Working today on a spot using reviews (only the raves of course) of our shows to convince a chronically over-entertained and distracted public to make room for even more in their digitally super saturated lives. Got me to wondering about poor old Herman and how he struggled to find an audience for his under appreciated efforts in a world (so different from today) far less crowded with entertainment options, but apparently teeming (not so different from today) with those quick and eager to find fault in their betters.
When the reviews for Moby Dick rolled in--The London Morning Chronicle said it was “sheer, moonstruck lunacy” And the Southern Quarterly Review said the book was “Sad stuff, dull and dreary, or ridiculous . . . his Mad Captain is a monstrous bore.”
He got some raves too, but for each of those, there were two of these.
“Mr. Melville has to thank himself only if his horrors and his heroics are flung aside by the general reader, as so much trash belonging to the worst school of Bedlam literature “--Henry F. Chorley, in London Athenaeum, October 25 1851
Thrice unlucky Herman Melville!... should he be to maintain the fame he so rapidly acquired, and not waste his strength on such purposeless and unequal doings as these rambling volumes about spermaceti whales. --London Literary Gazette, December 6 1851
Wonder what Abe thought after delivering The Gettysburg Address when The Chicago Times said, “The cheeks of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat, and dish-watery utterances.”
The Graduate… or to be more precise, Dustin Hoffman came under fire when Films in Review said, “... a genuinely funny comedy which succeeds despite an uninteresting and untalented actor in the title role.”
The National Gallery in London orgainzed the first major post-war Picasso show in England
and one newspaper . . . damned his art as the work of the devil, dismissed piggy-nosed portraits as the imaginings of a schizophreninc, and declared that such work should not be publicly exhibited in England . . .The New York Times, generally a restrained and proper paper, gnashed that he (Picasso) was …”the very devil and that his audacity was breathtaking . . . “
SF Chronicle critic Edward Guthmann began his appraisal of the film that launched a thousand White Russians with: “WEIRD STUFF, DUDE: Coen brothers up to the same old shtick with crime caper.
‘The Big Lebowski'' is ultimately too clever for its own good. There are more ideas here, more wacko side characters and plot curlicues than the film can support, and inevitably it deflates from having to shoulder so much.”
Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring was first performed in 1913, People booed, fights actually broke out in the crowd, the cops rushed in to quell what was turning into a riot and Stravinsky, rumored to be in tears, ran out of the building in the middle of the performance. However, some scholars suggest that Savvy Igor fueled the fires of controversy as a publicity tactic. BTW: Drawing on left by Picasso 
Emperor Joseph II told Mozart that The Marriage of Figaro had "too many notes." Other bad, or cautionary, reviews included: "too strongly spiced"; "impenetrable labyrinths"; "bizarre flights of the soul"; "overloaded and overstuffed"
When Beethoven's 9th symphony was first performed in London, reviewers wrote things like:
"...elegance, purity and measure are gradually surrendering to a new, frivolous and pompous style adopted by the superficial talents of our time." Fortunately, such criticism fell on Beethoven’s deaf ears.
Tom Brady was picked #199 in the 2000 draft – a sixth-round choice. The Patriots had four quarterbacks that season, and guess who was fourth-string? Yep. The Quarterback who still has a chip on his shoulder. And as Will Julian once said; " If Tom Brady has a chip on his shoulder, then I don't even have arms."
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