Just because books
are lauded today, doesn't mean they weren't, in their own time,
received with anger, fear, and disdain. Some of the most valuable
works of literature we have got their start amidst disgrace and
outrage, though in the long run at least, they didn't seem to suffer
too much for it.
Lolita, Vladimir
Nabokov
The New York Times
did not like Lolita. The full quote goes a little something like
this: “There are two equally serious reasons why it isn't worth any
adult reader's attention. The first is that it is dull, dull, dull in
a pretentious, florid and archly fatuous fashion. The second is that
it is repulsive.” Way harsh, Times.
Wuthering
Heights, Emily Brontë
The Brontës were
probably quite used to ruffling feathers, and the reaction Wuthering
Heights got says a lot about how revolutionary they were. This isn't
your average, delicate story for ladies, and it left the Graham's
Lady's Magazine wondering “how a human being could have attempted
such a book as the present without committing suicide before he had
finished a dozen chapters.”
The Grapes of
Wrath, John Steinbeck
Steinbeck's tragic
depiction of dustbowl living rocked the world when it came out, and
The Grapes of Wrath has been steadily banned ever since. Funnily
enough, though it was labeled communist propaganda stateside, the
book was also banned in the USSR by Stalin, who thought it dangerous
to show that even the poorest American could own a car.
The Lord of the
Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
Both Tolkien and
Dyson were members of the loosely-knit, Oxford-based literary group
the Inklings, and clearly our boy JRR had imposed on his friends just
one too many readings. Still, though, Dyson could have kept his
contempt a little better hidden. It's still nice to support your
friends.
Where the Wild
Things Are, Maurice Sendak
At the very least,
Publisher's Weekly liked Sendak's art, calling his technique “superb”
in the 1963 review. The illustrations, however, just couldn't make up
for what the reviewer thought was sloppy storytelling, proving
nothing so much as his own pitiable lack of imagination.
The Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
There are very few
children's books that have been as consistently reviled as
Huckleberry Finn. Published in 1884, it was first banned a year
later, and you know when public libraries are against a widely read
book, things have taken a turn. Still, at least the continued
controversy has guaranteed Huck and Jim some pretty substantial
airtime over the years.
Ulysses, James
Joyce
Ulysses was such a
departure from what most reviewers were used to that no one quite
knew what to make of it. Except the Sporting Times, that is. They
knew exactly what they thought. In a truly monstrous paragraph that
pulls no punches, Joyce is accused of being a “perverted lunatic
who has made a speciality of the literature of the latrine,” and of
dwelling “on things that sniggering louts of schoolboys guffaw
about.”
Madame Bovary,
Gustave Flaubert
As someone who puts
words down in ink or pixels and likes to think those words will
interest someone else, I can attest to this being, by far, the most
gutting of bad reviews. Flaubert didn't just make a mistake. He
didn't just produce poor work. No, no, he is “not a writer” at
all. You can just imagine Le Figaro smugly puffing on a cigarette and
sauntering off, leaving the broken remains of an aspiring artist
behind.
The Awakening,
Kate Chopin
Okay, so an 1899
book about a woman who shakes off traditionally feminine roles, has
an affair, and then kills herself was bound to receive at the very
least mixed reviews. But the St. Louis Globe and Democrat really went
above and beyond, finding it unendurably offensive. Not only was it
“morbid” and not healthy, but the—anonymous—reviewer felt the
need to add that “at the outset of the story one feels that the
heroine should pray for deliverance from temptation.” Not to doubt
your literary credentials, mysterious critic, but that doesn't sound
like a particularly thrilling story to me.
Moby Dick,
Herman Melville
Different people
will have different opinions on Moby Dick. It is, after all, not the
easiest of reads. But one thing modern readers can no doubt agree on
is that Captain Ahab doesn't lack for sentiment and enthusiasm. In
fact, it may be an overabundance of those particular qualities that
began his whole white whale of a mess in the first place. But that
didn't stop Melville's contemporaries from reviewing the novel
unfavorably, rounding out this list of critiques that would be nearly
unthinkable today.