Bad Reviews of Classic 20th-Century Novels

I enjoy reading bad reviews of famous novels - almost as much as I enjoy getting them. It comforts me to know that if a book of mine is called "lugubrious" I will be keeping company with Aldous Huxley. (Unlike Brave New World, not one of my books has been called "lugubrious," or even "nauseating," but this is probably due to an avoidance of polysyllabic adjectives on the part of contemporary reviewers.)

These books were panned primarily because they broke new ground. Innovative writing is rarely well received in the short run. However, in the long run, these books have stood the test of time, and are now considered classics.

Here are some truly harsh reviews of 20th-century classics assembled by Sean Hutchinson for Publisher's Weekly. If your book has the good fortune to be called "silly," know that you are right up there with Richard Wright.

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Really Harsh Early Reviews of 20 Classic 20th-Century Novels

By Sean Hutchinson

Ulysses – James Joyce

Joyce’s magnum opus redefined literature and was a major event upon its release in 1922. Some bought into its radical structure, but others didn’t—including fellow modernist Virginia Woolf. In her diary she called Ulysses “an illiterate, underbred book it seems to me: the book of a self-taught working man, and we all know how distressing they are, how egotistic, insistent, raw, striking, and ultimately nauseating ... never did any book so bore me.”

The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald

Cited by many as the Great American Novel, Fitzgerald’s inimitable The Great Gatsby remains a staple in classrooms and on bookshelves the world over. Critic and journalist H.L. Mencken, however, called it “no more than a glorified anecdote,” and that “it is certainly not to be put on the same shelf, with, say, This Side of Paradise [Fitzgerald’s debut novel].” In her review for the New York Evening World, critic Ruth Snyder said, “We are quite convinced after reading The Great Gatsby that Mr. Fitzgerald is not one of the great American writers of to-day.”

Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

Nabokov’s novel about a literature professor who becomes obsessed with a 12-year-old girl wasn’t without controversy when it was published in 1958. Orville Prescott’s review in the New York Times listed two reasons why Lolita “isn't worth any adult reader's attention.” “The first,” he said, “is that it is dull, dull, dull in a pretentious, florid and archly fatuous fashion. The second is that it is repulsive.” Later in the same review, he called Nabokov’s writing “highbrow pornography.”

Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

The ritualistic and drug-filled dystopian world created by writer Aldous Huxley may have been too much for some when it was first published in 1931, but the New York Herald Tribune may have missed the point of the book altogether when their review called Brave New World “A lugubrious and heavy-handed piece of propaganda.”

Catch-22 – Joseph Heller

Heller’s satirical novel about World War II is so popular that the phrase “Catch-22” has become a ubiquitous modern idiom meaning a type of no-win situation. Heller was in a no-win situation, according to critic Richard Stern, whose New York Times review called the book “an emotional hodgepodge.” He added, “No mood is sustained long enough to register for more than a chapter.”

Under the Volcano — Malcolm Lowry

Lowry’s novel—about an alcoholic British consul in Mexico during the Day of the Dead celebration on the eve of World War II—has both dazzled and frustrated readers since its debut in 1947. The New Yorker only reviewed it in its “Briefly Noted” section, saying, “for all [Lowry’s] earnestness he has succeeded only in writing a rather good imitation of an important novel.”

To the Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf

The New York Evening Post’s cleverly snide review of Woolf’s highly abstract Modernist masterpiece managed to praise her and shoot her down all in the same sentence: “Her work is poetry; it must be judged as poetry, and all the weaknesses of poetry are inherent in it.”

An American Tragedy – Theodore Dreiser

This sprawling tale of love and deceit's influence has been made into an opera, a musical, a radio program, and more. When the novel was first published in 1925, the Boston Evening Telegraph called its main character, Clyde Griffiths, “one of the most despicable creations of humanity that ever emerged from a novelist’s brain,” and called Dreiser “a fearsome manipulator of the English language” with a style that “is offensively colloquial, commonplace and vulgar.

Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison

Invisible Man won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1953, cementing its reputation as one of the most important books about race and identity ever written. In its 1952 review, however, the Atlantic Monthly thought it suffered from “occasional overwriting, stretches of fuzzy thinking, and a tendency to waver, confusingly, between realism and surrealism.”

Native Son – Richard Wright

Richard Wright’s Native Son is another classic American novel about the African American experience, but the New Statesman and The Nation found the book to be “unimpressive and silly, not even as much fun as a thriller."

Henderson the Rain King – Saul Bellow

Bellow’s uniquely comic and philosophical novel about an American millionaire who unwittingly becomes the king of an African tribe was the author's personal favorite. But it wasn’t a favorite for critic Reed Whittemore. In his review for the New Republic, Whittemore posed this question to himself: “The reviewer looks at the evidence and wonders if he should damn the author and praise the book, or praise the author and damn the book. And is it possible, somehow or other to praise or damn, both? He isn’t sure.”

