I have attempted to write a book several, no dozens of times and thrown away every single attempt. To me I sound trite and prissy, I don’t flow and the story I am trying to tell feels contrived rather than a believable fantasy.
Fortunately it seems I am not the only one and there are many well known published books hated by their authors that are adored by we readers. Perhaps it is normal for a writer to hate their own words? Whatever the case here are some well known books that are hated by their authors.
Kurt Vonnegut – Slapstick
Kurt appears to be his own harshest critic, in his book Palm Sunday Kurt grades many of his own worls and while he gave Slaughterhouse 5 an A+ he also gave several of his works including Happy Birthday Wanda June and Slapstick Ds
Annie Proulx – Brokeback Mountain
Annie is quite vociferous in expressing her regret at ever writing the short story series Brokeback Mountain; although happy with her work she is still inundated with fanfiction smut whereby the wannabe authors ‘fix her literary mistake’ in various pornographic manners.
Ian Fleming – The Spy Who Loved Me
Don’t worry, the Bond books as a whole are not what Fleming loathes but be warned it is a Bond novel; apparently Fleming decided to try a new tack with the famous spy and The Spy Who Loved Me was born. In it Bond does not even appear until around halfway through the book and the heroine Vivienne Michel is the main protagonist. Despite requesting the book be withdrawn from sale the book reappeared after his death.
Anthony Burgess – A Clockwork Orange
Yes, Burgess hates A Clockwork Orange; when the cult film was released the subsequent success of the hyper violent novel eclipsed his other works and to his horror spawned a glut of copycats who would imitate the characters in his book not only style but also in crime. These caused Burgess to try and distance himself from the book with him even going so far as to describe the iconic novel as being merely a ‘minor work’.
A.A. Milne – Winnie the Pooh
What? Winnie the Pooh’s author? Sadly yes, poor old Pooh ruined Milne’s chances at ever returning to his former career as the author of ‘proper’ adult fiction and he grew to loathe the honey loving teddy bear.
Franz Kafka – Metamorphosis
Renowned for destroying many of his unpublished works Kafka begged his friend Max Brod, to destroy everything he had ever written except for a few selected pieces just a few years before his death, Brod of course declined telling Kafka he must be mad if he thought Brod would do such a thing and despite again begging his friend to destroy all his works Kafka’s wishes remained unfulfilled and we can still read his books today.
Stephen King – Rage
King’s short story Rage, written under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman is unfortunately the book cited as being the inspiration for several high school shootings. Eventually King could no longer qualify its continued publication and asked for it to be left to fall out of print. The book is now the Holy Grail of all Constant Readers’ collections and can fetch several hundreds of pounds for a copy.
Proof positive that not even the giants of the literary world are always happy with their art and regret that their names will always be linked to something they wish would just disappear and on that note, I think I might give writing another go.
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