# Worst Novel Of All Time! **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 5, 2000, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-of-all-time/32036 "2000-09-05T03:07:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Stoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stoid/32/272_2.png) [@Stoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoid)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2000, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-of-all-time/32036/62 "2000-09-06T21:35:30Z")
Pick anything by Robin Cook, a jillion-selling author who can barely construct a readable sentence, much less a good book. stoidela ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2000, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-of-all-time/32036/63 "2000-09-06T21:53:05Z")
Amok, I agree with you. But why do you think nobody else has heard of Bellamy’s Looking Backward? Can I mention a short story done by an author who does novels? Got to be “The Pearl” by Hemingway. Where did this guy get his reputation anyway? ---
**Author:** ![Montfort](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Montfort](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Montfort)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2000, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-of-all-time/32036/64 "2000-09-06T22:12:32Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Baker \* > \*\*Can I mention a short story done by an author who does novels? Got to be “The Pearl” by Hemingway. Where did this guy get his reputation anyway? \*\* Waitasec. Didn’t Steinbeck write that? ---
**Author:** ![Ponyboy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/2bfe46/32.png) [@Ponyboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ponyboy)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2000, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-of-all-time/32036/65 "2000-09-06T22:59:45Z")
Freedomland by Richard Price. Yuck! Doubly disappointing since I loved Clockers so much. ---
**Author:** ![iksova](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/59ef9b/32.png) [@iksova](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iksova)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2000, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-of-all-time/32036/66 "2000-09-06T23:07:47Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Montfort \* > \*\* > > > [@](#): > > > > \*Originally posted by Baker \* > > \*\*Can I mention a short story done by an author who does novels? Got to be “The Pearl” by Hemingway. Where did this guy get his reputation anyway? \*\* > > Waitasec. Didn’t Steinbeck write that? \*\* Yep. Steinbeck. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2000, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-of-all-time/32036/67 "2000-09-07T00:47:06Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Joe\_Cool \* > \*\*Definitely has to be either David Coperfield or Knickerless Knickelby, by Edmund Wells. \*\* Not to mention _Rarnaby Budge_, by Charles Dikkens. That’s Dikkens with two k’s, the well-known Dutch author. ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2000, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-of-all-time/32036/68 "2000-09-07T01:19:33Z")
Ahhhhhh, yes…the estimable Mr. Dikkens. Wrote my doctoral thesis on him. THE COLD USURY SHOP. CHARTIN MUZZLEWIT. TEAK BLOUSE. THE DRESSERY OF EDWIN MOOD. And his luminous masterwork, A SALE OF TWO TITTIES. ---
**Author:** ![Montfort](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Montfort](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Montfort)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2000, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-of-all-time/32036/69 "2000-09-07T02:38:04Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by iksova \* > \*\* > > > [@](#): > > > > \*Originally posted by Montfort \* > > \*\*Waitasec. Didn’t Steinbeck write that? \*\* > > Yep. Steinbeck. \*\* That’s what I thought. Steinbeck was a genious. But, I certainly will wonder about Hemmingway’s popularity. ---
**Author:** ![rackensack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e5b9ba/32.png) [@rackensack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rackensack)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2000, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-of-all-time/32036/70 "2000-09-07T02:44:55Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Ukulele Ike \* > \*\* > > > [@](#): > > > > \*Originally posted by Mojo \* > > **_Slaves of New York_. I don’t know how this book was so highly touted. Awful, awful stuff.