I would nominate Mary Karr for this category. Her brilliant 1995 work,The Liars’ Clubwas followed by the sequil,Cherry,which seemed dull to me, and there was no sign of the talent that was so obvious in the earlier work.
Bram Stoker. Dracula is a damn good book. Everything else of his I’ve read (The Lair of the White Worm and The Jewel of Seven Stars, among others) has been a waste of good trees.
John Kennedy Toole. And it DOES seem to generate divided opinions, with the people who don’t like it becoming quite indignant about how demeaning, crass, vulgar, etc. the work is. And badly written. Personally, I thought it was hilarious. And reasonably well written. But then, I refer to South Park as “Swiftian”.
Thanks for the link jcgmoi. If the new novel is anywhere near the quality of her first it’ll be worth the wait.
I suppose I might have agreed with you if I hadn’t read both novels within the span of a couple months as an undergrad and been vastly more impressed by Eco’s writing.
Hodge
Walter Miller - A Canticle for Leibowitz.
Yeah, there was that sequel abomination recently, but that hardly counts.
Eeeew! “Canticle” should just be left to stand alone. Great book.
Nominate Meredith Ann Pierce. She wrote “Darkangel”, one of my all-time favourite books for its lovely dreamlike feel, then wrote some sequels which were terrible. What the hell happened in the meantime?
The only one worth reading or mentioning is One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The other stuff he put out is just pure crap. I remember a short story set in China about a marathon, and the basic premise was a local boy didn’t know how far the distance was because he lived in China. Well, roads in China are marked in 1/10 km increments. kesey also threw in some bs about the cultural revolution. Sheesh, it was a crap story and the basic background was completely off base. Pretty indicative.
I can’t remember the name of another novel set in Alaska. It was kinda interesting at first and then went to complete crap.
One Flew is a great novel though. Thus the one hit author.
God: The Bible.
Count me in as a fan of ACoD. In Toole’s case the book was first published many years after his death (due to his mother’s relentless hawking of it to publishers); thus, you can’t really fault him for the lack of a proper follow-up.
South Park as “Swiftian” – I can’t decide whether that’s profound or disturbing.
[sub]Timmy![/sub]
Give Walker Percy full credit for recognizing the quality of A Confederacy of Dunces and pushing for its publication. Toole’s mother did hawk the book but got nowhere until Percy took up the standard.
Fitzgerald only finished one novel, right? The rest were short stories.
Did Stephen Crane write any other novels than The Red Badge of Courage? I think he stuck to reporting and short stories after that.
Joseph Heller’s Picture This is one of the finest books I have ever read.
Fitzgerald: This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned,Tender Is the Night, and The Last Tycoon (unfinished) in addition to Gatsby.
Crane: Maggie: A Girl of the Streets and Active Service. Maggie’s pretty good.
This one may be a bit more obscure.
In the late 1980s, an author named Ken Grimwood wrote a book called Replay, and I was very impressed with it. It pre-dated the movie Groundhog Day by several years, but it had a similar premise, but instead of replaying a single day, the poor guy was replaying years and years. There is a lot more to the story, but I’d rather not give anything away. Let’s just say that that author was very clever about exploring the different possibilities of this premise.
It’s worth looking for in used bookstores, since I doubt it is still in print.
Well there was a Miguel de Cervantes a while back who wrote Don Quixote and very little else…
I assume I’m the only one here who read Cervantes’ “La Fuerza de la Sangre,” and even if anyone did, it’s really more a short story than a book.
Did the Lady Murasaki ever write anything besides The Tale of Genji?
Thanks for setting me straight, jcgmoi.
Oh yeah, I love that book! I lent it to a friend, and never got it back. I had to get a second hand copy from the internet a few months back, and it was just as good as I remembered.
I’ve looked for other books from the same author, and found nothing, so H.P. Saint is on this list.
If you haven’t read “Sometimes a Great Notion”, do so. Then you may concede Kesey two hits. If you have read it, and thought it was crap, we’ll just have to disagree. I might might even suggest that SaGN is a better work than “Cuckoo’s Nest”. It’s certainly in the same league.
As Told To…
If you haven’t read “Sometimes a Great Notion”, do so. Then you may concede Kesey two hits. If you have read it, and thought it was crap, we’ll just have to disagree. I might might even suggest that SaGN is a better work than “Cuckoo’s Nest”. It’s certainly in the same league. **
[/QUOTE]
I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree. It’s also embarrasing to read how many times I used the word “crap” in a short post.
I threw away Sometimes in disgust about halfway through, and I almost always finish novels. Then about two years later backpacking around China and desperate to read anything in English, I somehow ended up with a copy and read it to the bitter end, as one will when you’re stuck on a 3 day train ride. I grew up in a small town and Kesey captured small town stuff reasonably well, but the plot twists and turns were just too unbelieveable.
I’ve seen it argued that the final chapters of The Tale of Genji are actually the start of another story. (I might add that I find those arguments quite convincing.)