Unread bestseller
Posted by Masakim on February 11, 2003
In Reply to: Unread bestseller posted by ESC on February 11, 2003
: : : : From Word Spy (2/11/03:
: : : : unread bestseller n.
: : : : A book that many people purchase but few read in its entirety.
: : : : Example Citation
: : : : -------
:
: : : There's the National Book Critics Circle Awards, another nice "high-culture"
opportunity for Jonathan Franzen, author of jumbo unread bestseller The Corrections.
:
: : : --Alexandra Jacobs, "The Eight-Day Week," New York Observer,
: : : :
March 11, 2002
: : : : Backgrounder
: : : : -------
:
: : : Here's my all-time Top 10 unread bestsellers list:
: : : : 1. The Bible
:
: : : 2. A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking
: : : : 3. The Satanic Verses,
Salman Rushdie
: : : : 4. The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco
: : : : 5. The
Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom
: : : : 6. Doctor Zhivago, Boris
Pasternak
: : : : 7. Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
: : : : 8. The Bell
Curve, Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein
: : : : 9. The End of History,
Francis Fukuyama
: : : : 10. Beowulf, Seamus Heaney (trans.)
: : : : Earliest
Citation
: : : : -------
: : : : A 500-page novel
set in a 14th-century monastery and written by an Italian professor of semiotics
is hardly the stuff of conventional best sellers. But "The Name of the Rose,"
by Umberto Eco, has proven to be just that. ...
: : : : A few cynical observers
suspect that snob appeal has played a considerable role in the book's rise. Says
Howard Kaminsky, president of Warner Books, which bought the paperback rights
for $550,000: "Every year there is one great unread best seller. A lot of people
: : : : who will buy the book will never read it." It serves, he has said,
as a "passport" to intellectual respectability. "It doesn't hurt to be seen carrying
a copy at the Museum of Modern Art. It hints you've got
: : : : something
more in your mind than getting picked up."
: : : : --Alexandre Still, "Miracle
of the Rose," Newsweek, September 26, 1983
: : : : For more Word Spy words,
see the Word Spy Archives:
: : : : www.wordspy.com
: : : I slogged all the way through Rose, but Greavity's Rainbow? I'd make that Number One.
: : I absolutely adore this term. Thanks :)
: I just stack them up with all the "classics" I was suppose to read in college. Wasn't there a quote (Oscar Wilde?) defining classics as books we were supposed to read, but didn't?
"Classic."
A book which people praise and don't read. (Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's New
Calendar," _Following the Equator_, 1897)
A classic is something that everybody
wants to have read and nobody wants to read. (Mark Twain, "The Disappearance of
Literature," [speach] November 20, 1900)
- A classic
ESC 02/12/03
- Classic/groaner S. Ryan 02/12/03