Quote:
Originally Posted by Latinandgreek
Many Indo-European peoples had poet "classes": the Celts (Bards and also Fili, I believe), Greeks (Rhapsods), Slavs (There are still epic poets a la Homer among the South Slavs), Indians... I've just come home from a fantastic lecture on traces of autochtonous epic poetry in Rome (as evidenced in the Carmen Saliare), given by my favourite prof. and have really gotten geared up about that topic! I am also concurrently reading two books on Indo-European poetics: To Kill a Dragon (Watkins) and Indo-European Poetry and Myth (West) (The mention of Adam West and Skalds, really set me off on this rant). Anyone interested in the topic should give them a try, it is fascinating stuff!
Back to the topic at hand: What do you think is more of a factor in ensuring that an author is read long after his time, innovation or quality of writing in general? Are there any writers that whose works should not survive / have survived the test of time, or conversely, any that you wish had? (For example I loved Anais Nin when I was younger and had no trouble at all finding books of hers; now I find they are incredibly hard to find in brick and mortar bookshops.) Any thoughts?
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Fair question. Here's my list of needed attributes.
1. It has to be a rattling good read. Now that means different thing to different people/genres. A romance has different requirement for a rattling good read that say, an adventure story.
2. There has to be something about the author that keeps the English Lit teachers interested. Like it or not, most people are introduced to classic fiction that way.
3. The work has to be self-contained. Let me expand on this. It has to describe a world without a reference to the current times in which it was written. The concerns of the items of the books are not topical. it's the difference between
Uncle Toms Cabin and
Huckleberry Finn.
4. It needs to be popular once, so there is plenty of copies/memories of the work.
Somebody once said that Moby Dick couldn't work as a book, unless it first worked as a whale. A long term successful classic book is like a safari into a unknown place and time. You may come back with pearls (of wisdom) or interesting friends, or maybe just magnificent scenery, but if most people come back bored, it'll disappear in a few years...