Overrated authors thread

!bookworms, which authors you find overrated? Which popular one's do you believe are absolute hacks?

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Szrotmistrz he/man Mosquitoes carry the Vaccine. 9mo ago #5956819

Carl Marx. You hear countless socialist and communists praise his greatest work, his manifesto.

And honestly, it's a dry read. Every paragraph seemingly rises to a crescendo that never comes, leaving a deep sense of unsatisfaction.

Not to mention the repetition of words that happens there, I know he wants to make a strong point at times through said repetition, but he insists on using proletariat even with the subject of the sentence is known, and he could just write "it".

Anyway 5.5/10. Big mid. If this is his best work, i have no doubts he gets waaaay too much praise.

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FrozenChosin they/them (north) korean war veteran Szrotmistrz 9mo ago #5957023

No one considers The Communist Manifesto as his best work, and it's way over-rated (and more importantly outdated) as an introductory text to Marxism. If you want an intro text, read The Principles of Communism by Frederich Engels, it's only a 15 minute read. I personally think Engels is a better writer than Marx.

Marx's greatest work is indisputably Das Kapital, it's his Magnum Opus, but it is not intended to be easy for beginners and will be very long and dry. The third volume isn't complete. If you want something more short form, The Civil War in France and The German Ideology are good texts.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm

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Szrotmistrz he/man Mosquitoes carry the Vaccine. FrozenChosin 9mo ago #5957321

I was meming, but your comment was actually educational. For some reason I was conflating Manifesto and Das Kapital all this time, when they are two separate works.

I hope never to make this mistake again.

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borisjohnsonworshipper boris/boris Boris Johnson's #1 Fan Szrotmistrz 9mo ago #5957827

Marx's greatest literary work is undoubtedly 'Scorpion and Felix,' which is basically what would happen if a dramatard read too much Hegel.

"Clearly on the moon, on the moon lie the moonstones, falseness in the breast of women, sand in the sea and mountains o, the earth," answered a man who knocked on my door, without waiting for me to ask him in.

I quickly pushed my papers to one side, said that I was very glad not to have made his acquaintance before, since I thus had the pleasure of making it now, that in his teaching there was great wisdom, that all my doubts were stilled by his words; but the only thing was that however fast I spoke, he spoke still faster, hissing sounds poured forth from between his teeth, and the whole man, as I perceived with a shudder on closer perusal and inspection, appeared a shrivelled lizard, nothing but a lizard, that had crawled out of crumbling masonry.

Oh, vain is all our striving, our yearning is folly, until we have determined which is right and left, for he will place the goats on the left hand, and the sheep on the right...

So define for me which is right and left, and the whole riddle of creation is solved, Acheronta movebo, I shall deduce for you exactly on which side your soul will come to stand, from which I shall further infer which step you are standing on now; for that primal relation would appear to be measurable with the help of the Lord's definition of where you stand, but your present position can be judged by the thickness of your skull. I am dizzy -- if a Mephistopheles appeared I should be Faust, for clearly each and every one of us is a Faust, as we do not know which is the right side and which the left; our life is therefore a circus, we run round, try to find sides, till we fall down on the sand and the gladiator, Life, slays us. We need a new saviour, for -- you rob me of slumber, tormenting thought, you rob me of my health, you are killing me -- we cannot distinguish the left side from the right, we do not know where they lie----

The gap, which no human creature might occupy, was not filled by Banquo's ghost but by Merten's dog, which had every day to say grace at table, for Merten, who cultivated Humaniora, maintained that his Boniface -- that was the dog's name -- was one and the same person as St. Boniface, the apostle of Germany, quoting in proof a passage in which the latter announces that he is a barking dog (see Epist. 105, p. 145, ed. Seraria).