5 Meanest Book Reviews Ever: Franzen, Foer, Larsson And More (PHOTOS)

It has been said that any publicity is good publicity. But when someone describes your writing as "like reading a bad newspaper or a bad piece in a magazine. It makes you wince," as John Irving said of Tom Wolfe's "A Man In Full," that credo loses a bit of credibility.

Book reviewers, generally speaking, tend to keep their heads when assessing a book's worth. They are, after all, charged with the task of objectively analyzing a work. Sometimes, however, professionalism and decorum give way to vitriol and downright disgust. The words in these hateful reviews are less letters on a page and more the transcript of a critic's frenzied ravings.

So, here are the worst of the worst, the most dispiriting, and the meanest. But what did we leave out? What are the meanest reviews you've ever read?

Disclaimer: We apologize if you are the author of one of these books.

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"Dirty, Sexy Politics" by Meghan McCain

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Review by Leon H. Wolf: "It is impossible to read 'Dirty, Sexy Politics' and come away with the impression that you have read anything other than the completely unedited ramblings of an idiot."

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Review by Leon H. Wolf:

"It is impossible to read 'Dirty, Sexy Politics' and come away with the impression that you have read anything other than the completely unedited ramblings of an idiot."

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Comments

[Valjeanne]

01:20 PM on 10/07/2010

This is so funny and so mean (laugh)!

[Paul Raymont]

03:04 PM on 10/06/2010

For another scathing review of a philosophy book, see Colin McGinn's review of Ted Honderich's book, *On Consciousness*, about which there is more at http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2007/10/colin-mcginn-di.html

[Paul Raymont]

12:58 PM on 10/06/2010

Major John J. Stonborough, a nephew of Ludwig Wittgenstein, wrote a damning review of W. W. Bartley's biography, *Wittgenstein*, in *The Human World* (no. 14 [Feb. 1974]: 78-84). Stonborough said that Bartley and his publisher had "put out a book in which they pee on the graves of men whom honest and upright people admire and respect." The Major labeled Bartley's book "a farrago of lies and poppycock."

[Nick Domich]

03:38 PM on 10/05/2010

SF Examiner review of Marilyn Quayle and her sister-in-law's Embrace the Serpent. "This book is such a dog it should be subjected to leash laws." "The reader should scold it. Bad book...bad book."

[muhair]

05:23 PM on 10/02/2010

Nominating Walter Kirn's fairly recent review of Ian McEwen's Solar:
“Solar,” the new novel by Ian McEwan, is ... a book so good — so ingeniously designed, irreproachably high-minded and skillfully brought off — that it’s actually quite bad.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/books/review/Kirn-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

I'd been waiting for this review. Due to incredulous reactions, had stopped opining that McE's books were clever whirligigs, draped with perfect prose but essentially thought experiments.... not truly felt.

[polarscience]

01:57 PM on 09/30/2010

"Willfully young?" How does that work exactly?

[hcbuck]

03:25 PM on 09/29/2010

Remove the word EVER from the title of this.

Those reviews may be considered mean, but they are certainly not the meanest by far. I can not stand lists that only include content from, say, the previous five years, and they they add the word 'ever' to it. It makes the author (of the list) appear limited in their experiences.

Everything that is contained on this list is so very tame by comparison. I had a book that contained scathing book and play reviews, ranging from the 1800s until about the 1980. Some of the critiques were written by some of the most famous authors of that time, so the put-down was more sophisticated than the simple 'Stupid book, stupid author' that some would consider to be mean in current times.

[grange]

08:30 AM on 09/27/2010

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and the others in the 'Millenium' series are brilliant , I couldnt put them down. The films are great too. That reviewer is a fool.

[Scoutxx]

11:14 AM on 09/28/2010

I thought they were terrible. I don't mind bad writing so that didn't bother me, but the incredibly dull story telling, cliche characters, and trite plot made for a tough read. I knew exactly how it was going to play out, but I kept going because I was positive there was some twist coming. There wasn't. Just the obvious end to a standard mystery novel that's been done countless times before by better writers.

If ol' Stieg hadn't died, these books would've remained unknown, which is really what they deserve.

[Tony581]

10:42 PM on 10/02/2010

Just because you disliked the book, doesn't give you the right to be a sadistic monster. Why don't you go back to your worn copy of Middlemarch and leave us heathens alone.

[MolliBlum]

07:30 AM on 09/27/2010

Let's not forget Dorothy Parker's famous

"This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force."

