Pick an author. Of their works, give the most overrated, underrated, overall best, and overall worst.
I’ll start
Overrated: Notes From Underground
Underrated: House of the Dead
Best: Demons
Worst: The Adolescent
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In what world is the Adolescent worse than The Double
The Double is funny. My least favorite Dosto novel The Idiot. Nothing really happens until the ending.
i love all of them but the adolescent kinda goes nowhere with its characters. golyadkin is funny and cringe and also it does a really really really cool portrayal of insanity and makes me really question of the double is a figment of imagination or actually real. the adolescent felt like it was just about to get spicy then nothing happens and then it feels like it is getting momentum then nothing happens. great books both of them but the double being shorter and just as good makes it stand out to me more
>Over: CoL49
>Under: Against the Day
>Best: M&D
>Worst: Vineland
>>Over: CoL49
opinion discarded
agreed with overrated and underrated, but his best is crime and Punishment and worst is Nietotchka Niezvanova.
I dont think its fair to consider NN as thats fragmentary and is basically just a prologue since Dostoy never got to keep working on it thanks to being gulag’d
>Overrated
The Wild Ass's Skin
>Underrated
The Black Sheep
>Best
Lost Illusions
>Worst
A Woman Of Thirty
>notes overrated
opinion discarded
Overrated: Moby Dick ( it's good maybe great but not the best novel of all time kek)
Underrated: Bartleby
Best: Clarel
Worst: confidence man
hidden gem: pierre
>the best novel of all time
Only reddit NPCs and a few hispanics on the board believe that. The book is perfectly rated as it is.
>Only reddit NPCs and a few hispanics on the board believe that.
and yet mb is top 1 in both reddit and IQfy for 5 years now
The top r*ddit novel is Ready Player One
>Best: Clarel
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahaha
>Best: Clarel
Im just going to pretend you typed Billy Budd
Sell me on Melville's poetry
>pretend you have read an author's whole oeuvre
I'm game.
Overrated: Pygmalion
Underrated: Buyount Billions (maybe not really but I had fun imagining Fry and Laurie as the actors for act 1)
Best: Heartbreak House
Worst: Why She Would Not (either strong late onset dementia or a very mean-spirited self-sendup)
Hello fellow Shaw bro. I disagree with most overrated, I think Pygmalion is rated fine where it is. The binman father imo is Shaw’s funniest character.
Best and worst Id agree, tho I also think Saint Joan could be his best.
Good pick for underrated, tho Id also say Major Barbara could fit in there
hemmingway
>overrated
farewell to arms
>underrated
to have and have not
>best
for whom the bell tolls
>worst
islands in the stream
>Overrated: all
James Ellroy
>overrated
The Black Dahlia
>Underrated:
White Jazz
>Best:
American Tabloid
>Worst:
Anything after Blood's a Rover, sadly
>Overrated: Notes From Underground
Overrated: Waiting for Godot
Underrated: Watt
Best: Krapp's Last Tape
Worst: Dream of Fair to Middling Women
>Best anything other than Endgame
Opinion discarded.
OVERRATED: “Do Not Go Gentle” (Silver Medal: “The Hand That Signed The Paper”)
UNDERRATED: Lots of overlooked gems in there; it's hard to pick just one. “If My Head Hurt A Hair’s Foot”, perhaps.
BEST: Hard to argue against “Fern Hill”, although "In My Craft Or Sullen Art" is just about perfect.
WORST: Several, in my opinion, abandon sense too much for the sake of sound. "Altarwise By Owl-Light" is the first that comes to mind.
Robert Greene
Worst:
BEST: Power, War.
UNDERRATED: Mastery
MEDIOCRE: Laws of Human Nature
WORST: Seduction
Did you actually read all of his books?
machivalleism in modern language is pretty fun to read
(Prose only.)
OVERRATED: What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, probably. (It was in that stupid film, for a start.)
UNDERRATED: Everything Stuck To Him deserves more love.
BEST: Hard. Cathedral, maybe, but it’s primus inter pares.
WORST: I don't like this meanspirited worstnaming. If you’re going to point a gun at my head, I guess I found Errand a fairly unrewarding slog.
>meanspirited
>It was in that stupid film
What did he mean by this
Tolstoy novels only
Overrated: nothing
Underrated: Resurrection
Best: Anna Karenina
Worst: The Cutting of the Forest
>Over
Sun Also Rises, easily
>Under
Death in the Afternoon (long) Snows of Kilimanjaro (short)
>Best
Old Man & The Sea
>Worst
Across the River and Into the Trees (probably better than Islands but I wont count that since he died before it was finished)
Demons was his worst IMO. Boring shaggy dog story for the first 2/3 of the book before things finally pick up. Nowhere near as intellectually or philosophically stimulating as his other works, just a long observation that progressive liberals tend to be insane.
Most filtered take lmao. Dostoy never created a greater character than Stavrogin. He would write in his last letters “Stavrogin is everything.”
Also, he never delved deeper into nationality and Christianity’s place in society than he did in Demons.
Filtered by at tikhons
At tikhons> Grand Inquisitor
Taking Hydriotaphia and The Garden of Cyrus to be separate works (they're clearly not):
>Overrated
Hydriotaphia
>Underrated
The Garden of Cyrus
>Best
Religio Medici
>Worst
A Letter to a Friend
>Overrated
Satantango
>Underrated
War & War
>Best
Melancholy of Resistance
>Worst
Destruction and Sorrow, or: I Really Really Wish I Was a Chinaman
>Overrated: Notes From Underground
based
>Underrated: House of the Dead
BASED
Corncob McTism:
>Overrated
The Road
>Underrated
Child of God (also kind of Suttree)
>Best
Suttree
>worst
The Orchard Keeper
Feel like Blood Meridian is more overrated than The Road at this current time point. You have a whole bunch of people who've never even read Blood Meridian sucking it off. A couple years ago The Road is correct.
I think BM is fine where its at. Generally its considered his magnum which is fine tho like the other anon I prefer Suttree. Regardless its always going to be his defining novel. The Road is often considered also his other MO tho really its just a slightly diluted BM for most of its themes, the only really different message it had is about fatherhood. Still a great novel though.
As well. You cant really consider this board a litmus, half the threads stan for it and the other half call it reddit garbage. Neither ever really go into its meaning or message, its just one of the few lit buzz thread books like Infinite Jest
Faukner
>overrated
As I Lay Dying
>underrated
Wild Palms
>best
Absalom, Absalom!
>worst
Sanctuary
I hardly knew ner.
>Overrated
The Wizard Knight
>Underrated
An Evil Guest
>Best
Peace
>Worst
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