Great Put Downs

[Wifetheif]

After listening to a podcast on bad books where the moderator wished he had three middle fingers so he could flash them all at the author simultaneously. I thought is might be fun to start a literary Put Downs thread. What recent smack downs on bad verbiage have you heard? They can be classical ones or those picked up in conversation or surfing the web. There certainly are books I've read that deserved the three middle finger treatment. What other reactions have bad books inspired?

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Reading 'Ready Player One' reviews again? : P

 

[SimonDoom]

The best and funniest work of literary criticism, IMO, was Mark Twain's famous essay Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses. It's easy to find free online, since it's now in the public domain. Twain savages Cooper's work in almost every way. Here's one paragraph from his essay:

Cooper's gift in the way of invention was not a rich endowment; but such as it was he liked to work it, he was pleased with the effects, and indeed he did some quite sweet things with it. In his little box of stage properties he kept six or eight cunning devices, tricks, artifices for his savages and woodsmen to deceive and circumvent each other with, and he was never so happy as when he was working these innocent things and seeing them go. A favorite one was to make a moccasined person tread in the tracks of the moccasined enemy, and thus hide his own trail. Cooper wore out barrels and barrels of moccasins in working that trick. Another stage-property that he pulled out of his box pretty frequently was his broken twig. He prized his broken twig above all the rest of his effects, and worked it the hardest. It is a restful chapter in any book of his when somebody doesn't step on a dry twig and alarm all the reds and whites for two hundred yards around. Every time a Cooper person is in peril, and absolute silence is worth four dollars a minute, he is sure to step on a dry twig. There may be a hundred handier things to step on, but that wouldn't satisfy Cooper. Cooper requires him to turn out and find a dry twig; and if he can't do it, go and borrow one. In fact, the Leather Stocking Series ought to have been called the Broken Twig Series.

 

[SimonDoom]

Another passage from Twain's vicious put-down of James Fenimore Cooper, this time regarding his dialogue:

Cooper was certainly not a master in the construction of dialogue. Inaccurate observation defeated him here as it defeated him in so many other enterprises of his. He even failed to notice that the man who talks corrupt English six days in the week must and will talk it on the seventh, and can't help himself. In the Deerslayer story he lets Deerslayer talk the showiest kind of book-talk sometimes, and at other times the basest of base dialects. For instance, when some one asks him if he has a sweetheart, and if so, where she abides, this is his majestic answer:

“'She's in the forest-hanging from the boughs of the trees, in
a soft rain—in the dew on the open grass—the clouds that
float about in the blue heavens—the birds that sing in the
woods—the sweet springs where I slake my thirst—and in all
the other glorious gifts that come from God's Providence!'”

And he preceded that, a little before, with this:

“'It consarns me as all things that touches a fri'nd consarns a
fri'nd.'”

And this is another of his remarks:

“'If I was Injin born, now, I might tell of this, or carry in
the scalp and boast of the expl'ite afore the whole tribe; or
if my inimy had only been a bear'”—and so on.

 

[Cagivagurl]

As You Like It
By William Shakespeare
'I desire that we be better strangers.'

 

[SimonDoom]

Greatest movie put down, from Casablanca:

Ugarte: You despise me, don't you?
Rick: If I gave you any thought, I probably would.

 

[Flybynite1892]

There's a line in "Desperation" by Stephen King where a character uses bad grammar and the main character thinks "well, they are a Dean Koontz fan so..."

 

[Kasumi_Lee]

Another Mark Twain put-down, this time reviewing the Book of Mormon:

"It is chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle — keeping awake while he did it was, at any rate."

 

[StillStunned]

"We look forward keenly to the appearance of their last work."
(On 1066 And All That)

 

[Cagivagurl]

"By being here, you are depriving a village somewhere of an idiot."

 

[12oclocktales]

"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go." Oscar Wilde

 

[yowser]

Reputed exchange between the 4th Earl of Sandwich (d. 1792) and Samuel Foote

Earl: You, sir, will certainly either die upon the gallows or of the pox.

Foote: That depends, sir, upon whether I embrace your principles or your mistress.

 

[AlexBailey]

It’s a challenge to come up with a comparison that will insult you.

