Tag Archives: readings/research

“His characters are as shallow as the saucers in which they stack their daily emotions, and instead of interpreting his material–or even challenging it–he has been content merely to make a carbon copy of a not particularly significant surface life of Paris.”

The Dial

“…leaves one with the feeling that the people it describes really do not matter; one is left at the end with nothing to digest,”

The New York Times

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

“The same road that has been traveled with Kerouac and to an extent Herbert Gold, this was for those schooled in the waste matter of the body and the mind; for others, a real recoil.”

Kirkus Reviews

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

“Heller wallows in his own laughter and finally drowns in it. What remains is a debris of sour jokes, stage anger, dirty words, synthetic looniness, and the sort of antic behavior the children fall into when they know they are losing our attention.”

Whitney Balliet, The New Yorker

“There is a great difference, after all, between milking a joke (the great gift of all comedians) and stretching it out till you kill it. Mr. Heller has enough verve not to have to try so hard to be funny.”

William Barrett, Atlantic Monthly

“…it gasps for want of craft and sensibility…. The book is an emotional hodgepodge; no mood is sustained long enough to register for more than a chapter.”

New York Times Book Review

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

“Why do you like Miss Austen so very much? I am puzzled on that point…I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses…Miss Austen is only shrewd and observant.”

Charlotte Bronte, letter to G.H. Lewes 1848

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

“The commonplaceness of the story is not alleviated in the slightest degree by any glimmer of imaginative insight on the part of the novelist. A skillful writer would be able to arouse an emotional reaction in the reader but at no moment does he leave him otherwise than cold and unresponsive. One feature of the novel stands out above all–the figure of Clyde Griffiths. If the novel were great, he would be a great character. As it is, he is certainly one of the most despicable creations of humanity that ever emerged from a novelist’s brain. Last of all, it may be said that Mr. Dreiser is a fearsome manipulator of the English language. His style, if style it may be called, is offensively colloquial, commonplace, and vulgar.”

Boston Evening Transcript

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

“Middlemarch is a treasure house of details, but it is an indifferent whole.”

Henry James, Galaxy

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