Read the rest of these really harsh reviews here.

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald's Most Famous Failure

F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby hits theaters today, and, predictably, the paperback tie-in hit #1 on bestseller lists. But, F. Scott Fitzgerald never saw his book become a success. In fact, at his untimely death at the age of 44, he had earned a grand total of $13.13 in royalties. Read Newspaper Alum's great blog on why it took so long for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece to make it to the big time.

I might point out that a number of other "classics" - among them, The Grapes of Wrath, Brave New World, and Lord of the Flies - were hated by critics when they were published. That's not too surprising. All of these books were critical of our society. If there is one thing critics don't like, it's criticism.

"On May 10th, Baz Luhrmann's new film adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s literary masterpiece ``The Great Gatsby’’ hits theaters nationwide starring  Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan, Joel Edgerton, Isla Fisher and Jason Clarke. The official premiere of the film kicked off at a star-studded event at Lincoln Center on Wednesday with a dazzling 3-D spectacle.

``The Great Gatsby’’, written by Fitzgerald while living  with his wild and mentally unstable wife Zelda in France and Italy in 1924 and early 1925, tells the tragic story of Jay Gatsby (born James Gatz), once a poor young man who rose to become fabulously rich (through bootlegging) embraces a corrupted form of the American Dream by worshiping the monied class of Daisy Buchanan, a former flame of his while enlisted in World War I. Gatsby finally meets her again for the first time in five years and ultimately becomes destroyed by pursuing what he naively thinks will bring him happiness and fulfillment.  The theme of disillusionment with American contemporary culture and its fraudulent emphasis on wealth and power are common threads found throughout the novel. But probably ``The Great Gatsby’s’’ most enduring impact was educating succeeding generations about the roaring 20’s, namely about jazz, gambling, excess drinking, and reckless living.

Whether the film meets with upbeat praise or is scorned by critics; the film will more than likely cause film goers to dust off ``The Great Gatsby’’ from their bookshelves or dash off to the library or their Kindle’s to reread what is now considered the Great American novel.

It’s shocking how long it took ``The Great Gatsby’’ to be considered a classic.  It wasn’t until April 24, 1960, for example,  that The New York Times wrote: ``It is probably safe now to say that it [The Great Gatsby] is a classic of twentieth-century American fiction.

When it was published in 1925, Gatsby sold a disappointing 21,000 copies, less than half of sales for ``This Side of Paradise’’ and ``The Beautiful and Dammed,'' Mr. Fitzgerald's first two novels.  And there were reportedly still copies from the second printing in the Scribner warehouse when Fitzgerald died in 1940.

Kirk Curnutt, author of ``Coffee with Hemingway’’, ``Key West Hemingway’’, ``The Cambridge Introduction to F Scott Fitzgerald’’, and ``The Critical Response to Gertrude Stein’’, among others, told me: ``It [Gatsby] definitely grew in stature over the years’’ ``A couple of Fitzgerald's friends’’, Curnett says, ``notably Stephen Vincent Benet, recognized that it was a breakthrough in his literary development, but nobody heralded it as a literary classic.’’

Not only did Gatsby practically go unnoticed by American readers, but Fitzgerald himself by the end of his life was rarely, if at all, mentioned as one of America’s greatest writers. Such a perception became a harsh painful  reality for Fitzgerald in 1937 when he walked into a bookstore to buy copies of his books for his companion Sheilah Graham only to discover there were no books, not one, of his on the shelves.

In 1940, before dying of a massive heart attack in a Hollywood apartment at the age of 44, Fitzgerald earned a grand total of $13.13 in royalties.

According to a Scribner spokesperson, `` more than 25 million copies of ``The Great Gatsby'' have been sold worldwide since the novel’s original publication in 1925, while more than 15 million copies  have been sold in North America alone.’’ Scribner typically sells more than 500,000 combined copies of ``The Great Gatsby'' every year (across print and eBook editions).

Many American literature scholars concede, if Fitzgerald were living today, he would have been rolling in cash from royalties.

When you consider that the vast majority of Fitzgerald obituaries in 1940 clearly omitted the legacy that he left behind, why, many wonder, did it take so long for the American reading public to discover the literary genius of Fitzgerald? ’’

Read the rest of this article HERE. 

The Harshest Rejection of Them All

"We were not amused."

Gertrude Stein's rejection letter merits a special place among rejections, if only because the publisher put so much effort into it. 

This parody demonstrates the defining character flaw of publishers: they believe they are the final arbiters of literary taste. Notwithstanding the possibility that, in this case, Fifield may have been right, one hardly needs to point out that being a music critic does not make you Rachmaninov. Or even a Rach knock-off.