 

[StillStunned]

Pretty much the whole episode "Ink and Incapability" of Blackadder the Third consists of literary put-downs.

My favourite line from the episode isn't a put-down, but it's still hilarious.
Blackadder: "I believe, Sir, that [Doctor Samuel Jonson] is trying to tell you that he is happy because he has finished his book. Apparently it has taken him ten years."
Prince George: "Well, I'm a slow reader myself."

 

[Britva415]

"Your mother has three middle fingers"

 

[alohadave]

This was actually said to me in person: "I'd slap you but shit splatters."

The store worker who was stocking nearby snickered at that.

 

[lovecraft68]

There's a line in "Desperation" by Stephen King where a character uses bad grammar and the main character thinks "well, they are a Dean Koontz fan so..."

Desperation made me quit on King, just pure trash.

 

[SyleusSnow]

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

Attributed to Dorothy Parker commenting on Ayn Rand's execrable Atlas Shrugged. Sounds like Parker, but it probably wasn't.

 

[Rob_Royale]

There's a line in "Desperation" by Stephen King where a character uses bad grammar and the main character thinks "well, they are a Dean Koontz fan so..."

Koontz was one of the two writers I sent a poor critique to. On his website, I sent a message regarding his poor ability to end a story.

Your endings are ejaculation without orgasm.

 

[SimonDoom]

Winston Churchill, master of the put down:

Lady Astor: Winston, if you were my husband I would put poison in your coffee.
Churchill: Nancy, if I were your husband I would drink it.

President Truman, commenting on Clement Atlee: "He seems a modest sort of fellow."
Churchill: He has much to be modest about.

Churchill, on DeGaulle: "What can you do with a man who looks like a female llama surprised while bathing?"

Bessie Braddock: "Winston, you are drunk."
Churchill: "My dear, you are ugly, but tomorrow I will be sober and you will still be ugly."

 

[jehoram]

Then there's Groucho Marx:
"I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception."

 

[jehoram]

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

Attributed to Dorothy Parker commenting on Ayn Rand's execrable Atlas Shrugged. Sounds like Parker, but it probably wasn't.

You're right. It wasn't.
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/26/great-force/

 

[SimonDoom]

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

Attributed to Dorothy Parker commenting on Ayn Rand's execrable Atlas Shrugged. Sounds like Parker, but it probably wasn't.

If you're looking for an authentic and equally savage review of that book, you can't do better than Whittaker Chambers's review of it in the National Review: https://whittakerchambers.org/articles/nr/bigsister/.

Personally, I think it goes a little too far. Part of the problem with reading Ayn Rand is almost everyone comes to her books predisposed to think one way or another about her. If you don't take the politics and philosophy too seriously and look at it instead as a unique and somewhat bizarro blend of speculative fiction and hardboiled mid-20th century mystery story, it's entertaining in its own way for the first 2/3 of it, until the mystery is revealed (hint, the mystery concerns the oft-repeated question in the novel, "Who is John Galt?"). Then it bogs down.

 

[SyleusSnow]

Winston Churchill, master of the put down:

Lady Astor: Winston, if you were my husband I would put poison in your coffee.
Churchill: Nancy, if I were your husband I would drink it.

President Truman, commenting on Clement Atlee: "He seems a modest sort of fellow."
Churchill: He has much to be modest about.

Churchill, on DeGaulle: "What can you do with a man who looks like a female llama surprised while bathing?"

Bessie Braddock: "Winston, you are drunk."
Churchill: "My dear, you are ugly, but tomorrow I will be sober and you will still be ugly."

Heh... Churchill was a witty fellow. George Bernard Shaw is said to have sent Churchill two tickets to a performance of either "Pygmalion" or "Saint Joan" with this note:

"I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend—if you have one."

Churchill's reply:

"Impossible to be present for the first performance. Will attend the second—if there is one."

 

[TarnishedPenny]

His speeches leave the impression of an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea. Sometimes these meandering words would actually capture a struggling thought and bear it triumphantly a prisoner in their midst until it died of servitude and overwork. Senator William McAdoo, speaking of Warren Harding

A shiver looking for a spine to run up. Harold Wilson, speaking of Edward Heath

The only man who has run away from the circus to become an accountant. Edward Pearce, speaking of John Major