I know that this isn't a math Q, but that's at least three or four parts, bub.

Extended rumination will probably generate a few more answers, especially in part 1c., where I feel something lurking in the shadow, but, alas, currently unnameable.

For the first parts of 1., I get a lot more out of Martin Amis than most people. I've had a book group split between hostile and indifferent over "The Information," and the "Rachel Papers" was so detested by a friend's partner that the friend's having liked another Amis was actually a wedge between them for a time. But this reflects what Amis does well -- creates a really repulsive main character then dares you not to like him.

For two, I have to say that I never got much out of Dune or Lord of the Rings.

On 1c., not necessarily my final answer, Tim O'Brien's "The Nuclear Age" was amazing for me when I first read it, but in a reread, seemed much more ordinary. I couldn't in rereading or searching, even find one of my "favorite scenes" and "favorite lines", which I'm thinking may not exist in the form I remember. But I do still remember what a great scene it was.

Man, this is a popular new feature I've started. Wooo!

Well, my contributions: to the first part, I'd throw in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, a wonderful novel that deeply impressed me, and is regularly dissed/dismissed by people who (a) simply don't like Wallace's fundamental method, which is to be both funny and illuminating in the guise of overexplaining, or (b) just don't like really long novels. Wallace is probably the writer most likely to get tagged with the label "pretentious," but in my view he, more than most writers, lays enough out there that I feel allowed to make up my own mind. A brilliantly garrulous narrator, who through his incessant chatter invites our reservations, our suspicious, our demurrals: Wallace, for all his bulk, gives one a lot of space as a reader.

A book which impressed itself very deeply upon me, despite its questionable claim to anything other than a shaggy-hippie-dog-story, was Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus (a trilogy, but I read it bound in one volume and it really is one big book). The grab bag of trippy anarchist humor, bits of Rosicrucian lore, dollops of portentous New Age philosophy, and perpetual parodying of Joyce, Freud, Ayn Rand and sundry other writers hit me like -- well, like my first experiment with a water pipe and wacky tobaccy.

That doesn't sound like much of an endorsement and it isn't -- Robert Anton Wilson's shtick, while it worked for me fifteen years ago so well that elements of it still vibrate with meaning for me, is not one that I'd foist on anyone. But, as my sole connection (besides, perhaps, The Firesign Theater) to the sensibility of Tuning In and Turning On, I can't repudiate it. For better or for worse, it's one of those Unforgettable Books.

As for my second question...man, that's tougher than I thought. Half of the books I think of are "too easy" in the sense that I don't think anybody reading this would rate them that highly. And half of the books I might throw out there I would do so because it would, in an evil Dale Peck kinda way, feel good to say "Mrs. Dalloway is overrated! It's not nearly as good as half her other books!" But I'd just be saying it for shock value -- I think Mrs. Dalloway is pretty freaking amazing, even if I do like To The Lighthouse more.

This part of the question, incidentally was prompted by the Salinger discussion over on MeFi a week or so ago, in which a lot of people gave forth with their resounding anti-Salinger feelings. I have no strong feelings myself, pro- or anti-Salinger, so I remained aloof, but it got me wondering what other writers might inspire this particular blend of worship and backlash against said worship.

I still haven't answered the question. And now I'm hung up. I could name any given work by a famed author who doesn't engage my sympathies much -- Hemingway, for example, or Barth, or much Updike. But I balk at calling, for example, Hemingway "overrated" -- A Moveable Feast stinks, but it's not the reason people read Hemingway. Updike frequently leaves me absolutely cold, but I'm not going to pretend that his prose isn't masterful, or that I didn't enjoy the hell out of Rabbit, Run or lots of his short stories.

So maybe this is a BS question, designed only to stoke either our desire to bash easy/recondite targets (A Prayer for Owen Meany is forced and sentimental! Winesburg, Ohio is flat in its approach to character!) or our thrill in taking potshots at established literary icons a la Peck.

So maybe the silence around here is pretty, um, explicable.

We'll try to do better.

I'll offer up an answer to the second question: the "classic" I tried reading last year only to abandon as a piece of overripe proto-goth tripe was Wuthering Heights. I suppose she gets a few points for having invented the modern romance novel, but only a few.

Okay, I think the church around the corner is open now--time to go see the Bernini.

I'll offer up an answer to the second question: the "classic" I tried reading last year only to abandon as a piece of overripe proto-goth tripe was Wuthering Heights. I suppose she gets a few points for having invented the modern romance novel, but only a few.

Okay, I think the church around the corner is open now--time to go see the Bernini.

The spirit is willing, but the brain is weak. I'll try to come up with a decent comment before this week's Q becomes last week's. (Last week's was good, too, but last week wasn't good for me...)

I admit that part of the problem for me is, overrated/underrated by who? For example, the very first comment puts Dune and Lord of the Rings in the overpraised category, where I would swear that despite their legions of fans, each has received far more serious opprobrium that approbation.

For some reason, I could answer these questions far more easily with music.

1) One book that I don't believe was well received and that I have to read a chapter or two before putting it down is Abbie Hoffman's Steal This Book. It really, really hasn't aged well (kind of like an old movie when someone asks for a dime to make a phone call) and the 1970 LEET speak sounds like a parody of itself. But the abrasiveness and the unabashed middle finger in the face of authority is still very cool.

2) I thought Beowulf was a bit wordy.

Speaking of movies that have become dated, Robin Laws just pointed out that After Hours is now thoroughly in that camp.

The plot turns on our hero's inability to (1) make a phone call (2) get $20. In an era of cash machines and cell phones, those wouldn't be the same obstacles today.

Cell phones, IMing, etc. take the bite out of a lot of Shakespeare, too.

Dear Romeo -- Faking death, POS gotta go, CYA ;) Jules.

Etc.

now, if I'd been reading the internet on Friday the 28th of January rather than flying in a plane to Australia, I might have added that I was too afraid to reveal my lack of literary insightfulness to answer the question without feeling, well, a little dumb.

wait a second! did that run-on sentence even make sense? d'oh! I revealed my lack of literary insightfulness anyway!