BUT DON'T YOU BE DISSIN' MY CHUCK DICKENS!!! (i agree with his hemingway comment though. well not the comment just the sentiment. i never liked hemingway and think him HIGHLY overrated)
from the bbc news
Naipaul attacks literary giants
Novelist Sir VS Naipaul has lambasted literary greats from Jane Austen and Charles Dickens to "the worst writer in the world" Henry James.
Naipaul said Thomas Hardy was "an unbearable writer" who "doesn't know how to compose a paragraph".
And Ernest Hemingway "was so busy being an American" he "didn't know where he was", he told the Literary Review.
The Trinidad-born UK writer, who was knighted in 1990, said his own writings had been neglected in his home country.
"England has not appreciated or acknowledged the work I have done," he said.....
....The author slates Dickens for his "repetitiveness" and cites the experience of reading Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey as a revelatory one.........
...In 2001, he accused EM Forster of being a sexual predator and described Irish author James Joyce as incomprehensible. ......
i've never read mr naipaul (and i sure am leaning toward NEVER reading him) but i can tell he sure has a BIG FAT HEAD
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seems sure of himself. next he is going to say the beatles suck
I've read several Naipaul books including A Bend In the River and, recently, Magic Seeds.
He writes about flawed characters. More to the point, he writes about unremarkable bit players involved peripherally in minor historical occurances (Banana-Republic Coups, Failed Indian Political Movements, etc.). His characters show the futility of action, the futility of being, and attempt to show the true scale of one's worth and that being worthlessness.
If Dickens were the yardstick of accomplishment, Naipual doesn't measure a third of the way to him. Hemingway (my hero, sorry rose) writes more impact in one sentence than Naipaul manages in chapters - and as a bonus Hemingway's characters have hope and make a difference to someone, if only themselves.
Naipaul has an overinflated view of his own worth pumped up by a literary community which has lost the concept that stories have to mean something beyond hopelessness and ineptitude. His books are a chore to read, not a pleasure. He and Pynchon are the standard-bearers of a literary movement going neither forward or backward, but crafted to thrust the tedious into a place of prominence.
NO he didn't diss Forster...Thanks for putting the link in the latest campaign of weirdness by the way...
aw blow it out your ass v.s. or is it b.s.
What he says about James and Hardy is ridiculous…for starters. He sounds like a chemistry major that was forced to take a literature course. Why would an accomplished writer go out of his way to make himself a pipsqueak? ?
i love EACH and EVERY one of you (yes even YOU rick!!! by the way, just because i want to know, have you read any raymond chandler?)
one can do what they want. dis who they want (yes, even my favorites, toni morrison, joan didion, bruce chatwin, jamaica kincaid, gabriel garcia marquez. you can dis 'em (yeah even the beatles)all BUT NOT DICKENS. NEVER DICKENS. NEVER
and rick yet another question, if you don't like him that much, WHY keep reading him? not judging you, i just am very curious
(i LOVE ALL of those i mentioned above by the way. dickens isn't even my favorite author. i just have a thing for him)
LOL! I sure agree with him about Henry James.
Of course I've read Chandler.
Why do I keep reading him? As a writer I enjoy both reading and studying the craft. I want to find out what makes readers tick and what authors do right and what they do wrong. Naipaul is so highly praised that I have read his work with an eye toward figuring out what others see in him.
I read books I love as well as those I don't. I read genre, mainstream, literary, etc. and always try to find something positive to emulate and something negative to avoid.
My personal favorite: Vonnegut.
i don't think henry james is THAT bad. not in my top ten, but then again two books that ARE in my top ten are horton hears a who and the little prince (both of those books speak volumes to me and should to the whole wide world)so what the hell do i know?
thanks rick. i didn't mean to patronize you when i asked if you read chandler........many people haven't. i think that's a shame too. he wrote so very simply yet said so much, was so descriptive, was so evocative. also thanks for aswering my why do you read something if you think it's shite question. i don't have your patience. i'll attempt something (music, movies and art as well as literature) but if i deem it to be shite, i'll stop right then and there (the movies of ingmar bergman come to mind first thing). i too like vonnegut and EARLY john irving.
I'm not surprised that you like early Irving . . . I like him as well; he's admitted to writing Dickensian-styled novels.
A suggestion for you: Try Sean Stewart - he's not easy to find, but well worth the effort.
i've never heard of stewart. thanks rick i WILL give him a try!
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