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Originally Posted by fjtorres
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?
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Dickens and Doyle weren't contemporaries. But at the time Dickens wrote, all novels were "downmarket." There were no highbrow novels at all. The more intellectually inclined read poetry, or read the classics (the actual Greek or Latin classics).
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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.
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That's probably a good bet. (Although I don't really blame the Nobel committee - they like to reward people for a lifetime of work... and around the time Tolkien started getting attention, he died.)
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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.
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I'm kind of skeptical of some of these. AFAICT, Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke are already not nearly as popular as they were when I started reading SF in the 70's. Bradbury might still be read, though - we read Fahrenheit 451 in school. I can see Vonnegut, too.
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I'm thinking enduring popular appeal is bound to be a better predictor of future classics than establishment awards.
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This is probably true, although I don't know anyone who would claim the opposite. I can't think of any classic that wasn't popular in its day. But to be read in 100 years, you will also need some sort of timelessness to give people some sort of real connection with the otherwise dated work, and it's kind of hard to know how that will play out. [/QUOTE]