The letter reads:

Dear Madam,

I am only one, only one, only one. Only one being, one at the same time. Not two, not three, only one. Only one life to live, only sixty minutes in one hour. Only one pair of eyes. Only one brain. Only one being. Being only one, having only one pair of eyes, having only one time, having only one life, I cannot read your M.S. three or four times. Not even one time. Only one look, only one look is enough. Hardly one copy would sell here. Hardly one. Hardly one.

Many thanks. I am returning the M.S. by registered post. Only one M.S. by one post.

Sincerely Yours,

A.C. Fifield

Letter image from http://www.flavorwire.com/232203/famous-authors-harshest-rejection-letters

23 Idiotic Rejections of Famous Authors

Rejections are hard on budding young authors - even on old, famous ones.

The following is a list of authors who have received what should have been soul-crushing rejections. Thankfully, their souls were not crushed, and their books went on to become icons in the literary world.

Nowadays, publishers don't put their thoughts into writing (although, believe me, they still say them in private). In some ways, it's a pity. Authors who have achieved success should have the pleasure of gloating over the idiocies of publishers who have dismissed them.

From the American literary publisher Knopf's Archives at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin ...

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Jorge Luis Borges

'utterly untranslatable'

Isaac Bashevis Singer

'It's Poland and the rich Jews again.'

Anais Nin

'There is no commercial advantage in acquiring her, and, in my opinion, no artistic.'

Jack Kerouac

'His frenetic and scrambled prose perfectly express the feverish travels of the Beat Generation. But is that enough? I don't think so.'

Lady Chatterley's Lover by D H Lawrence

'for your own sake do not publish this book.'

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

'an irresponsible holiday story'

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

'an absurd and uninteresting fantasy which was rubbish and dull.'

Watership Down by Richard Adams

'older children wouldn't like it because its language was too difficult.'

On Sylvia Plath

'There certainly isn't enough genuine talent for us to take notice.'

Crash by J. G Ballard

‘The author of this book is beyond psychiatric help.'

The Deer Park by Norman Mailer

'This will set publishing back 25 years.'

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos

'Do you realize, young woman, that you're the first American writer ever to poke fun at sex.'

The Diary of Anne Frank

‘The girl doesn’t, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift that book above the “curiosity” level.’

Lust for Life by Irving Stone 

(which was rejected 16 times, but found a publisher and went on to sell about 25 million copies)

‘ A long, dull novel about an artist.’

Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope

'The grand defect of the work, I think, as a work of art is the low-mindedness and vulgarity of the chief actors. There is hardly a "lady" or "gentleman" amongst them.'

Carrie by Stephen King

'We are not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias. They do not sell.'

Catch – 22 by Joseph Heller

‘I haven’t really the foggiest idea about what the man is trying to say… Apparently the author intends it to be funny – possibly even satire – but it is really not funny on any intellectual level … From your long publishing experience you will know that it is less disastrous to turn down a work of genius than to turn down talented mediocrities.’

The Spy who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré 

‘You’re welcome to le Carré – he hasn’t got any future.’

Animal Farm by George Orwell

‘It is impossible to sell animal stories in the USA’

Lady Windermere’s Fan by Oscar Wilde

‘My dear sir,

I have read your manuscript. Oh, my dear sir.’

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov 

‘... overwhelmingly nauseating, even to an enlightened Freudian … the whole thing is an unsure cross between hideous reality and improbable fantasy. It often becomes a wild neurotic daydream … I recommend that it be buried under a stone for a thousand years.’

18 Incredibly Stupid Publishing Mistakes

The wacky world of publishing continues with this second installment of Publishers Say the Darndest Things.

There is a lesson to be learned from these rejections.

And for yet more stupidity read:

10 Things Publishers Wish They Had Never Said  

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Dr. Seuss
(Theodor Seuss Geisel's first book was rejected by 27 publishers - this is why)

'too different from other juveniles on the market to warrant its selling.'


The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin
(LeGuin's book went on to win both a Nebula and a Hugo award and to reshape a genre)

'The book is so endlessly complicated by details of reference and information, the interim legends become so much of a nuisance despite their relevance, that the very action of the story seems to be to become hopelessly bogged down and the book, eventually, unreadable.'


The Female Man by Joanna Russ
(winner of the Nebula award)

"We've already published our feminist novel this year, so we don't want another" … "I'm sick and tired of these kinds of women's novels that are just one long whiny complaint."


Mary Higgins Clark
(rejected 40 times)

'Your story is light, slight, and trite.'


Colette
(Colette went on to publish 50 books)

"You won't be able to sell 10 copies."


Bridge Over River Kwai by Pierre Boulle

'A very bad book.'


The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean Auel

"We are very impressed with the depth and scope of your research and the quality of your prose. Nevertheless ... we don't think we could distribute enough copies to satisfy you or ourselves."


Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach
(sold more than 7.25 million copies)

"Jonathan Livingston Seagull will never make it as a paperback."


