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[nezahualcoyotl]

So, what 'classics' would you consider to be classified as such without merit, and which ones would you consider to be obscure but deserving of being classics or at least better known? (Yes, I'm shamelessly looking for reading suggestions while we're at it)

I'll start:

Overrrated:
-Don Quixote. Widely seen as the masterpiece of Spanish language literature, I found it dull, repetitive, largely pointless and the humor fell flat. It's not just overrated, it's not even good.
-Doña Bárbara. Worst novel I've ever read. Thta the author was awarded the Nobel is a disgrace. It's basically a soap operam in very slow motion.
-Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Underrated>

-Marcel Schwob's 'The Children's Crusade' Particularly noteworthy is how the leper's tle combines the abject and the sublime.

[mended_drum]

I love Don Quixote!

I consider The Great Gatsby overrated, however. 

[prytania3]

I love Don Quixote!

I consider The Great Gatsby overrated, however. 

It doesn't matter how you feel about Don Quixote--it was the first modern novel, and it is highly rated by virtue of being the first. Okay, there were some other picaresque things floating around back then--but DQ gets the honors.

As for the Great Gatsby, you need to give it a closer read. That novel is almost flawless.

[ejb_123]

Overrated:

On the Road by Jack Kerouac.

Howl by Allen Ginsberg.

(Perhaps these aren't "classics" yet, but I do think they are overrated.)

Underrated:

Pericles by Shakespeare.

The Professor by Charlotte Bronte.

[zharkov]

The books I've re-read the most would probably be On the Road, The Sun Also Rises, and The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test.  So I guess novels with strong narratives appeal to me.  (And to be clear, I'd consider EKAAT a non fiction novel.)   I'd say Howl works better performed, not just read silently to one self.

I don't know if I would call it overrated, but I could never get into Dickens.  Or Thomas Hardy, for that matter. 

For underrated, Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan.  That would also be on my re-read the most list.

[mended_drum]

I love Don Quixote!

I consider The Great Gatsby overrated, however. 

It doesn't matter how you feel about Don Quixote--it was the first modern novel, and it is highly rated by virtue of being the first. Okay, there were some other picaresque things floating around back then--but DQ gets the honors.

As for the Great Gatsby, you need to give it a closer read. That novel is almost flawless.

Trust me, I've given it extremely close reads.  I find it overdetermined.  I don't enjoy Austen either, but I understand why, intellectually, her work is among the classics.  For the twenties and thirties, I find the Harlem renaissance writers more challenging and powerful than Fitzgerald.  And Steinbeck, though later, is probably the most satisfying for me.

But it might be that I don't have a taste for the "flawless." 

I also disagree that being "the first" makes DQ highly rated.  It's brilliant, funny, moving, all of the things which, say, Pamela or Gorbaduc are not.  They get credit for being "firsts," but they are (in my opinion--I don't want to make flat statements about quality as if there's no room for debate) exceeded by their successors.

But, of course, I'm speaking as an amateur when it comes to anything written after 1600.

[mountainguy]

I liked The Great Gatsby, but to fully grasp it, I think one has to have an understanding of the cultural milieu in which Fitzgerald wrote. Otherwise it just seems kind of pointless.

I remember Wuthering Heights bored me beyond belief when I was in high school. I think it had to do with how it was taught.

[frogfactory]

Anything by Steinbeck.

[yellowtractor]

Anything by Steinbeck.

Was that overrated or underrated, FF?

I'd actually agree on Don Quixote as overrated.  The Great Gatsby is just fine--goes down smooth, no bitter aftertaste.  It's just not Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  As for Allen Ginsberg, Howl's place in the putative canon is based on its notoriety and subsequent influence, not its quality (Ginsberg wrote better in Kaddish).

Overrated:  from the American side, I'll nominate James Fenimore Cooper.  I get that he was important in his (Emersonian) moment, in galvanizing an American sense of self.  Welcome to young America etc.  Otherwise...?

Underrated:  Flann O'Brien.  Just because Joyce did it first doesn't mean nobody else can do it.  O'Brien's funnier, to boot.

G. K. Chesterton is either overrated or underrated.  Can he be both, somehow?

[scampster]

I remember Wuthering Heights bored me beyond belief when I was in high school. I think it had to do with how it was taught.

Me too. Maybe I should go back and read it to see if it was an artifact from high school. But I remember being incredibly ambivalent about the characters - in fact they annoyed me, when I'm guessing that wasn't the point.

[parispundit]

Overrated: Dickens. All his characters are made out of cardboard. A vastly inferior version of Emile Zola.

Underrated: Jorge Semprun (at least among English-only readers - see my recent thread)

[frogfactory]

Anything by Steinbeck.

Was that overrated or underrated, FF?

Oops, misread.  Overrated.  Definitely.

[luder]

You have no idea how immensely it delights me—how it reassures me—to see Gatsby brought up (and invariably in the first three or four posts, heh, heh) on nearly all overrated-book threads ever started anywhere.

Ah, I tell myself, discernment, despite all of the evidence to the contrary, hasn’t entirely vanished from the face of planet Earth. There’s still hope.

[hegemony]

Gatsby -- definitely overrated.

Cannery Row -- underrated.

John Masefield's novels -- underrated.

Thackeray -- overrated.

I have come to the disappointing conclusion that Hemingway actually is good, much as I would like to rightfully despise him.

[luder]

So, what 'classics' would you consider to be classified as such without merit, and which ones would you consider to be obscure but deserving of being classics or at least better known? (Yes, I'm shamelessly looking for reading suggestions while we're at it)

I'll start:

Overrrated:
-Don Quixote. Widely seen as the masterpiece of Spanish language literature, I found it dull, repetitive, largely pointless and the humor fell flat. It's not just overrated, it's not even good.
-Doña Bárbara. Worst novel I've ever read. Thta the author was awarded the Nobel is a disgrace. It's basically a soap operam in very slow motion.
-Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Underrated>

-Marcel Schwob's 'The Children's Crusade' Particularly noteworthy is how the leper's tle combines the abject and the sublime.

Neza, I don’t know how things are in Latin America or Spain, but in English-speaking countries I don’t think anyone without a professional interest in Latin American literature (and probably quite a few of those who do have such an interest) reads Doña Bárbara anymore. Can a book no one reads really be called overrated? And you can rest easy: Gallegos didn’t win the Nobel (though he was, I believe, elected president of Venezuela).

I didn’t think the book was great by any means, but it was readable enough. Gallegos was simply the Jonathan Franzen of his time and place (by which I mean no compliment). And some people apparently took Doña Bárbara seriously enough to threaten Gallegos’s life over it.

I think quite a few Latin American writers are overrated (Cortázar, for example). But I also think (I would now, wouldn’t I?) that the Peruvian Julio Ramón Ribeyro is criminally underrated.

Likewise, I wonder why so few people have ever heard of—much less read—the Romanian Panait Istrati.