** > > I’d LOVE to be able to say that the collected works of the Three Stooges of the New York Literary Scene, 1980s edition…McInerny, Ellis, and Janowitz…are the worst crap ever published. > > But I never read any of them (their hype was enough to make me vomit; I didn’t want to compound the nausea by actually purchasing and reading their work), so it would be…intolerant and wrongheaded to do so. \*\* Well, I did read _Bright Lights, Big City_, so I can at least be somewhat more tolerant and right-headed and still say that it was no better than it ought to have been. The worst sort of creative writing program drivel, with a 2-micron veneer of cleverness (“Look ma! I wrote a whole novel in the second person!”). McInerney’s idea of wit seems to be to have a black character pronounce “philanthropist” as “FIE-lan-throw-PUSS”. Never read Ellis or Janowitz, nor had any desire to. ---
**Author:** ![rackensack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e5b9ba/32.png) [@rackensack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rackensack)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2000, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-of-all-time/32036/71 "2000-09-07T02:56:05Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by All School \* > \*\*If there is a single more unreadable book in the English language, please keep it away from me. . . . Every time I see some literary snob allude to the genius of Thomas Pynchon, and especially his “masterpiece,” (sic) Gravity’s Rainbow, I have to laugh. My conclusion is that this is a little inside joke members of the literati like to play on unsuspecting would-be intellectuals. “I know…we’ll get them to read that horrid novel by Pynchon,” they no doubt chortled when this fiendish plot was first hatched. Anyone who can go cover to cover on this one is either a glutton for punishment, or possibly just brain dead. Ayn Rand is as light and amusing as Charles Schultz compared to this novel. \*\* One literary snob who’s either brain-dead or a glutton for punishment, playing a little inside joke on the rest of you, present and accounted for. Don’t let it get around, but I’ve “gone cover to cover on this one” not once but three times. It’s one thing to dislike something because despite having understood it you think it’s poorly done, and quite another to insist that it’s awful simply because you can’t make heads or tails of it and give up. I, for example, fall into the latter camp with nearly anything by Faulkner, and the former with (for example, Jay McInerny’s _Bright Lights, Big City_). ---
**Author:** ![Amok](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f17d59/32.png) [@Amok](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amok)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2000, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-of-all-time/32036/72 "2000-09-07T03:08:04Z")
**rs0522** : Nope, I went to the University of Pittsburgh (“Pitt”). I guess those books must be pretty standard for courses on utopian literature. I suppose there aren’t that many seminal works in the field, so it doesn’t allow for much variety. **Baker** : Well, I’m sure some people have heard of it, I just assumed that most of the people here haven’t. But it is certainly possible I’m wrong on that. As for why I assume it is not well known: I believe it was the only book that I had literally never heard of going in to the class. I might be wrong on that, since it has been a few years and I can’t remember all of the books we read, but of the ones I do remember, I had heard of all the others (though some, like News From Nowhere, I knew very little about). And since then I don’t think I’ve heard or read any references to it. It certainly deserves to be forgotten even if it isn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2000, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-of-all-time/32036/73 "2000-09-08T03:25:18Z")
The trouble with most of your choices is that they are obviously open to interpretation, seeing as most of them are considered (rightly or wrongly) as great works by others. What I had in mind was the _Global 2000_ series by Gloria Basile, put out by Pinnacle Books back in the mid 1980s. These three books, _Eye Of The Eagle_, _The Jackal Helix_, and _The Sting of the Scorpion_, contains some of the most convoluted plotting, rediculous sentence structure and cardboard characters(the hero’s name in the first book is General Matt Lincoln, and he’s caucasian!) that you’ve ever seen. It makes the Illuminatus Trilogy look like a textbook for Logic 101! ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2000, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-of-all-time/32036/74 "2000-09-08T03:30:47Z")
OK, **slythe** , I’ll agree with you in principle, but I have to make an exception for, if not all of L. Ron Dullard’s works, at the very least that hypercrappy Mission Earth drivel. A mind that would be so underdeveloped as to “interpret” that as good would obviously be unable to read, so it could never happen. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2000, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-of-all-time/32036/75 "2000-09-08T04:51:36Z")
But the series I’m talking about is so bad you couldn’t even _brainwash_ somebody into liking it! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2000, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-of-all-time/32036/76 "2000-09-08T14:16:52Z")
Oh! You didn’t want _bad_ books, you wanted BAD books! Sorry, I got caught up in the moment and forsook your OP. **Slythe,** my fine fellow, I have JUST the reference works for you! Between 1982 and 1996, mystery/western writer Bill Pronzini produced three astonishingly entertaining volumes: GUN IN CHEEK SON OF GUN IN CHEEK SIXGUN IN CHEEK I doubt any of them are still in print, but do an Amazon search before you boot up BiblioFind. They’re loving tributes to the absolute WORST CRAP in genre fiction…the first two cover the mystery/crime/detective genre, and the last is devoted to the western. Lots of good history (Pronzini is a fanatic collector of pulp mags and paperback originals), and lots of rib-tickling examples of excreable prose. Get 'em! You’ll thank me later. ---
