Iconoclasm

Although nominating "overrated novels" (here and here) sounds like great iconoclastic fun, I can't quite get over my gut reaction: "How do we define 'overrated'?"  I've had grumpy reactions to several canonical novels, for example, but considering the topic from the POV of a literary historian, my grumpiness on aesthetic grounds is totally irrelevant.  If the novel has influenced generations of successors, then my aesthetic objections are neither here nor there: I still have to teach the book (if it's in my field, anyway), whether or not I want to throw it into the nearest recycling bin.  Then again, from the POV of literary history, it's quite possible to "overrate" a novel's importance (the extent to which it attacted imitators, was genre-changing or -originating, etc.) by pointing to its aesthetic superiority.  It's the great irony of critical evaluation.  (It's also the great challenge of developing a survey course.) 

So, to dwell in my usual field of religious fiction, John Henry Newman's Loss and Gain is, I think, an overrated conversion novel.  Its quality as a novel is leaps and bounds beyond that of just about every other nineteenth-century conversion novel--not perfect, to be sure (Newman never knows when he has exhausted a joke), but still, a twenty-first century Victorianist can make it through Loss and Gain without suffering doubts about his or her academic vocation, eating an entire bag of Lindor balls (preferably the dark chocolate variety), or deciding to write about Star Trek fan fiction instead.  And, of course, Loss and Gain is by Cardinal Newman.   (Never underestimate the selling point of a famous name.)  The thing is...the more Victorian Catholic fiction I read, the less significant Loss and Gain looks.  It went through many editions, but it's not the book other Catholic novelists chose to imitate. In other words, the best novel turned out to be a one-off. 

By the same token, if by "overrated" we mean "novels that have had an influence that they shouldn't," my critical self is willing to go to town, but my literary-historical self says, once again, "in the end, that's not particularly relevant."  Like the Denver Bibliophile, I was deeply unamused by my slog through The Lord of the Rings--great world-building, prose like wading through the Slough of Despond--but nobody interested in the history of fantasy would dare ignore it.¹

¹ A student once threatened me with a bow-wielding Aragorn figurine after I dared to hint that, perhaps, the novels were not all that they could have been. 

Comments

[jseliger.com]

A student once threatened me with a bow-wielding Aragorn figurine after I dared to hint that, perhaps, the novels were not all that they could have been.

Although this question could be a post or essay in and of itself, I would still ask: What do you think The Lord of the Rings could have been?

(Bear in mind that this comes from a person who identifies more with the bow-wielding-Aragorn-figurine-wielding-student than with the Slough-of-Despond perspective, but I'm still curious.)

[Brandon]

The point about the best not necessarily being in the line of greatest influence is an important one, and I suspect it's fairly common; I know that in philosophy this is often the case. In the early modern period Norris has the best attack on scholasticism (best informed, most careful, and most extensive); but it seems to have influenced nobody (they mostly just repeated the cliches Norris rises above). And so forth. We tend to muddle two kinds of importance together: importance in the historical network of causes and effects (extensiveness of influence) and importance relative to the full potential of the genre (comparative excellence as a thing of its kind), and you're right that we shouldn't.

[Miriam]

LOTR: Well (opening my copy to a random page), there could have been less dialogue like the following: "'Saruman!' muttered Aragorn. 'But he shall not turn us back! Halt we must once more; for, see! even the Moon is falling into gathering cloud. But north lies our road between down and fen when day returns'" (TTT 418, HM 1-vol. ed.). I understand where he got the idea for this type of dialogue, but I found the result frequently tedious, mock-portentous, and sometimes unintentionally hilarious (as here). I'm perfectly happy to grant that the novel is brilliant world-building; unfortunately, for me, the prose doesn't match the conception. As I said, however, my opinion of the novel's prose has nothing to do with my estimate of its considerable importance.

[Amateur Reader]

I have extended, or, let's be honest, simpified, some of your idea's here. I actually wrote most of it before I saw your post. I had the same reaction as you in one sense - maybe literary history can help us out here.

[Bourgeois Nerd]

I can't say I ever really enjoyed reading LotR myself, so you're not alone. But then I like The Silmarillion and the appendices, so maybe my opinion is questionable.

You might find this interesting: http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=blog&id=13692

[D G Myers]

Miriam,

Since I nominated Beloved as the most overrated novel of all time, here is how I determined that it was rated highly. A search of the MLA Bibliography turns up 647 items in whole or in large part about the novel.

By comparison: a search for John Cheever returned 194 items; Bernard Malamud, 534; Alice Walker, 579; Peter Taylor (who won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction the year before Beloved), 135; Anne Tyler (who won the year after), 147.

Prima facie evidence of overrating, I would say.

[Lindsey Sparks]

LOTR just dragged on too long for me personally. I agree - I felt like I was in the Slough of Despond wading through some of the battle passages and pages and pages of description. I'm usually a big fan of description, but felt Tolkien went a bit overboard. I would find myself bored in the middle of a raging a battle. Not good.
I agree that Beloved is also overrated. I don't think it's even very well written, but it gets unbelievable amounts of attention and is taught on practically every college campus. I'd take The Color Purple anyday, or what about Their Eyes Were Watching God? Both have better plots, characters, and literary style, but they don't get the same type of attention.

[Charles Lambert]

This is fun. I thought Beloved was dreadful, and didn't even finish it, which is rare for me. It's good to see I'm not alone (though it wouldn't have changed my opinion of the book to discover otherwise...)

[arnold]

It surprises me that you don't consider what, to me, would be the logical way of 'rating' a conversion novel, i.e. how far did it succeed in converting its readers? By this standard I suspect Loss and Gain rates quite highly. Offhand I can't think of any RC converts to Anglicanism who directly attributed their conversion to reading the novel, but it ought to be possible to find some among the post-Newman generation of Oxford Tractarians. One scholar has pointed to parallels between Loss and Gain and G.M. Hopkins's letters at the time of his conversion, and speculated (plausibly, it seems to me) that 'Hopkins read that novel as he was contemplating his own conversion' (Bernadette Ward, Word as World: Philosophical Theology in Gerard Manley Hopkins (2002), p.68 n.34).

[Miriam]

That's a good point. Not sure where it would leave poor Grace Kennedy: several Victorians claimed that her anti-Catholic novel Father Clement converted them. To Catholicism.

[D G Myers]

After much thought, a two-weeks-deferred reply is here.