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Quote of the Day: On Wheat and Chaff
Few American writers of the twentieth century so embody the quotably pungent and pithy in their prose as does Dorothy Rothschild Parker.
Google her name, and her often caustic, witty, gems just tumble out at you: “The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.”–“If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people He gave it to.”– “She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B” (this from a review of a Katharine Hepburn performance in a Broadway play)–“The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue.”–“What fresh hell is this?”–“Brevity is the soul of lingerie.”–“I don’t care what anybody says about me as long as it isn’t true.”–“Of course I talk to myself. I like a good speaker, and I appreciate an intelligent audience.” And perhaps my favorite, which I can’t even include here (no, it’s not the one about the girls at the Yale prom).
But the DP quote I’ve chosen for today is one I particularly love. It comes, as did so much of her output, from a review of an item of cultural interest, in this case, a particular book:
“This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”*
So, come on. Haven’t we all come across at least one of these in our lives? Which weighty tomes, or bits of literary fluff, would you put on the list? Or better yet, fling across the room, if you had the chance (less effective, more expensive, and not as much fun with e-books, which don’t land with the same satisfying thump, it’s true).
I’ll start: Just about anything with Jack Kerouac’s name on it (self-indulgent and creepy). Lady Chatterley’s Lover (tedious, overwrought, and laughable purple prose). Fifty Shades of Grey (unbelievably badly written). Any Dan Brown book, starting with The DaVinci Code (Can’t keep them straight, one from the other. I suppose if you overlook the abysmal writing, the lack of character development, and the ludicrous and inconsistent plot twists, what’s left might be worth saving).
You can have my share of any and all of these.
So. Your turn. What are your least favorite novels of all time?
*In its most quoted form, it’s generally assumed to be a paraphrase of the sentiment of the review. No one has been able to find exactly these words, in exactly this order, in her writings. But, if she didn’t say it in precisely this way, she should have.
Published in General
I agree with you on the merits, but, in Mrs. Rand’s defense, American readers found The Fountainhead too subtle. Can you imagine?
Duplicate Comment
My three picks:
1) Faulkner’s Sound and Fury
2) Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway
3) Recent vintage The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
No.
Ayn Rand novels. Can’t get through 10% of any of them. Awful writer.
One such novel that I wanted hurl against the wall was The Silver Skull by Mark Chadbourn. It had such potential that it gradually wasted by becoming more and more cliche and stupid page by page until the very end.
The premise was a historical fantasy take on James Bond, set in Elizabethan England with spymaster John Walsingham and occultist John Dee in the roles of M and Q, respectively. Christopher Marlowe was a fellow agent who faked his own death to go undercover, and the enemy was Phillip of Spain allied with Unseelie Court faeries who sought to dethrone Elizabeth II. It looks like a great idea on paper but it didn’t stick the landing, not by a long-shot.
I was willing to overlook the fact that the eponymous Silver Skull was a macguffin that was a key to a weapon of ultimate power. The worst part was when the hero was in the clutches of the evil faerie lord, who proceeded to torture him by …waterboarding. Seriously, waterboarding. You have an ancient faerie armed with eldritch magic who at the beginning of the novel was turning people into living, screaming scarecrows resort to waterboarding the protagonist –like the villain in a bad TV thriller (circa 2005)– by the third act.
I almost hurled Eco’s “Foucault’s Pendulum” across the room for not being as good as “The Name of the Rose” – but that was because I adore “The Name of the Rose”, so that’s more like a lover’s spat than actual hatred.
My Silver Haired Queen and I mistakenly grabbed “Inferno” on disk for a road trip a while back. Add a truly annoying male marginally doing all the characters to the malevolent and unstoppable, dare I say omnipotent Robert Langdon, and you have a recipe for vehicle assisted suicide.
There is a humorous short movie called “Bill” that is a send-up of the early life of Shakespeare. It includes Marlowe and Walsingham and has all these crazy scenes that “lead” to Shakespeare’s best lines. In one, Marlowe is conveying the password to get in touch with Walsingham:
Christopher Marlowe: Saying things in a short snappy way instead of a long drawn-out way is the soul of wit
Bill Shakespeare: You mean brevity?
Christopher Marlowe: Yes, but say it exactly as I said it.