**Author:** ![Ceejaytee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ceejaytee/32/2956_2.png) [@Ceejaytee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ceejaytee)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2000, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-of-all-time/32036/77 "2000-09-08T21:25:48Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Ukulele Ike \* > \*\*Oh! You didn’t want _bad_ books, you wanted BAD books! Sorry, I got caught up in the moment and forsook your OP. > > **Slythe,** my fine fellow, I have JUST the reference works for you! Between 1982 and 1996, mystery/western writer Bill Pronzini produced three astonishingly entertaining volumes: > > GUN IN CHEEK > SON OF GUN IN CHEEK > SIXGUN IN CHEEK > > \*\* Damn!! Sixgun in Cheek? I have to find that! I loved the first two. Some of the most horrific passages ever written are included in that. Hmm, Sixgun. Must search for that. Personally, I hated Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow, the inane Bridges of Madison County, Tess of the D’Ubervilles, which was boring _and_ vile, among countless other dreck. But I really loved David Copperfield. ---
**Author:** ![Dumbguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/2bfe46/32.png) [@Dumbguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dumbguy)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2000, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-of-all-time/32036/78 "2000-09-08T22:00:41Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by rackensack \* > \*\* > > > [@](#): > > > > \*Originally posted by All School \* > > \*\*… Every time I see some literary snob allude to the genius of Thomas Pynchon, and especially his “masterpiece,” (sic) Gravity’s Rainbow, I have to laugh. \*\* > > One literary snob who’s either brain-dead or a glutton for punishment, playing a little inside joke on the rest of you, present and accounted for. \*\* I also love Pynchon, and I watched ‘Survivor’, so I’m pretty sure I don’t qualify as a snob. ---
**Author:** ![flup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d07c76/32.png) [@flup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flup)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2000, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-of-all-time/32036/79 "2000-09-09T02:38:39Z")
…Hey, anyone ever read this shit “The Bible”? Who wrote this shit, and what the fuck was he smoking? I’ve never read more bullshit in my life, and that includes “Dianetics” (although, strictly speaking Dianetics is not, technically, fiction…) ---
**Author:** ![NiceGuyJack](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/niceguyjack/32/3069_2.png) [@NiceGuyJack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NiceGuyJack)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2000, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-of-all-time/32036/80 "2000-09-09T17:21:39Z")
It’s been a long time so I am not so sure which book it was, but I believe it was the first book of the Thomas Covenant trilogy written by Stephen Donaldson. The main character in the book actually rapes a child in the very beginning. Now if the raping of a child were an important part of a story, I wouldn’t be so critical, if the act in question was described as an evil act, which it is. However, in this book, the author was trying to make you feel sorry for the perp. “He felt so bad about what he did”. “He couldn’t control himself”. I didn’t feel sorry for the character at all. I only felt disgust. I couldn’t read any further and the book ended up in the trash. The only book I ever read where I felt disgusted. And the only book I ever threw out. ---
**Author:** ![anya\_marie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ebca7d/32.png) [@anya\_marie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anya_marie)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2000, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-of-all-time/32036/81 "2000-09-10T16:14:14Z")
QUOTE FROM MISSBUNNY: I am pretty sure that V. C. Andrews was a man. Flowers in the Attic and all those other books are an embarrassment to bookbinding glue everywhere. But they were certainly popular, so I guess people will pay for anything under the right circumstances! i saw this page, i still cannot believe it exists! [http://www.angelfire.com/va/vcroleplay](http://www.angelfire.com/va/vcroleplay) you have so got to be kidding! nobody has that much time on their hands!! there are 40 v.c. andrews homePages i have only listed two. [http://go.webring.yahoo.com/go?ring=vca&id=21&go](http://go.webring.yahoo.com/go?ring=vca&id=21&go) babble- all about vc and her alleged legacy, and reveals who her ghostwriter is! [http://www.homestead.com/evilgranny/criminals.html](http://www.homestead.com/evilgranny/criminals.html) where the villains on the v.c. andrews novels are on trial i think this one wil be the most entertaining. i have not been able to read Stephen King “Bag Of Bones” without falling asleep. the worst book i read in school was hemingway’s “the old man and the sea” i just hated it, i do not know why. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-of-all-time/32036.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-of-all-time/32036.md?page=5)