Not so awful

It seems there is almost an "Awful Canon" on the awful boards here: near universal agreement that Dan Brown and certain others write nothing but unredeemable pieces of trash.

Are there books in the Awful Canon that deserve redemption? For years, many had condemned Edna St. Vincent Millay to a lead role in the Awful Canon, for example, and she seems to be getting some redemption now. Are there others we can think of who have been thoroughly derided at one point in time only to be redeemed by a later period?

>near universal agreement that Dan Brown... unredeemable pieces of trash

More like those that hate him are so adamant about it that those of us who really enjoy his books are afraid to say so for the fear of being looked down upon as being as "trashy" as his books.

I put Brown in the category of trash I've enjoyed, so I can both have and consume my cake.

I've never read anything by Brown, so I can't really say that it's trash. It's just not the sort of thing I would ever read or enjoy.

There are plenty of things that I read that others may see as fluff or trash. I don't really care. I read for myself.

Kate Chopin is recently (recently being with the arisal of the equal rights movement) finally getting the acclaim she deserves. She is an excellent author, but was condemned around the time of the publishing of The Awakening simply because she was a woman, and it wasn't the accepted social norm.

I have to say that I enjoyed all of Dan Brown's books. I don't think they will become "classics", but for entertainment value, they're great.

(I have to add my comment to all those who think Davinci Code is evil incarnate - It's fiction!!! I go to church every Sunday, and I was not the least offended.)

Well, I don't think The Da Vinci Code is evil incarnate, but with or without the consent of the author "common knowledge" has marked it as a book that presents an alternate version of history and as such poses as possible "fact", not "fiction". And that's one of the problems with the work - many people take it for fact when it at most could be labeled "speculative semihistorical fiction", and when lots of people treat it like fact it in some sense become fact.

As a nonbeliever in any "-ity" or "-ism" I only see what I think is a to me an uninteresting story. Not good, not bad. Only totally void of interest. What makes it interesting is the ensuing debate, nothing else, and in that debate I stand on the side of those who a) thinks that the division between fiction and nonfiction should be quite clear (we've had a debate about this in Sweden recently, with an author defaming his own family in work of fiction (or was it?), and this debate tied in with the Dan Brown-debate...) and b) everyone reads what's to his or her's taste and liking (which could differ based on mood, time, and circumstances).

A_Musing wrote:

"It seems there is almost an "Awful Canon" on the awful boards here: near universal agreement that Dan Brown and certain others write nothing but unredeemable pieces of trash."

That's not the overwhelming impression I get from the Awful Lit. threads at all. I think there is a distinction to be made between traditional "trashy" books whose readers tacitly admit are trash when they decide to read them (literary cotton candy as it were) and books whose word of mouth and/or reviews would imply are great monuments to writing but which many readers feel are just crap (books that wind up being a HUGE letdown because of the hype). The talk I usually see on the threads skews much more to the latter IMO. I think most times posters are making it clear that what they are classifying as "awful" are books they went into thinking would be good because of pedigree, reviews, recommendations, etc.. If people on this message board really spent time only talking about truly "tradional" trashy books there wouldn't be enough bandwidth in the world for all the books and subsequent musings that would encompass. In fact I have seen many posters claim to enjoying the occasional lapse into trashy fiction reading. . .myself included. :-)

For example, I like to use The Alchemist as an example of awful lit. In no way would I classify it as a "trashy" book nor do I think that it's intent was to be classified as "traditional" literary trash. I do however consider it to be a piece of unoriginal, uninspiring, not particularly well-written piece of hack writing plain and simple. The fact that it takes itself so seriously as philosophical or relevatory and NOT trash just makes me dismiss and mock it even further---it's that very earnestness in its message that both cracks me up and chafes my hide too! :-)

bookjones, I found your analysis interesting, because I can enjoy trashy novels like da Vinci Code, and I am quite puzzled about why people see it as so significant, but that doesn't make me hate the book. I don't think it was written as great literature. Like you (I think) I reserve my loathing for the pretensious books that the authors clearly see as great literature, but which i think are crap.

akennded5 wrote:

"Like you (I think) I reserve my loathing for the pretensious books that the authors clearly see as great literature, but which i think are crap."

Well I wouldn't say that I reserve ALL my loathing for so-called serious books that I believe are awful. :-) It's more the case that I have made a determination for myself that I don't want to expend tons of mental or in the case of discourse on the LT forums, physical energy dissecting or critiquing "traditionally" trashy lit. Afterall, there's so much excellent lit to be discussed. . .or so-called good lit to be brought down a peg or two. :-) In any case, I have never read much trashy lit and so don't have a huge frame of reference to go on about it in any authoritative way. I am not however always and irredemably adverse to reading it at all. After all, the occasional piece of literary cheese can be good.

