Many writers, filmmakers, chefs, musicians, and other artisans have a love/hate relationship with the critics. Get a rave review, and you're well on your way to bestseller-land. Have a critic tear your new album apart, and your sales hit the floor. Critics have an awful lot of power.
Alas, they do not always get it right. Here's are some of the best goofs:
-- Critic Samuel Pepys called William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, "The most stupid ridiculous play that I ever saw in my life." One of the bard's most popular works, the play has been read and performed by millions of people over the past few centuries. Whoopsy.
-- Another critic, after reading the classic Madame Bovary said of the author, "Monsieur Flaubert is not a writer." In a 2007 poll of contemporary authors, Madame Bovary was chosen as one of the two greatest novels ever written.
-- In the 1870s, the Odessa Courier called Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina "Sentimental Rubbish." It has since been made into a movie over a dozen times, was declared "flawless" by Dostoevsky, and made publishers a nice bundle when Oprah included it in her Book Club. Too bad Leo couldn't enjoy his own success.
-- Finally, Catch-22, written by Joseph Heller was denounced by critic Whitey Balliett of the New Yorker, who said, "Heller wallows in his own laughter... and the sort of antic behavior the children fall into when they know they are losing our attention." Yet, the book has had such an impact on popular culture that even people who have never read the book know that the phrase "catch-22" means "a no-win situation." Can't beat that.
I guess everyone has an off day.
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