What 20th Century Writers do you think will still be read 100 years from now?

[zelda_pinwheel]

i love to kill a mockingbird too.

[pdurrant]

With poison or a shotgun?

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

i love to kill a mockingbird too.

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

With poison or a shotgun?

:groan:

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

With poison or a shotgun?

Flamethrower....

[Latinandgreek]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

(I hope I used the right word, or Tompe will be very upset...)

A skald was a nordic poet/singer/news carrier who wandered from place to place during the middle ages...

I believe there was a French equivalent word starting with a J, but I don't want to embarrass myself mis-spelling it...

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?

[Greg Anos]

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?

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...

[EatingPie]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

Flamethrower....

Forced to read it in school too. Bummer!

-Pie

[ficbot]

Some of my pics have been already mentioned, so I will only add new ones:

- Sue Grafton (I think she will be viewed as a latter-day Christie)
- Douglas Coupland (I am a maybe on him; he may be too pop-cult for longevity)
- J.M. Coetzee (Nobel winner and vastly under-rated outside his own country)
- Michael Ondaatje (has the most staying power of the Canadian literary fiction mob)
- Alice Munro (a mater of the short story form)
- John Irving (maybe)
- Nora Roberts (our generation's Mary Roberts Rinehart---high-end, plentiful pulp)

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by desertgrandma

I so loved the original Batman series and movie. The new ones are so flippin' dark. Yes, I know thats what the original comic books portrayed him as, but, as usual.......................I like Hollywoods first effort better.

Ah, you mean the ones with Lewis Wilson as Batman/Bruce Wayne and Douglas Croft as Robin/Dick Grayson.



And, of course, the Batmobile (1939 Cadillac Convertible)

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by ficbot

- Sue Grafton (I think she will be viewed as a latter-day Christie)
- Douglas Coupland (I am a maybe on him; he may be too pop-cult for longevity)
- J.M. Coetzee (Nobel winner and vastly under-rated outside his own country)
- Michael Ondaatje (has the most staying power of the Canadian literary fiction mob)
- Alice Munro (a mater of the short story form)
- John Irving (maybe)
- Nora Roberts (our generation's Mary Roberts Rinehart---high-end, plentiful pulp)

Wow, I've never heard of a single one of these. Are they all very late 20th century?

[desertgrandma]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

Wow, I've never heard of a single one of these. Are they all very late 20th century?

Try this site

www.fantasticfiction.com

Just enter the authors name, and it will give you a list of all their works, in chronological order. You can get a great idea of what they write in this way.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by desertgrandma

Try this site

www.fantasticfiction.com

Just enter the authors name, and it will give you a list of all their works, in chronological order. You can get a great idea of what they write in this way.

What a great site! for posting that link.

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by desertgrandma

Try this site

www.fantasticfiction.com

Just enter the authors name, and it will give you a list of all their works, in chronological order. You can get a great idea of what they write in this way.

Okay, using that, I see a few titles I've heard of before from that group (and I recognize seeing "Nora Roberts" on book covers before once I saw the font.)

[Salgueiros]

Sandor Marai (only very recently his works are being rediscovered and i definitely think he is superb)

Nabokov

[GA Russell]

Originally Posted by desertgrandma

Try this site

www.fantasticfiction.com

Just enter the authors name, and it will give you a list of all their works, in chronological order. You can get a great idea of what they write in this way.

Thanks for that link, grandma! I've seen that site referred to before, but I hadn't checked it out.

The first author I looked up was Gregory Mcdonald. I had long wondered what the order of the Fletch books was.