Novelists No One Reads Anymore

Flann O'Brien will never not be read.

What was the name of the guy who wrote _Seven Who Fled_ again? He was in the comeback kid mode around here for a hot minute.

(not answering James's question; just wondering if anyone still reads 'em)

― Les hommes de bonbons (cryptosicko)

sort of a related question that one, _genres_ that have fallen out of favor probably they have at least niche followings. i was at powell's i think before the pandemic and they had a whole section, for instance, of nautical adventures. i think my brother read some of the horatio hornblower books. he's kind of big on old niche fiction, he's really into doc savage. i didn't know nautical fiction was an entire genre, though i guess it stands to reason.

i'm actually half-heartedly reading a harlequin romance now! _for the love of april french_ by a lady named penny aimes. my mom read harlequin romances by the bushel when i was young - i never touched them myself, they were For Girls, so i don't know how _for the love of april french_ stacks up, but i can _definitely_ see the appeal. only reason i haven't finished it is because all of my leisure reading tends to be dour nonfiction books about genocide and for some reason i've stopped enjoying reading for leisure as much as i used to. april french is pure fantasy - it's about a trans woman (of course, because i am a cliche) who meets a cis guy who isn't a chaser, an egg, or otherwise a fucking asshole but who is nevertheless into her. aside from that it was actually super relatable to my own life, which i can't imagine would be true about '80s harlequin romances. the titular april french is sort of a den mom at a local bdsm club, who by day works a job that's _very_ similar to my own, even considering that there are like three or four careers that have historically been open to trans women.

anyway. my feeling - and again i haven't read any '80s harlequin romances so i can't confirm - is that the idea of a "harlequin romance novel" has changed to adapt with the times, and that while the romance novel is probably even more of a niche concern than it was previously - nowadays i suspect that ao3 fills a lot of the niche that harlequin used to fill - there's certainly good quality writing still being put out by harlequin.

Flann O'Brien will never not be read.

I wasn't proposing Flann O'Brien as a subject for this thread. O'Brien and Cabell were both stuck and couldn't renew their imaginations.

What about Henri Barbusse? Feel like he would be difficult and lack the cache of say Celine.

My best friend at high school was an obsessive reader of Alexander Kent novels, was he ever a big deal? Certainly wrote a lot of books, and he only died five years ago.

What about Henri Barbusse? Feel like he would be difficult and lack the cache of say Celine.

i didn't know nautical fiction was an entire genre

OCEANS ARE NOW BATTLEFIELDS

Poster Boy Arnold Bennett is a Penguin Classics kind of guy, so while this definitely disqualifies for Type I Unread, not sure about Type II Unread. Maybe Type II should have subdivisions of the clade: Type IIa- famous for being unread, but still read and in print, Type IIb - unread and unknown by most but still in print but a publisher you know etc.

definitely need some empsonian classifications of that sort.

have read two Arnold Bennett's in the last couple of years - the card and Anna of the five towns. was figuring him for stoke's version of gaskell based on descriptions of the latter but the card was a bit of a knockabout. tptv shows the film from time to time.

gissing also, New Grub Street, slightly depressing

Most recent Arnold Bennett reference prior to this thread

i was right to say it

Lol

I think the important thing about Bennett is that Stoke is now widely understood as a racist shithole

So George Meredith doesn't seem to be in print with any publisher of note in the US but it seems maybe Penguin UK does have The Egoist.

So his Penguin Score is very low but non-zero.

**ahem** a more recent Arnold Bennett reference:

Bright Remarks and Throwing Shade: What Are You Reading, Summer 2022?

sort of a related question that one, _genres_ that have fallen out of favor probably they have at least niche followings.

Good point. In identifying Grey and L'amour, I was kind of thinking of them in these terms, and my suspicion, at least, is that the pop Western as a genre was basically replaced by the likes of Clancy, Grisham, Patterson, etc. There are undoubtedly some large gaps in that history; Stephen King might belong there, but I always think of him belonging to slightly different, if related, literary traditions. Basically, I'm arguing for Grey and L'amour as the "airport reads" of their day, if that makes sense.

Oh wait, sorry, maybe I was sorting by relevance instead of date.

lol

EIther that or I just can't read or something.

Stephen king has a new book in the top ten just this week

he's the new winston churchill

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSzJNQSkbi8

probably nobody still reading j.b. priestley? pretty big in 50s & 60s, lots of his books still in op shops (uk -"charity shops") - i read one once, was a sort of heavy handed satire of an arts festival

op shops is probably where you'd get a pile of answers for this thread but i seldom go into those places any more

Good one, Priestley. I always get him confused with J.R. Ackerley tbh who had a recent revival via NYRB, not sure how high he got on the Type-O-Hype-O-Meter.

At the risk of dragging out the big gun for dinosaur and aiming it at Stonehenge (DO U SEE?), there is a kind of hauntology associated with these kinds of authors.

lot of '90s "chick lit" & "lad lit" dudes in the op shops last i looked but i don't remember any of those authors' names & anyway maybe ppl still do read em idk

^^ those feel like a different category, as far as an omnipresent best-seller (Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain) that never entered a canon vs. one that endured for a while and has now petered out.

That said, not sure Millennials or Gen Z are getting into High Fidelity or Bridget Jones's Diary unless it's picked up from a Little Free Library.

yeah those are ubiquitous in the ol' LFL & i don't know if that means nobody reads em any more or if it means lots of ppl still read em

actually i realise that i don't have very much idea what other people are reading at all

probably nobody much still reading susan hill or andrea newman (also ubiquitous 2nd hand & both actually good imo)

this thread is a delight & i'm awed and charmed by many posts

I read a few J. B. Priestley plays in that same modern drama course I mentioned earlier. Maybe the instructor was some kind of freak?

SF/fantasy seems like a slightly different thing, but I hope no children are reading Piers Anthony like I did.

I'm curious if kids these days are into Baum or (older kids) Vonnegut? Is Kerouac too toxic masculine now? Bukowski? I feel like the category of "genuinely popular in my lifetime but now not read" is harder to fill. I remember my parents reading The Jewel in the Crown when the miniseries was on Masterpiece Theater—I assume that's a tough sell these days

I meant to include Heinlein in my childhood wonderings

SF/fantasy seems like a slightly different thing, but I hope no children are reading Piers Anthony like I did.

― rob

god, even when i was young piers anthony had a well-known reputation as a creep.

Daphne du Maurier. (Surprising that she died as late as 1989.)

Andre Norton btw? idk

People surely still read Du Maurier (and Brautigan), a lot.

Daphne du Maurier. (Surprising that she died as late as 1989.)

she was still in her 20s when she wrote her big hits, hitchcock was on it!

Is kind of mad that she wrote Rebecca and Jamaica Inn and The Birds and Don't Look Now, if we judge an author by their film adaptations she's a world-beater.

I just downloaded a du Maurier novel onto my Kindle! And I recently read a collection of her stories that included Don't Look Now. It was patchy, but very readable.

i think of those four as the birds expanded universe tetralogy

I've read two of her short stories and tried to read Rebecca (not bad but life is too short)

First encountered Rebecca as part of my stepmother's set of "classic novels" audiobooks, think it was the only thing from the 20th century in the set, still odd to me that it was written so late

There’s a sub-group of novelists who were sort of big deals because they were related to famous authors:

Julian Hawthorne
Constance Fenimore Woolson
Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie