Art is totally subjective. Just as many people may praise a work, others may rail against it. That is exactly what happened on several occasions with different books.
Today we want to echo an article published by the site Big Think to tell you about five cases in which the public approved a novel, while specialized critics and prominent writers did the opposite.
Party by Ernest Hemingway
The acclaimed American writer’s debut novel was published in October 1926 and features two of Hemingway’s most unforgettable characters: Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley. The story follows flamboyant Brett and hapless Jake as they journey from the wild nightlife of 1920s Paris to the brutal bullrings of Spain with a group of expats.
Despite becoming a bestseller, The Nation argued that Hemingway “does not complete his characters and lets them fend for themselves.”. Furthermore, he claimed that the author used his book to place himself in a “morally superior” place. On the other hand, Hemingway’s own mother said that “every page fills me with a sick hatred.”.
One hundred years of loneliness of Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Colombian author’s most notable work follows seven generations of the Buendía family in his native country and combines elements of magical realism with real events from his nation’s history to result in a novel that explores ideas of time, loneliness, destiny, free will and elitism.
One hundred years of loneliness It went on sale in 1967 and its success led the writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. However, another winner of the aforementioned recognition, The Mexican Octavio Paz defined it as “watery poetry.”. Furthermore, the British writer and composer, Anthony Burgess, warned that it should not be “compared with the genuinely literary explorations of [Jorge Luis] Borges and [Vladimir] “Nabokov”.
The grapes of wrath by John Steinbeck
This work, which was a best-seller in 1939, follows the Joad family in Oklahoma during the Great Depression and serves as a social critique of the bitter poverty of America’s migrant workers in the crisis of the 1930s.
The novel is considered an American classic and launched Steinbeck in his bid to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. However, His work also earned him the label of a socialist, while libraries refused to keep a copy.. In fact, a congressman of the time argued that the book “exposes nothing but the utter depravity, vulgarity, and degraded mentality of the author.”
Kill a Mockingbird of Harper Lee
This ’60s classic takes readers to the roots of human behavior: to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hate, humor and pathos. All this, through the story of the life of an innocent man who is defended both in court and before public opinion by a particularly virtuous lawyer, Atticus Finch.
Today the book is classified as a classic, but when it was published The bad reviews were immediate: Flannery O’Connor considered it a “children’s book,” while the novelist Granville Hicks considered it “melodramatic and artificial.”.
The Miserables of Victor Hugo
The plot of this novel focuses on the story of Jean Valjean, sentenced to prison for stealing a loaf of bread for his nephews. Upon release from prison, the protagonist repeats the robbery, but the good will of a priest makes him reform his life. Meanwhile, Inspector Javert becomes obsessed with capturing him again.
Victor Hugo received criticism for his novel: The French novelist Gustave Flaubert described it as “childish” and the poet Charles Baudelaire classified it as “repulsive.”. For its part, the Catholic Church included the novel in the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, so the book was prohibited for all practitioners of said religion.
