Carl Sandburg. Clive Barker. Bernard Henri Levy. I have met many people who think HP Lovecraft is not only overrated, but downright horrible. Jean Baudrillard. Paul Virilio. Dave Barry. :) Howard Kurtz. Thomas Friedman. Robert Bly. (Blech.) And at the risk of sounding very douchebaggy, I would say Noami Shihab Nye.
There's a world of overrated writers out there. Overrated by who, though? By the general public, or us elitist intellectual snob lefties and semi-professional book critics? :)
-B.
----- Original Message ---- From: // ravi <ravi at platosbeard.org> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Sent: Sun, April 24, 2011 5:49:03 AM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Overrated writers
On Apr 23, 2011, at 11:19 PM, 123hop at comcast.net wrote:
> No doubt, no doubt he has talent. Let me know when he writes a classic.
>
There are sections of insight where Naipaul gets out of the way (like the bit my wife — who is made of sterner stuff than I am — read out to me, a conversation between two Indians in the USA, in which Naipaul, perhaps unoriginally but with some subtlety brings out the unattractiveness of negative freedoms in the immigrant experience - particularly for unsuccessful, non-individualistic persons). But I have never found that suitable compensation for having to deal with the man for the bulk of it.