Quote:
Originally Posted by Kumabjorn
You don't think Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu will stand the test of time?
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Main reason I'm skeptical of the lot of them (though I'm sure a few *will* stand the test of time) is the selection process and the participants in them. Their focus is generally too... establishment, too timebound...
They look for relevance and significance for *them*.
So those lists are more reflective of the moment than of the long term potential of the work itself. My gut feeling is that literary historians will be thrilled to read their way through those lists to study the literary climate of the times but the timeless mass appeal that defines actual classics is more likely to be found elsewhere, among books deemed offensive, crude, or trivial by the establishment.
I mean; which writers were lionized by the establishment when Dickens and Doyle were selling their serials in the popular magazines of the day? Or further back, what did the cultured people who decried Shakespeare and his ilk read?
If there is *one* 20th century work that is a surefire bet as a long-time popular read, it has to be Lord of the Rings. And the Nobel committee refused to even consider him in his day because his writing style didn't meet their standards. Doesn't speak well of them, I'm afraid.
The same is true of the genre writers; I'm pretty sure the likes of Cartland and Heyer, Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, Vonnegut, Bradbury, Chandler, and yes, King will be read by more people in a hundred years than other more literarily acclaimed writers. Patterson and Clancy, Roberts, Steele, Meyer... I wouldn't be so sure but I wouldn't write them off either.
I'm thinking enduring popular appeal is bound to be a better predictor of future classics than establishment awards.
But I'll listen to alternative models that can explain Doyle, Verne, both Dumas, and Austen, as well as Shakepeare and Cervantes, Ibsen and Dostoyevski.