Tag Archives: fiction/literature

Rotten Reviews: An Aldous Huxley/Brave New World Omnibus

Posted on July 17, 2018 | Leave a comment

“A lugubrious and heavy-handed piece of propaganda.”

New York Herald Tribune

“… a somewhat amusing book; a bright man can do a good deal with two or three simple ideas.”

Granville Hicks, New Republic

“There are no surprises in it; and if he had no surprises to give us why would Mr. Huxley have bothered to turn this essay in indignation into a novel?”

New Statesman and Nation

Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.

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Rotten Rejections: In My Father’s Court

Posted on July 12, 2018 | Leave a comment

[This refers to the 1966 novel by Isaac Bashevis Singer.]

“Too pedestrian.”

Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.

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James Jones: From Here to Eternity

Posted on July 10, 2018 | Leave a comment

“The first novel (1951) by James Jones (1921-77), who was serving in the US infantry in Hawaii when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941. Twice promoted and twice reduced to private, he fought at Guadalcanal and was wounded in the head by a mortar fragment. The novel, which won a National Book Award, draws on his own experiences in Hawaii and caused a sensation for its expose of army brutality and its outspokenness about sex and military mores. The film (1952) was a slick, sexually oblique version directed by Fred Zinnemann. The title comes from the poem ‘The Gentlemen Rankers’ (1889) by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) about oppressed junior ranks:

‘Gentlemen-rankers out on the spree,
Damned from here to Eternity,
God ha’ mercy on such as we.'”

Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.

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Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

Posted on July 10, 2018 | Leave a comment

“A film (1991) directed by by Jon Avnet and with a screenplay by Fannie Flagg, adapted from her own novel. Evelyn Couch, a middle-aged housewife, finds inspiration in the story told her by Ninny Threadgoode, an octogenarian lady in an old folk’s home. Her story from her youth concerns a relative, Idgie Threadgoode, an early feminist, who many years before had run the cafe in Whistle Stop, Alabama. Idgie rescues her friend Ruth from an abusive marriage, and Ruth joins her at the cafe, cooking such Southern delights as Fried Green Tomatoes.”

Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.

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Rotten Rejections: The Great Days by John Dos Passos

Posted on July 10, 2018 | Leave a comment

“I am rather offended by what seems to me quite gratuitous passages dealing with sex acts and natural functions.”

Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.

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Rotten Reviews: Ulysses by James Joyce

Posted on July 9, 2018 | Leave a comment

“I finished Ulysses and think it is a misfire…. The book is diffuse. It is brackish. It is pretentious. It is underbred, not only in the obvious but in the literary sense. A first rate writer, I mean, respects writing too much to be tricky.”

Virginia Woolf, in her diary

“That the book possesses literary importance, except as a tour de force, is hard to believe. If we are to have the literature of mere consciousness there are numerous examples from the later Henry James to Virginia Woolf which import to consciousness a higher intrinsic value and achieve the forms of art.”

Springfield Republican reviewing the American edition 1934

Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.

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Charles Dickens: Great Expectations

Posted on July 7, 2018 | Leave a comment

“A novel by Charles Dickens (1812-70), published in 1860-1. The ‘expectations’ are those of the central character, Pip, who starts as a simple country boy. As he grows older he receives money and hints that he might expect much more; he sets himself up as a gentleman and disowns his humble beginnings. He believes the elderly Miss Havisham is his benefactor, but it turns out to be Magwitch, the convict he helped to escape as a child. He is spoilt by his expectations, but when penury strikes he returns to a life of honest toil.”

Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.

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Rotten Reviews: From Here to Eternity by James Jones

Posted on July 6, 2018 | Leave a comment

“Certainly America has something better to offer the world, along with its arms and its armies, than such a confession of spiritual vacuum as this.”

Christian Science Monitor

Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.

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Kazuo Ishiguro’s An Artist of the Floating World

Posted on June 26, 2018 | Leave a comment

“A novel (1986) by the Japanese-born British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro (b. 1954), about a Japanese artist looking back on his life after the Second World War.

‘The floating world’ is a Japanese euphemism for the entertainment districts of Japanese cities, scenes from which were depicted in the genre titled Ukiyo-e (‘pictures of the floating world’), a type of painting particularly popular during the Tokugawa period (1603-1867) in Japan. Subjects included courtesans, actors, scenes from plays and erotica. A well-known work of fiction from the period is Ukiyo Monogatari (c. 1661; ‘tales of the floating world’) by the Samurai turned novelist Asai Ryoi.”

Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.

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Rotten Rejections: The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie

Posted on June 26, 2018 | Leave a comment

“It is very interesting and has several good points, but it not quite suitable for our list.”

Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.

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