Bad Reviews

[molly bloom]

" Neither rhyme nor eason do I find in one single page... these books to me are absolutely empty and void...
[...] I say it is to me absolute nullity."


The author whose work was being roasted had this to say of another poet:

" I consider him unworthy of the poets' corner of a country newspaper."

One novelist had this to say of a famously peripatetic writer:

" Filth. Nothing but obscenities."


This was one journal's review of a well-known 20th Century poem:

" Unintelligible, the borrowings cheap and the notes useless."


The New York Herald thoroughly roasted this play, because:

" It defends immorality
It glories (I think they meant glorifies) debauchery
It besmirches the sacredness of a clergyman's calling
And worst of all, it countenances the most revolting form of degeneracy...."


Any guesses at which 'classics' and writers are being shredded ?

[Zoid]

At the 1913 Paris premiere of Stravinskys "The Rite of Spring" the audience was so appaled by the "barbaric" music and presentation that they rioted throwing chairs and debris at the stage.

I´d say that´s a pretty bad review And the press didn´t pull any punches either...

"The music of Le Sacre du Printemps baffles verbal description. To say that much of it is hideous as sound is a mild description. There is certainly an impelling rhythm traceable. Practically it has no relation to music at all as most of us understand the word." Musical Times, London, August 1, 1913 (Slonimsky, 1953)

"All the signs indicate a strong reaction against the nightmare of noise and eccentricity that was one of the legacies of the war.... What has become of the works that made up the program of the Stravinsky concert which created such a stir a few years ago? Practically the whole lot are already on the shelf, and they will remain there until a few jaded neurotics once more feel a desire to eat ashes and fill their belly with the east wind." Musical Times, London, October 1923 (ibid.)

Composer Constant Lambert (1936) described pieces such as L'Histoire du Soldat (A Soldier's Tale) as containing, "essentially coldblooded abstraction". Further, the "melodic fragments in L'Histoire du Soldat are completely meaningless themselves. They are merely successions of notes that can conveniently be divided into groups of three, five, and seven and set against other mathematical groups", and the cadenza for solo drums is, "musical purity...achieved by a species of musical castration". He compares Stravinsky's choice of, "the drabbest and least significant phrases", to Gertrude Stein's: "Everday they were gay there, they were regularly gay there everyday" ("Helen Furr and Georgine Skeene", 1922), "whose effect would be equally appreciated by someone with no knowledge of English whatsoever".

In his book Philosophy of Modern Music (1948) Theodor Adorno calls Stravinsky an acrobat, a civil servant, a tailor's dummy, hebephrenic, psychotic, infantile, fascist, and devoted to making money. Part of the composer's error, in Adorno's view, was his neo-classicism, but more important was his music's "pseudomorphism of painting", playing off of le temps éspace (space) rather than le temps durée (duration) of Henri Bergson. "One trick characterizes all of Stravinsky's formal endeavors: the effort of his music to portray time as in a circus tableau and to present time complexes as though they were spatial. This trick, however, soon exhausts itself." (1948)

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Kamrat X
At the 1913 Paris premiere of Stravinskys "The Rite of Spring" the audience was so appaled by the "barbaric" music and presentation that they rioted throwing chairs and debris at the stage.

I´d say that´s a pretty bad review And the press didn´t pull any punches either...

Yeah, it's interesting how many accepted 'classics' have been dumped on when they were first published or performed.

Similarly, it's interesting to see how some directors and actors never received nominations for an Oscar, and how many great writers never received a Nobel prize.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Re: Bad Reviews

Originally posted by molly bloom

This was one journal's review of a well-known 20th Century poem:

" Unintelligible, the borrowings cheap and the notes useless."

Eliot's "The Waste Land"?

[molly bloom]

Re: Re: Bad Reviews

Originally posted by Lazarus and the Gimp


Eliot's "The Waste Land"?

Yes, that one's relatively easy. From 'The New Statesman' .


I like this one on a famous novelist:

" One excessively touching heart-breaking passage, and the rest sullen socialism. (!)

The evils which he attacks he caricatures grossly, and with little humour."

[KrazyHorse]

Orwell?

[KrazyHorse]

Possibly Dickens.

[Boris Godunov]

There's a great book called "The Lexicon of Musical Invective." It features a collection of all the bad reviews written against what are now considered the great monuments of classical music. No piece escapes being ripped by the prominent music "critics" of the age.

Wagner's works were called "the music of a demented eunuch." And Berlioz said of Wagner that he was "evidently quite mad." In fact, I think the book devotes 27 pages to bad Wagner reviews, whereas Mahler escapes with just 4-5. Go figure.

[Zoid]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
In fact, I think the book devotes 27 pages to bad Wagner reviews, whereas Mahler escapes with just 4-5. Go figure.

Well, nobody cares about Mahler

[Zoid]

Originally posted by molly bloom

Yeah, it's interesting how many accepted 'classics' have been dumped on when they were first published or performed.

Similarly, it's interesting to see how some directors and actors never received nominations for an Oscar, and how many great writers never received a Nobel prize.

The Oscar sucks, it has nothing to do with quality. Just a bunch of Hollywood hot shots kissing other Hollywood hot shots asses... The same with the Nobel Prize. To get the Nobel prize in litterature you have to be thoroughly unknown to the general public and your books can´t be sold in more than 1000 copies...

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Possibly Dickens.

Spot on. A review of Dickens' 'Hard Times' by Macaulay.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Kamrat X

The same with the Nobel Prize. To get the Nobel prize in litterature you have to be thoroughly unknown to the general public and your books can´t be sold in more than 1000 copies...

You mean like the unknown George Bernard Shaw and William Faulkner, Samuel Beckett and Albert Camus ?


V.S. Naipaul, Dario Fo and Gunter Grass ?


Pirandello or Yeats, Pasternak or Toni Morrison ?

[KrazyHorse]

God knows I've never read Lord of the Flies...

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
God knows I've never read Lord of the Flies...

# Time is still on your side, yes it is.... #


I like this one (should enrage a few 'Poly folks):

" ....his appeal is to readers with a lifelong appetite for juvenile trash."

[Verres]

^^^ Tolkien?