‘Overrated’ should be banished from any grown-up lexicon. Except when I use it

A personal anecdote first. Well over a decade ago, word got back to me that someone else in the scribbling business thought I was “overrated”. I could hardly have been happier. This wasn’t one of those “well, if that fraud thinks X is bad then X must be terrific” situations. I quite admired the bloke. What I drew from the gossip was that, to my surprise, other people “rated” me. I was like Gustav Mahler or Vincent Van Gogh or Ingmar Bergman. Those sorts of fellows. An admired modern great.

Even if it weren’t a backhanded compliment, “overrated” would still deserve banishment from any grown-up lexicon. It’s a cheap dig, too-often brandished to establish the user’s reputation as a brave tribune of independent thinking. All these snoots are pulling the wool over your eyes about F Scott Fitzgerald or Lenny Bruce. I am here to yell “we can see your mickey” at the chilblained emperor. Now allow me to take a deep slug from the elixir of self-satisfaction.

What brings this on? Well, there is always something. Last week the Guardian wondered if “good posture” was overrated. The New York Times fretted that “following your work passion” might be overrated.

A few months back reliable old Buzzfeed came up with the 21 “most overrated movies in the history of cinema”. You hardly need to be told that the word “history” was used in its most limited sense. Only one title emerged before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Avatar, a film plenty of people hate, was at No 1. Nick Cassavetes’ The Notebook – recipient of a rotten splat on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes – made it in at No 2. Somehow or other, Water for Elephants, an indifferently reviewed film that was not a big hit, is, we learn, sufficiently celebrated to deserve deflation. What exactly are the rules here?

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It feels as if we are all now living in a famous scene from Woody Allen’s Manhattan. The viewer is in little doubt that, though the characters have their virtues, we are expected to here find them insufferable

It is, however, in the field of literature that the online iconoclasts are at their busiest. Scarcely a week goes by without some publication telling us Charles Dickens is overrated. Jane Austen is so often toppled from her pedestal she must be in a permanent state of postmortem concussion. It feels as if one whole wing of digital media is devoted to avenging the frustration felt by future content creators in their bored secondary-school years. The people at Sparks Notes are here to explain you should read, of all things, The Joy Luck Club instead of The Great Gatsby – a book “short on emotional resonance”. JD Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye appeared on both that list and a recent one on Book Riot that has been generating enormous ferment over the past seven days.

As is so often the case with such things, there is a whiff of social-justice evangelism about the entries. Krystal Marquis’s YA title The Davenports, concerning well-off African-Americans in early-20th-century America, is preferred to Edith Wharton’s “boring as sin” The Age of Innocence. The Catcher in the Rye is “dated”. Pride and Prejudice is “not all that compelling”. All are, of course, overrated.

It feels as if we are all now living in a famous scene from Woody Allen’s Manhattan. Strolling through monochrome New York after visiting an art gallery, Diane Keaton’s character announces that she and her boyfriend, both pointedly up themselves, have devised an imaginary “Academy of the Overrated” into which they position all the geniuses mentioned in the opening paragraphs of this column: Bergman, Mahler, Fitzgerald, Van Gogh. “Lenny Bruce. We can’t forget Lenny Bruce, now, can we?” Keaton drones with imperial smugness. The viewer is in little doubt that, though the characters have their virtues, we are expected to here find them insufferable.

A quick search tells me that, not so long ago, writing in these pages, I waved “overrated” at the entire city of Paris

Our current Academy of the Overrated is, however, considerably less lofty in its ambitions than that in Allen’s film. It snorts at venerability. It regards recency as a virtue in itself. Any hint of linguistic density is read as one part of a plot to bore and frustrate nimble young minds. “It was perfectly integrated, and it had a marvellous kind of negative capability,” Keaton’s character says elsewhere of a preferred alternative. You don’t get that class of high-end baloney in websites recommending A Kingdom of Faeries and Thorns over A Tale of Two Cities.

By all means, topple the pillars supporting the literary establishment, but be aware any such project requires imagination and application. Driving past that imagined edifice yelling “overrated!” will deliver only short-term satisfaction (if that). It is a largely useless word that asks more questions than it answers.

Except when I use it. A quick search tells me that, writing in these pages not so long ago, I waved “overrated” at the entire city of Paris. Must I take that back?

Oh all right. Here’s to strong opinions, weakly held.