It’s a pretty low bar but I bet she’d still drain my life force. The title alone “Anthem”………
Thanks Dr. B, it was a perfect storm of getting up early, coffee, and exercise that allowed me to “flow like Ayn”
I remember really hating “Jonathan Livingston Seagull”, but haven’t read it since I was a teen.
Good call.
I loved that book. The idea that an invented conspiracy becomes real just because people believe in it …
I found We the Living to be pretty readable, but its worldview is a little too Nietzschean for my taste.
I would have given the Tolkien comment a like, but Doug Adams too? Every nerd is going to like at least one of them.
Michael Shaara’s “Killer Angels.” It was the first book that while only halfway through it, I stood up, ripped it in half and threw it away.
Honorable mention goes to Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five.”
Killer Angels so misrepresented the southern events in the battle of Gettysburg, all well documented by contemporaries, that his portrayal was sinful and I think he has had a substantial influence on a lot of people today. For shame.
And what good could be said about Vonnegut? In his book the heroic men who were fighting and trying to win were portrayed as brutes while Vonnegut’s alter ego, whining and complaining was portrayed as enlightened.
Both books should be thrown forcefully in to the dung heap.
Yes. Kurt Vonnegut. I was struggling for another name which I thought was on the tip of my tongue, when I was writing the post, but apparently I’ve done a fairly good job of burying his.
Kurt Vonnegut. He’s another one.
Being as my family is from Nantucket, I’m not allowed to place that on my list, but I will say that it is grossly over esteemed.
“The End of Sparta: A Novel” by Victor Davis Hanson.
I hope none of you have read this because he has a good reputation here.
Now, I like him, but you have to admit that his demeanor is slow talking and monotone. Imagine his novel being that way, and then add in that he has 349 characters talking in the first two chapters and never makes it clear which one is doing the talking and what their relationships are.
I’m an avid reader of Greek history of the time his was writing about but I couldn’t figure out what the heck was going on, and being a fan of VDH, I tried very hard. It was the worst “novel” I’d ever read. It makes third place here only because it isn’t well known. The only reason I didn’t throw it across the room is because I read it on Kindle.
My favorite Parker quote:
I wish I could drink like a lady
I can take one or two at the most
Three and I’m under the table
Four and I’m under the host
I like her comment about Clair Boothe Luce, also:
Someone told Parker that Luce was always kind to her inferiors;
Parker replied “Where does she find them?”
On another occasion, the two women arrived at the door at the same time.
Luce said “Age before beauty” motioning for Paker to enter first.
As she walked through the door, Parker replied “And Pearls before Swine.”
Some more:
A telegram from Dorothy Parker to her editor, who was bugging her for belated work while she was on her honeymoon:
“Too f*****g busy, and vice versa.”
I love this poem:
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
Gravity’s Rainbow. I made it about a hundred pages in, thinking the whole while, “It can’t be dreck all the way through, can it?” I’ll never find out first-hand. Fortunately, it was gifted to me by a friend, so I don’t suffer from regret over its purchase. { Hmm. Friend?? }
Congratulations. You made it at least twice as far as I did.
I’m just guessing that none of you have tried L. Ron Hubbard’s Invader series. It is as close to being literally unreadable as it is possible to be.
I think that applies to most of Hubbard.
I don’t dislike them, per se, @chuckenfield; what I dislike is the near-total immersion in the LOTR world I experienced on campus in the Seventies – and the later treatment of Adams as a ‘secular guru’, by fans I knew after graduating from college, elsewhere. Not to mention both authors being considered as writers of near-sacred texts. (I kid you not.) I guess I never did earn my nerd credentials…Ah, well. :-D
Adams is nothing more than funny some of the time, but Tolkein’s work is sacred. :)
I grant that Tolkien *explores* and *resonates with* the sacred, but…”It’s a cracking good yarn, for all that.” :-)
In April 1938, Dorothy Parker was “among one hundred and fifty American artists and educators who signed a statement declaring that the evidence presented at the Moscow trials established ‘a clear presumption of the guilt of the defendants.’ Furthermore, the signers urged support for the Soviet Union, because it was struggling to free itself from ‘insidious internal dangers.’”
Clever fools are never in short supply. But that she was incredibly clever cannot be disputed.