From “Where the Wild Things Are” to “Ulysses”…

by Gene Taft

I was so excited when I heard about Panned Books Week. I take quite a bit of perverse pleasure in reading bad reviews of what are now considered classic books.

Here are some of my favorites:

“[A] pointless and confusing story.” Publishers Weekly on “Where the Wild Things Are” by Maurice Sendak

“It is no discredit to Walt Whitman that he wrote ‘Leaves of Grass,’ only that he did not burn it afterwards.” – The Atlantic on “Leaves of Grass” by Walt Whitman

“At a conservative estimate, one million dollars will be spent by American readers for this book. They will get for their money 34 pages of permanent value. These 34 pages tell of a massacre happening in a little Spanish town in the early days of the Civil War…Mr. Hemingway: please publish the massacre scene separately, and then forget ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls;’ please leave stories of the Spanish Civil War to Malraux…” — Commonweal on “For Whom the Bell Tolls” by Ernest Hemingway

“This is a tough book to read unless you understand several languages and are on LSD. I may have thirty or forty more years to live so maybe I’ll get through it.” — Amazon 1 Star Customer review of “Ulysses” by James Joyce

What’s that you say? It’s not Panned Books Week, it’s Banned Books Week!

Well that’s not funny at all. No books should be banned. It’s unConstitutional!!!

Committee member Gene Taft owns and operates GT/PR, a greater Washington, D.C., based public relations firm specializing in the promotion of books and authors. Prior to starting his own company in 2006, Gene spent 15 years in New York City working in-house for publishers ranging from Columbia University Press and The Overlook Press to The Free Press at Simon & Schuster and Viking/Penguin. His last position in NYC was Vice President, Assistant Publisher and Director of Publicity at PublicAffairs, a member of the Perseus Books Group.