I do read the occasional trashy book and always reach a determination that either it served its purpose effectively and was well-executed and entertaining trashy lit or that it was poorly written, plodding bad trashy lit. There is an art/talent to it in and of itself---look no further IMO than Anne Rice. I used to read all her books and thought the early ones were great trashy FUN but then she lost her way, lost her mojo, and more importantly strated taking her writing far too seriously. Her writing became a meandering mess as far as I was concerned. I haven't read her last 7 or so books so I don't know if she was able to recapture any of her former glory. To that end I suppose traditionally trashy lit should not by its very nature be exempt from discourse on the Awful Lit. forum as the worst trashy lit is certainly awful literature. :-)

bookjones: I hung on for dear life through all of Anne Rice's crap, so I guess I can say something here. Memnoch the Devil is when she started to get pretty awful, I think, and The Vampire Armand probably was her low point - pure gay porn. Absolutely. She kind of redeemed it with Blood and Gold, which was the same story from Marius' point of view with far less sex, but it wasn't even close to being good. Blackwood Farm was okay, maybe it was good for her to focus on some other characters for a while. Of course, she dragged everyone, and I mean everyone out in Blood Canticle, a book that I've seen described as "OMG, Lestat discovers girls!" That's the book that caused the "controversy" on Amazon, where Rice herself responded to negative reviews with a rant that didn't even have paragraph breaks. But you know, it really wasn't that bad of a book - because it was short. It was almost like she actually let an editor look at it.

I thought the same thing about Anne Rice! But I didn't think I'd even read enough to be justified in saying it. I thought Interview with the Vampire was very well done, and I really enjoyed The Vampire Lestat even though the characters had suddenly changed drastically, but I couldn't stand Queen of the Damned and struggled to finish it. It felt like she was just repeating the same story again and again and again with only the most minor additions each time.

Speaking of Dan Brown I am one of those who enjoys his books for what they are - pieces of fiction :) I often read what others may call "trashy" as a way to escape everyday life and have a bot of fun. Brown falls into that category for me.

Some people called A Million Little Pieces and My Friend Leonard by James Frey trash because he lied about them being real. But I, again, enjoyed them as I read them as a piece of fiction, not as someone's true-life experiences.

Than again, I'll read anything which includes shampoo bottles and empty cereal boxes :)

I don't know how this group feels about them, but here's my contribution: the Anita Blake books by Laurell K. Hamilton.

I heard for years that they were trash and nothing but soft vampire porn, so I stayed away from them even when they were recommended to me. Eventually I gave in, and yeah. They're fluff, and they're not exactly Austen, Shakespeare, or Tolkien, but they're not nearly as horrible as I was led to believe. The sex (excluding a single incident) isn't even as bad as I was told (really, it's fairly good, compared to some of the fic I've seen out there). I must admit to being sucked into the story and am eagerly awaiting the release of Danse Macabre in March.

Anita Blake? Started well She was quite prudish at the begining. The sex? No problems with that it was increase in the kinks that started to wear thin..She seemed to spend half the books describing the mens choice in leather and latex. Shrug maybe if it had been women , but even then discriptions of clothes just don't do anything for me.

With Anita Blake the problem for me is the fact that the sex is boring and predictable, that there is nothing else going on in the books, like plot. Then the addition of all these new little characters so AB can be a big fish. She spends all her time being a big fish in a little pond, and no longer spends much time with actual peers. Those who are peers, are gone, made wimpy, fawning bootlickers, or crazy.

Then of course there is the fact that all the men worship her, that she develops new powers of the month each book, and that she has become selfish, self-absorbed, and mean spirited.

Just a series of horrible changes in my opinion.

I dislike Dan Brown's works due to their predictable nature, not due to a misplaced sense of elitism. Both Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci Code are very formulaic mystery/thrillers that, with an infusion of "controversy", managed to earn a veil of credibility and and the aura of "literature".

It's Hamilton's need to escalate that is the core of the problem. every book Anita overcomes nastier nasties, and, encounters hunkier hunks, Hamilton ran out of superlatives long ago and has been running on empty ever since. Sometimes less is more. They started really well but she can't turn it around now.

I think Nathaniel Hawthorne gets a bad rap. The Scarlet Letter was not his best work. Read his short stories - some of them are almost like fantasy/sci fi works and were a real mind-opener for me. He's my favorite American writer.

I enjoy trashy books all the time (for example the Mike Ripley private detective series and agatha christie novel, as well as heaps of comic fantasy.
However, Dan Brown is an awful writer. I read The Da Vinci code and although I was hooked on the plot, the writing was really poor. Then I found out that his other books are pretty much the same plots but with names/places/name of secret society changed!

One of the last novels I expected to see mentioned in this thread is Chopin's The Awakening. I know it wasn't particularly well-received in its day, but I was completely unaware that it was a candidate for "awful lit" lists.

Are we confusing "awful lit" with literature viewed unfavorably in its day here, or is The Awakening still considered by many to be trash?

>21 MrJessDub: - see Message 5.

>22 A_musing: - I was writing in response to #5, actually. Is it still generally considered "awful lit" outside circles informed by feminism?

MrJessDub - No, at least, I have never heard that. Are you saying "only feminists" could like The Awakening?