The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells

'An endless nightmare. I do not believe it would "take"...I think the verdict would be 'Oh don't read that horrid book'.'


Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann

' ...she is a painfully dull, inept, clumsy, undisciplined, rambling and thoroughly amateurish writer whose every sentence, paragraph and scene cries for the hand of a pro. She wastes endless pages on utter trivia, writes wide-eyed romantic scenes ...hauls out every terrible show biz cliché in all the books, lets every good scene fall apart in endless talk and allows her book to ramble aimlessly ...'


The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

'I wish there were an audience for a book of this kind. But there isn't. It won't sell.'


Emily Dickinson

'(Your poems) are quite as remarkable for defects as for beauties and are generally devoid of true poetical qualities.'


Edgar Allen Poe

'Readers in this country have a decided and strong preference for works in which a single and connected story occupies the entire volume.'


Moby Dick by Herman Melville

'We regret to say that our united opinion is entirely against the book as we do not think it would be at all suitable for the Juvenile Market in (England). It is very long, rather old-fashioned...'


Jack London

'(Your book is) forbidding and depressing.'


The Torrents of Spring by Ernest Hemingway

'It would be extremely rotten taste, to say nothing of being horribly cruel, should we want to publish it.'

Rudyard Kipling

'I'm sorry, Mr. Kipling, but you just don't know how to use the English language.'

Sanctuary by William Faulkner

'Good God, I can't publish this!'

10 Things Publishers Wish They Had Never Said

Given their abysmal track record when it comes to predicting what readers will enjoy, we have to wonder why publishers are so short-sighted. After all, gauging the interests of readers is their business.

The answer is quite simple.

Publishers don’t like to take a chance on anything too different from what they have already published. ( See below: ‘Too radical of a departure from traditional juvenile literature.’)

As one publisher famously said, “We want the same thing … only different.”

Acceptance criteria for large publishing houses are based almost exclusively on what they have sold before. All the necessary components of calculating potential profits — cost/benefit analyses, market projections, etc. — rest entirely on previous sales, not on the inherent value of the manuscript.

Sometimes we forget that publishing is a business like any other. Businesses don’t like to take chances, and the bigger the business, the more cautious it will be. (Random House turned down the Harry Potter books because they were “too long, and nobody would read them.”)

These pointed— and completely misguided — rejections should not only encourage you on your path to publication (you are in good company!), they should steel you against the frustration of the inevitable “Thanks, but no thanks.” Imagine where we would be if L. Frank Baum (or Oscar Wilde!) had quit after being given the brush-off. They didn’t quit and neither should you.

(Just as a case in point, my trilogy was rejected repeatedly for five years before being picked up by Random House.)

But don't take my word for it; here’s what publishers had to say about the following books.

Note: And for more entertainment at publishers' expense be sure to read: 

18 Incredibly Stupid Publishing Mistakes 

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The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

'Too radical of a departure from traditional juvenile literature.'

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

'It contains unpleasant elements.'

Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe

'Terrible.'

The Blessing Way by Tony Hillerman

'get rid of the Indian stuff.'

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

'Stick to teaching.'

The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck

'The American public is not interested in China.'

Lady Chatterly's Lover  by D. H. Lawrence 

'for your own sake do not publish this book.

Garfield by Jim Davis

'Too many animals, and cats don’t sell.'

Zane Grey (93 books, 21 films)

'You have no business being a writer and should give up.'

Remembrance of Things Past Marcel Proust

'My dear fellow, I may be dead from the neck up, but rack my brains as I may I can't see why a chap should need thirty pages to describe how he turns over in bed before going to sleep.'

Never Give Up! Never Surrender!

What? Rejected? Again?

Buck up! For writers, rejections aren't just inevitable – they are a way of life. Every writer gets rejections. Every. Single. One. 

There are no exceptions. 

Here is a tally that should, if not encourage you, at least bring you back to reality. 

(The reality is this: KEEP WRITING!!)

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The Princess Diaries, by Meg Cabot, was rejected by 17 publishers 

Frank Herbert’s Dune was rejected 20 times.

Thor Hyerdahl's Kon-Tiki was rejected 20 times. 

Richard Hooker's novel M*A*S*H was rejected 21 times.

James Joyce's Dubliners was rejected 22 times.

John Grisham’s first novel was rejected 25 times. 

Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind was rejected by 25 publishers. 

Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time was turned down 29 times.

Stephen King's Carrie was rejected 30 times.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull was rejected 40 times. 

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was rejected 121 times. 

Chicken Soup for the Soul by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen received 134 rejections. 

Louis L’Amour was rejected over 200 times before he sold any of his writing. 

And the grand prize goes to:

C.S. Lewis, who received over 800 rejections before he sold a single piece of writing. 

(My personal goal is to beat C.S. Lewis. What's yours?)