
What I Learned from the Worst Novelist in the English Language - pseudolus
https://newrepublic.com/article/158761/learned-worst-novelist-english-language
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jamestimmins
Really enjoyed this piece. Quite poignant and has enough self reflection to
conventuals the writers experience without being self indulgent.

~~~
jamestimmins
*contextualize

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itronitron
Anyone that creates and that cares how their work will be received by others
should volunteer as judges in competitions until they realize fully how
subjective and biased the judging committees are.

Since Burrows already had some experience running against the establishment
(his university administration) I expect that he was not particularly fazed by
the negative review.

~~~
leib
If you can't do, judge.

I suspect some of these people are bad faith in their criticisms simply
because they're bitter their own work didn't take off.

~~~
bitwize
"But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of
things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our
criticism designating it so." \--Anton Ego, _Ratatouille_

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zwaps
Off topic: This is how this website looks when I open it:

[https://i.imgur.com/M1m5LJX.png](https://i.imgur.com/M1m5LJX.png)

yikes

~~~
skitter
On my phone in landscape orientation, the blue popup in front of the other two
popups that cover half of the screen each is so big that the closing-button is
unreachable. Quite unusable.

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afr0ck
I really enjoyed the writing even though it took me some time to correctly
understand some passages (I am not a native speaker). I feel sorry for
Burrows's case, he seems to be a great militant against oligarchy and
oppression as well as a tempted writer who was not fairly reviewed by his
peers.

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frostburg
I would argue that the worst English language novelist, among those of
reasonable renown, was Anthony Trollope (but this kind of statement is fraught
with issues, due to inclusion criteria - I'm not counting people that write
for, say, Castalia House - and inherent subjectivity).

~~~
sbierwagen
I'd nominate Hugo award winning author Liu Cixin.

~~~
Panoramix
That's just ridiculous. His trilogy is good, in the vein of Asimov. It's
riddled with issues, yes - such as poor characters, unbelievable human
behavior, etc. But the big ideas (which is what a lot of the people reading
science fiction are after) are very cool and fairly novel. Come to think of it
a lot of this could be said about Asimov or Arthur C. Clarke. Their characters
sucked too, yet their books are classics.

You know, Cixin won the Hugo award? This fact alone should tell you that he
cannot be the worst, not even close. A lot of people enjoyed his novels. You
could argue that he's over rated and that's about that.

~~~
frostburg
It must be said that he won his Hugo in part due to the consequences of a
openly hostile voting campaign for the nominations organized by people who
did, in fact, write for Castalia House.

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wombatmobile
Robert Burrows wasn't the worst novelist in the English language. The article
makes that clear.

The article includes Gene Weingarten's demeaning characterisation to get
clicks. That wouldn't be necessary if Barrett Swanson had listened to his
better instincts, and built on his portrait of Robert Burrows as an earnest
man of letters. Instead, he had a bet each way, perpetuating Gene Weingarten's
cruel ruse as a straw man, and negating it.

~~~
ponker
Robert Burrows is not newsworthy without Gene Weingarten. The article would
leave a massive unanswered question at its center.

~~~
wombatmobile
> Robert Burrows is not newsworthy without Gene Weingarten.

Are you saying that in your way of thinking, newsworthiness only arises from a
false, disparaging accusation?

~~~
andrewflnr
It's easy to answer that question by just, you know, reading what they're
actually saying, instead of making insinuations based on the dumbest possible
thought someone could have about the article.

~~~
wombatmobile
I read the article, andrewfinr.

It seems like a serious attempt to inform us about the humanity and abilities
of Robert Burrows. The reason it tends more towards clickbait than necessary
is obvious from the headline:

What I Learned From the Worst Novelist in the English Language

If the article was more of an attempt to rehabilitate Robert Burrows, who the
author visited on his death bed to get the story, the headline might more
candidly have been written as:

What I Learned From the "Worst Novelist in the English Language"

Swanson does encapsulate the insult in inverted commas, but not until para 19,
when he writes:

There was something regal, something monumental, in his bearing, and though I
knew otherwise, I found myself thinking, “There he is. The worst novelist in
the English language.”

Was it really necessary, or beneficial to share that thought, if the point of
the article is to debunk the insult?

~~~
andrewflnr
Those are reasonable points that are entirely irrelevant to mine, which was
about how you misrepresented ponker's position through your asinine, insulting
"in your way of thinking" question.

You didn't even have to stretch for a charitable interpretation: the surface
reading was perfectly decent. Instead you either thought they were making some
ludicrous generalization about newsworthiness for all time, or found it
rhetorically useful to seem to think that. In either case your comment
provided negative value.

