Donis here, Dear Readers. Today I'm posting a "Tip of The Week" from wildly prolific writer and my friend, Dan Baldwin, Dan is the author of westerns, mysteries, thrillers, short story collections and books on the paranormal. He is the winner of numerous local, regional, and national awards for writing and directing film and video projects, and if anybody knows what he's talking about, it's Dan. His weekly writing tips are always spot on and fun to read, and when I received this one, I asked his permission to repost it here. If you'd like to check Dan out, and maybe receive his Tips email yourself, do yourself a favor and click on https://danbaldwin.com
Do you get discouraged when you receive a bad review for the work you toiled so diligently on? Well, don't! A bad review tells you more about the reviewer than about your work. And Dan has the proof!
Concerning Bad Reviews….
by Dan Baldwin
Catcher in the Rye
"The book as a whole is disappointing, and not merely because it is a reworking of a theme that one begins to suspect must obsess the author. Holden Caulfield, the main character who tells his own story, is an extraordinary portrait, but there is too much of him.
In the course of 277 pages, the reader wearies of [his] explicitness, repetition and adolescence, exactly as one would weary of Holden himself. And this reader at least suffered from an irritated feeling that Holden was not quite so sensitive and perceptive as he, and his creator, thought he was."
Tropic of Cancer
"Miller stands under his Paris streetlamp, defiantly but genially drunk, trolling his catch mixed of beauty and banality and recurrent bawdry-a little pathetic because he thinks he is a discoverer and doesn't realize that he is only a tourist on a well-marked tour. We see him at last as an appealingly zestful, voracious, talented hick."
The Great Gatsby
“This story is obviously unimportant and, though, as I shall show, it has its place in the Fitzgerald canon, it is certainly not to be put on the same shelf with, say, This Side of Paradise. What ails it, fundamentally, is the plain fact that it is simply a story -- that Fitzgerald seems to be far more interested in maintaining its suspense than in getting under the skins of its people."
For Whom the Bell Tolls
"A master of the concentrated short story, Hemingway is less sure in his grasp of the form of the elaborated novel. The shape of For Whom the Bell Tolls is sometimes slack and sometimes bulging. It is certainly quite a little too long."
To Kill a Mockingbird
"Miss Lee's problem has been to tell the story she wants to tell and yet to stay within the consciousness of a child, and she hasn't consistently solved it."
O Pioneers!
"Miss Willa S. Cather in O Pioneers (O title!!) is neither a skilled storyteller nor the least bit of an artist."
Slaughterhouse Five
"The short, flat sentences of which the novel is composed convey shock and despair better than an array of facts or effusive mourning. Still, deliberate simplicity is as hazardous as the grand style, and Vonnegut occasionally skids into fatuousness..."
Brave New World
"Mr. Huxley has the jitters. Looking back over his career one can see that he has always had them, in varying degrees... [he] rushes headlong into the great pamphleteering movement. [Brave New World] is a lugubrious and heavy-handed piece of propaganda.”
Lolita
“Lolita then, is undeniably news in the world of books. Unfortunately, it is bad news. There are two equally serious reasons why it isn't worth any adult reader's attention. The first is that it is dull, dull, dull in a pretentious, florid and archly fatuous fashion. The second is that it is repulsive...”
And just for good measure, consider the following:
The Wizard of Oz
“It has dwarfs, music, Technicolor, freak characters, and Judy Garland. It can't be expected to have a sense of humor as well, and as for the light touch of fantasy, it weighs like a pound of fruitcake soaking wet."
Titanic
“James Cameron has never been known for his dialogue, but Titanic carries some stinkers that wouldn't make the final draft of a Days of Our Lives script."
Lawrence of Arabia
“Seldom has so little been said in so many words."
Citizen Kane
“You’ve heard a lot about this picture and I see by the ads that some experts think it ‘the greatest movie ever made, I don’t… It’s different. In fact, it’s bizarre enough to become a museum piece. But its sacrifice of simplicity to eccentricity robs it of distinction and general entertainment value.”
Need I say more?
