J. Robert Lennon writes:
At the moment I [Lennon] am simultaneously working on two magazine articles, each requiring me to assess not just a book, but (briefly) a writer’s entire career. The writers in question are both prominent, both widely published, read, and appreciated. And yet neither, I think, enjoys a full appreciation of their career–its real scope, with all its twists and turns, its eccentricities intact.
In one case, the writer had one smash hit, and one notorious book everyone hates. In the other, the writer has somehow become known as the author of one really serious book that gets taught a lot in college classes, and a bunch of other stuff generally thought to be a little bit frivolous. But close readings of each (hell, not even that close) reveals these reputations to be woefully inadequate. Both writers are much more interesting than their hits and bombs would suggest.
This naturally got me thinking about statisticians. Some statisticians are famous (within the statistics world) without having made any real contributions (as far as I can tell). And then there are the unappreciated (such as the psychometrician T. L. Kelley) and the one-hit wonders (Wilcoxon?)
I was also curious who Lennon’s subjects are. Feel free to place your guesses below. I’ll send a free book to the first person who guesses both authors correctly (if you do it before Lennon announces it himself).
My attempts to cheat by googling were completely and humiliatingly thwarted—I couldn't come up with search terms that didn't result in 45 pages of Twilight. And that includes "one serious book."
So my admittedly weak guesses are Joyce and Melville. For Joyce, I'm assuming the pornography trial helped sales of Ulysses, and everyone makes fun of Finnegan's Wake. For the second I briefly considered Mary Shelley and Huxley (I was a little thrown by "college"), but I'm going to go with Moby Dick as the Work of Great Import, and Typee, Omoo, Billy Budd, etc., and all the short stories as the frippery that turn out to be Also Of Quality.
I'll guess Harold Brodkey & Joseph Heller, but I'm not sure that Brodkey had a "smash hit" or that Catch 22 is a "really serious book."
Ellison, Fitzgerald.
"In one case, the writer had one smash hit, and one notorious book everyone hates."
My guess: Robert Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is the hit)
"one really serious book that gets taught a lot in college classes, and a bunch of … frivolous"
I dunno. Mailer?
Here are a few more (all 20th Century):
Henry Miller
William S. Burroughs
Most of the Beats
Ken Kesey
Tom Robbins
Mario Puzo
Booth Tarkington
James Baldwin
Nelson Algren
James T. Farrell (count the Lonigan trilogy as one book)
If someone hadn't gotten to them first, I would have put Heller and Ellison at the top.
Wild guess: Amitav Ghosh and Margaret Atwood
I'd add Walker Percy and Alice Walker to Mark's list.
Joseph Heller and Bret Easton Ellis
Is Bayes a one hit wonder?
Regarding the authors: My guess for the first is Bret Easton Ellis – but I don't know how interesting his life is. Also, both these sound like an author who has been around for a long time, and Ellis isn't all that old. (Well, he's only slightly older than me, so he can't be). Lunar Park seemed to reflect his life at the time as well, so maybe knowing about his life helps to understand the book. (The author is a minor character in the book, who is [IIRC] not popular.)
I like the idea of Heller too for the second – he didn't write many books, but I think his life was interesting, and the books are related to what he was doing in his life – Catch 22 was about a bombardier in WWII, and Heller was a bombardier in WWII, the second book [Something Happened] was about someone who worked in advertising, and Heller worked in advertising, and the third [Good as Gold] was about a professor of English – Heller taught in university.
One should be
JD Salinger
The other I don't know. (Will I win half book?)
I agree with Bret Easton Ellis for the first, and will go with Thomas Pynchon for the second. At one time Gravity's Rainbow was regarded as a really serious book. I don't know how its reputation has held up, but maybe it still is.
@Mark Palko
Are you putting James Baldwin on the list as a candidate for the second article? While he is admittedly a better essayist than novelist, I would hardly call any of his novels frivolous. If you're nominating for the first hinted-at author, which exactly are you terming "notorious"?
I should clarify that Tony said Heller before me – so that wasn't my idea. But Seth's comment wasn't there when I typed mine. But he beat me to the prize anyway, in the unlikely event we're right.
Now I've thought about it, I'm much more convinced by Heller than Ellis though.
Yes, Bret Easton Ellis's "American Psycho" would seem the most likely for the book everybody hates.
The other sounds like Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby.
Yes, Ellis for the hit/hated. Maybe Capote for the other, although I got the impression that the writers are still alive. In Cold Blood is probably taught in college, and much of his other work might seem frivolous, despite his own view of it.
I'd add Robert Penn Warren to the list of one-hit wonders (can you name any of his other novels?), but his other books are not "frivolous."
