe to Stoker, Lovecraft to Robert Bloch. The problem is his cliched writing and the way he churns out formulaic books designed to turn instantly into best-sellers and predictable movies. Given how hugely successful he is, he's the definition of overrated.

white noise for me was a great book for me, but maybe it's very rooted in the time when it was published (80s?). so some of the things that appeared perhaps "new" or "strange" in the 80's, like the family's shopphing addiction (i saw it that way, dont know about you) , are nothing but commonplace these days. and reading about a professor of hitler studies who can't read german, well, that was just too much fun for me. but the book was a wonderful hallucination for me, coming from another country which is a little behind in history, and where life is more "backwards"--so this book made quite an impression. i think the story & the characters & the situations are wonderfully composed. but again perhaps the elements of it have aged quite fast since 198...something when it was written.

thhhhththththththth....

hm, perhaps you may have heard of oedipus rex, this old-as-fuck play... about hm 2500 years old (i'm approximating). if by "whole movies out of chronological order" you mean that shit starts in the middle of the action & then you have flashbacks to explain whats going on etc well that was already done there. was done in the illiad too which is older. if you mean shit like memento, that was something else & it had a clear cause. if you are talking about fragmenting perception, that was something that the cubists were doing in the 1910's. film editing was invented in the 20's and for that i refer you to the work of sergei einsenstein-- not even "potemkin", go back to "strike" even which is oh so cheesy & so wonderful. if you're talking about random seemingly disconnected things that flow from the unconscious the surrealists did it in the 20's. burroughs contribution was, well, the coks & spurts & turds-- which are fine actually but don't carry a whole novel very well. the problem with reading only things published in the past 50 years is that one loses perspective in a huge way. cervantes was a genius, burroughs was just a very smart guy.

note-- no "hatin" no no no-- i like to discuss things i care about. as long as we stick to the subject & avoid insults & cock contests it's all good.

If you can give one example to substantiate that statement I will buy you milkshake. Or, admit the line doesn't make a whole lot of sense and I'll give you a coupon for a milkshake.

Yeah but Dick can often have a reeeeally convoluted way of getting to the said heart. I remember reading Valis and all the exegesis entries and just thinking "YES. HE/YOU IS/ARE INSANE. I COMPREHEND THIS."

That said, I got 50 pages into Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky before shelving it indefinitely. If you REALLY want a thousand-page piece of convoluted prose to enhance your pseudo-intellectual cred, there it is.