We called “Sister Carrie” a book “one can get along very well without reading,” dismissed “Lolita” as “dull, dull, dull,” and had nothing nice to say about “Howards End.”
By Tina Jordan
- March 9, 2019
What can we say? We don’t always get it right. Here’s a look back at some of our most memorable misses.
“Shall we frankly declare that, after the most deliberate consideration of Mr. Darwin’s arguments, we remain unconvinced?”
On the Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin (1860)
“The average intelligent reader will glean little or nothing from it … save bewilderment and a sense of disgust.”
Ulysses, by James Joyce (1922)
“This Salinger, he’s a short-story guy.”
The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger (1951)
“As discouraging as a breakfast of cold porridge.”
Collected Poems, by W.B. Yeats (1896)
“There are two equally serious reasons why it isn’t worth any adult reader’s attention. The first is that it is dull, dull, dull in a pretentious, florid and archly fatuous fashion. The second is that it is repulsive.”
Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov (1958)
“The author’s probable intention was to exhibit a unique development in this little asylum waif, but there is no real difference between the girl at the end of the story and the one at the beginning of it.”
Anne of Green Gables, by L.M. Montgomery (1908)
“It is a book one can very well get along without reading.”
Sister Carrie, by Theodore Dreiser
“A disappointment … not the work of a wise and mature novelist.”
Tender Is the Night, by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1934)
“Not one syllable of what Hemingway has written can or will be missed by any literate person in the world.”
Across the River and Into the Trees, by Ernest Hemingway (1950)
“‘Catch-22’ has much passion, comic and fervent, but it gasps for want of craft and sensibility.”
Catch-22, by Joseph Heller (1963)
“One has a suspicion that Mann likes death scenes.”
Buddenbrooks, by Thomas Mann
“It seems to me to present Mr. James at his worst.”
The Golden Bowl, by Henry James (1904)
“Mr. Forster … evinces neither power nor inclination to come to grips with any vital human problem.”
Howards End, by E.M. Forster (1911)
A version of this article appears in print on March 11, 2019, Section C, Page 5 of the New York edition with the headline: Oops! Scalding Reviews of Some Classics Bubble Up. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