Oh, it can't be Heller–I've tried to read some of his other books. And they indicate that he is more boring than his hits would suggest.
"But close readings of each (hell, not even that close) reveals these reputations to be woefully inadequate. Both writers are much more interesting than their hits and bombs would suggest."
My English major days are long behind me so I don't what professors are talking up these days, but I seem to recall that Mountain got most of the attention. Baldwin would also suffer since so much of his best work was essays. I don't recall that genre getting as much respect as it deserved.
By the same token, I could see academics dismissing Capote's post-Cold Blood nonfiction. I think they'd be mistaken (if you can find a wrong word in Music for Chameleons I will buy you the book), but the topic here is works that have been wrongly dismissed.
ps I had forgotten the offer of the free book when I wrote my list or I would have limited myself to two. Anything more than that would be cheating.
One guess for the famous/infamous pair:
In Cold Blood/Answered Prayers
I've read a lot of Capote and though I like Cold Blood it's not my favorite. I always thought its reputation depended on the ground it broke, not on how well it was written.
No opinion on Prayers. Haven't read it.
For serious/frivolous:
Goerge Apley/Mr. Moto
(OK, that one is a bit of a long shot)
Andrew – are you going to give an opinion about what you consider to be better answers? Or present your own alternatives?
Jeremy:
I have no idea. But Maxine Hong Kingston is my dark horse for #2.
FYI: "As for these two, they are still writing–quite vigorously, in fact–which complicates things even further. They are moving targets."
Has anyone mentioned Evelyn Waugh yet? He certainly qualifies for the one serious book category.
I don't understand the comment about Evelyn Waugh. He wrote at least three of the greatest comic novels ever written, and an excellent serious WWII trilogy
Just to underline what Alex F underlined: the authors in question are still writing. Evelyn Waugh is not.
My guess would be John Irving for the author of one serious book (The Cider House Rules) and a bunch of other stuff, and my other guess would be Charles Frazier, given how fantastic Cold Mountain was against Thirteen Moons.
My runners up would be Atwood for the serious/frivolous and Pynchon with the love/hate.
I'm very curious to see the answers…
I keeping stepping on people's toes here, but at the risk a belabouring, we are talking about perceived quality here and Brideshead is often seen as being Waugh's "great book," with the rest of his work being explicitly or implicitly dismissed as minor.
I'm more of a Wodehouse man myself, and I haven't read much Waugh recently so I really don't have a dog in this fight, but when I was in school Brideshead was the book everyone had to read and judging from this quote from a recent New Republic, it still seems to be the book that gets the most respect:
When you are an inarguably excellent novelist of the mid-twentieth century, with a solid trans-Atlantic reputation among critics and readers and steady paychecks from new books and film rights and journalistic commissions, there seems to come a decisive moment when you buckle down to write your Great Book, and the outcome either makes or breaks you. In either case, the experience appears to be harrowing. While writing Brideshead Rivisited, according to Martin Stannard’s biography, Evelyn Waugh took bromide and chloral at night to sleep and drummed out thousands of words a day in a five-month sprint, complaining to his agent that his “Magnum Opus is turning into a jeroboam.” But Waugh at least achieved his Great Book. What happens to those authors who approach the threshold but do not quite cross it?
http://www.tnr.com/book/review/the-goal-was-great…
well try "Decline and Fall", "Scoop", or "Black Mischief", and that's just for starters.
He went on taking bromal and chloride long after "Brideshead" was written, and chronicled the results in "The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold"
A classical one-hit wonder in Stats is Hastings of Metropolis-Hastings fame. His "one-timeness" seemed to have been inherited by his student Peskun. Both were associated with universities in Toronto. See also the page build by Jeff Rosenthal at
http://www.probability.ca/hastings/
Radu: Interesting point. I assume that the "Hastings" variant of the Metropolis algorithm–allowing asymmetric jumping rules–was already known in physics, though, no?
So Hastings was one of Fraser's students …
Fraser could be accussed of inspiring others beyond their capacities (some have actually admitted that)
Disappointed my recent post of his current work drew not even one hit!
http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/ar…
It was presented recently http://fisher.utstat.toronto.edu/dfraser/document…
Art Dempster and others raised concerns about "being too certain about modeling assumptions which are always somewhat wrong" but taking the assumptions as is – there did not seem to be any criticisms.
Maybe blogging is not the right venue for discussing work that raises "confidence issues"?
K?
Andrew, I am not 100% sure. Maybe the physics folklore at the time was allowing for asymmetric proposals. I am not sure anything was published before Hastings (1970) though.
Author #1 is Bret Easton Ellis. I still don't know who author #2 is.