[Behind the Tweed Curtain]

03:05 AM on 09/27/2010

The late, great web satirist Jon Swift used to post reviews on Amazon.com, usually of work by conservative or right-wing writers. He always began his reviews by saying "I have not actually read this book, but..."

These are the first few lines of his review of Right Turns: Unconventional Lessons from a Controversial Life by Michael Medved

A lonely man, January 19, 2006

I have not actually read this book but I feel very sorry for Mr. Medved. It must be difficult being a film critic who hates films and the people who make them and I wonder if he wouldn't have been happier in some other line of work.

[Existentialist]

10:38 PM on 09/26/2010

For mean and funny, it's hard to beat Christopher Hitchens's negative reviews. His reviews of books by Tom Clancy, Tom Wolfe and Norman Podhoretz in Hitchens's collection "Unacknowledged Legislation" are nastily entertaining enough to be read more than once. Especially the Podhoretz; Hitch marvelously eviscerates him.

[JJDDMM]

09:29 PM on 09/26/2010

The most notable mean review I can think of comes from Wolfgang Pauli's review of (Born, M., and P. Jordan, Elementary Quantum Mechanics. (Structure of Matter in Monograph, Vol. IX.) Berlin: Julius Springer 1930). After a review where he digs:

* One author's work habits: ("...the second volume, which will be written 'once he can afford the time and energy...'");

• The relevance of the material covered: ("the book, as a result of the inevitably partial picture that it creates of the theory, can be of any benefit whatsoever only to quite a small circle of readers");

• And another author's tendency to flog his accomplishments needlessly: ("The final chapter ... contains a brief foray into DIRAC’s theory of radioactive processes, in addition to trains of thought about fluctuation phenomena of radiation—which one author (P. JORDAN) has already taken the opportunity to expound upon several times.)"

He finishes with the review's one positive comment: "The production of the book in terms of print and paper is excellent."

[martyfrancom]

06:02 PM on 09/26/2010

I'm actually glad to read that someone (besides myself) hated The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo ... some of the worst, laugh out loud writing ever ... it's bad. (IMHO)

[yellowdoggie]

12:42 AM on 09/27/2010

I couldn't finish it. I don't even want to attempt the other two. Bad. Bad, bad, bad.

[martyfrancom]

01:51 AM on 09/27/2010

I agree ... and let's add just more bad, shall we? Cause it WAS bad, bad, bad, bad and bad. Some of the incredibly poor writing actually made me laugh out loud.

[TetraPetra]

04:40 PM on 10/03/2010

thank you! finally! it was one of those books i wanted so much to like. it was sort of that high school-y, mob mentality. i spent 200 pages trying to figure out what i was supposed to be getting! should have been called: the old guy with the painfully boring story about his niece.

[The-JuRK]

01:38 AM on 09/27/2010

And yet I see everyone everywhere reading these books. What gives?

[martyfrancom]

01:52 AM on 09/27/2010

Mindless literary followers I guess ... we see the same phenomenon with the amazingly horribly written Twilight series. Yet they try to call that "literature"! What an insult.

[Ken Katz]

09:29 AM on 09/26/2010

Do mean reviews only happen to "successful geniuses"? Best line I can remember occurred in review of Bob Dylan's Self Portrait album of "covers", totally unexpected and different with backup singers and a crooner's voice.
Greil Marcus said in Rolling Stone, I've said in the past that I would pay to hear Dylan breathe heavily, BUT not lightly.
Album now considered historic by some.

[RobinSeattle]

05:24 AM on 09/26/2010

Well, fortunately, book reviewers and readers tend to be a relatively stolid lot compared to classical music fans.

For example, when Stravinsky premiered his Rite of Spring ballet in Paris in 1913, here is what happened:

"The complex music and violent dance steps depicting fertility rites first drew catcalls and whistles from the crowd. At the start, the audience began to boo loudly. There were loud arguments in the audience between supporters and opponents of the work. These were soon followed by shouts and fistfights in the aisles. The unrest in the audience eventually degenerated into a riot. The Paris police arrived by intermission, but they restored only limited order. Chaos reigned for the remainder of the performance."

And then there was this incident in Boston :

"Stravinsky's unconventional major seventh chord in his arrangement of the Star-Spangled Banner led to an incident with the Boston police on January 15, 1944, but he was only warned that Massachusetts could impose a $100 fine any "rearrangement of the national anthem in whole or in part." he incident soon established itself as a myth in which Stravinsky was supposedly arrested for playing the music"

[Behind the Tweed Curtain]

02:18 AM on 09/27/2010

Thanks for those.