Novelists No One Reads Anymore

Two kids authors that were relatively omnipresent on the mid-80s WH Smith shelves of my childhood, but now never even turn up in charity shops: JH Brennan and John Antrobus

None of the novelists today will be read.

there’s so little contemporary literature that has the potential to be classic (i.e. to be appreciated outside its immediate context). nobody in a hundred years is going to read donna tartt or sally rooney as literature (even if they might read them as cultural history)

— rose ❤️‍🔥🗡 (@roselyddon) November 1, 2022

tweeters with a time machine

Incidentally I am not sure if I ever read a piece of old literature as cultural history xp

I read Madame Bovary once to find out what kinds of hats were considered unfashionable at the time.

Think cultural history is at least a component in my enjoyment of...everything, really.

Yes, what will last is silly. But there are many novels published in the last two decades that will have an interest as exciting things to read

xp = guess the Anatomy of Melancholy is interesting as an insight of how people thought about depression, but it's the expression of it that really holds for me.

I kind of feel like the default case for literature is to be forgotten. What percentage of old books are remembered decades or even centuries later? I would guess much less than 1%. So predicting that something will be forgotten is kind of easy.

OTM. See also all the languages gone missing over the millennia.

It is hard to think of recent authors who I actively hope will be read in the future. Whether as literature or as a time capsule.

It's a very abstract question and it is, of course, not ours to decide. There's a (possibly apocryphal) thing about how if Henry Ford had asked his customers what they wanted, they would have said "faster horses."

Elinor Glyn was pretty popular; so was I dunno Tom Clancy or whoev. If you time-traveled to 1850 and asked art critic which painters would still be talked about in 100 years, they would almost certainly answer wrongly.

I do not weep for the legacy of, say, Donna Tartt. But in my secret heart I kinda hold out hope that maybe George Saunders will still be read in future.

Think the concept of timelessness during the time of the author’s life is weird and it’s not as though it’s remotely objective.

Also, books not being read anymore is hardly indicative of this quality, like trends affect books too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2ujNVw8Shk

I know, we’re talking novelists, but George Crabbe is a perfect example of this— someone well-regarded in his time by Byron, Edmund Burke, Samuel Johnson, and others, he is virtually unheard of in English letters today. I think that part of it is his form— he wrote exclusively in heroic couplets lmfao— and part of it is that the narrative poem, with some exceptions, has dramatically fallen out of favor with the reading public.

The whims of the reading public are unpredictable, and so any predictions re: timelessness are quite silly.

I predict the Captain Underpants books will still be read in 2407

I met a traveller from an antique land iirc

Every other sentiment an antique.

Crabbe was on the syllabus when i did English Lit in the late 80s, tho only in a minor way. his biggest connection to the present is probably Britten's Peter Grimes i'd guess

anyway it's hard to write anything at length about the contingencies of what "lasts", never mind a quick Tweet with a lazy handwave at The Canon

my tweets will last, yours are already forgotten

Crabbe was on the syllabus when i did English Lit in the late 80s, tho only in a minor way. his biggest connection to the present is probably Britten's Peter Grimes i'd guess

We read him alongside Pope in an 18th century lit class.

Dryden obv has more name recognition but he's not much read/discussed, is he?

Nothing odd will do long. Sinkah's tweets will not last.

Thoroughly unpopular opinion, but I think Tom Wolfe's novels and the research within will have an audience a century from now.

I could see Bonfire being read as social portrait of the world Trump sprang from

Wouldn't it actually be rational to assume that most novelists are no longer read, and the ones who are extensively read are exceptional?

― the pinefox, Wednesday, September 28, 2022

re: predicting legacy while the writer is alive

I was looking at some lit journals from the 1870s and a critic was giving a run down of recent Russian publications. Anna Karenina had been coming out as a serial but was as yet unfinished by Tolstoy. The critic said something like "Even if Tolstoy dies before finishing the novel the existing portions are already great enough to ensure its permanent place in great literature."

"the only consolation which we have in reflecting upon [Wuthering Heights] is that it will never be generally read"

Got a little further into something by Tom Robbins which had no especially low or any point, was just twaddle.

Isn't this every Tom Robbins book though? I made it through Another Roadside Attraction but punched out early from Even Cowgirls Get The Blues and Still Life With Woodpecker. Distrustful hippies and boomers seem to have been the only ones reading him (of course my brother was a fan)

The adaptation of Even Cowgirls Get The Blues is one of the most chilling things I've ever experienced.

Details please.

My book club seems in sync with this thread. Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five is the consensus choice for our next read.

I read it decades ago but don't remember anything about it.

I usually use audible or audiobooks to listen to the books we've selected. I'm very curious about James Franco's narration for this

Speaking of writers no one reads

S-5 is very much not a novel that nobody reads anymore.

meant to put him hear from another thread - laureate of Dartmoor, Eden Philpotts. Just looking at that reminds me - wasn’t The Red Redmaynes a Borges fiction choice? finding out brb.

here. not hear. i’m having a bad day.

and i misspelled his name. Phillpotts.

Eden Phillpotts (1862 -1960) was an English author. He was the author of many novels. Phillpotts was a friend of Agatha Christie, who was an admirer of his work and a regular visitor to his home. Jorge Luis Borges was another admirer. Borges mentioned him numerous times wrote at least two reviews of his novels, and included him in his "Personal Library," a collection of works selected to reflect his personal literary preferences.

according to some amazon/goodreads boilerplate.

fwiw he’s surprisingly good, v much in a Hardy plus “supernal immanent nature” mode.

"Hardy plus “supernal immanent nature” mode"

This description makes me think of John Cowper Powys. Has he been mentioned yet?

I just dmor and nope, no mention of Powys.

i almost mentioned Powys in relation to him. And as you say he, in fact all of them, are well qualified for this thread.

I might have to give Phillpots a go. Dartmoor + Borges is a mix too good to ignore.

Powys has a cult following, have two friends reading him right now

A Glastonbury Romance *is* magnificent, fwiw.

Believe Skot was a big Powys enthusiast as well.

I might have to give Phillpots a go. Dartmoor + Borges is a mix too good to ignore.

Found a bookshop, and a book that looked at all of Phillpotts's cycle, and had a great quote from The Mother that covered much of the route I'd taken the day before:

AFTER Walla has fallen from her fountains near the
cradle of her greater sister, Tavy, in midmost Moor,
she winds south-west and passes downward under Mis
Tor into the wooded glens beneath the Vixen. But,
before she leaves the waste, a bridge of grey stone spans
her growing stream, and road and river meet at right
angles. Down the great slope eastward this highway falls,
then upward climbs again under the triple crown of the
Staple Tors ; and just beyond the bridge, extended strag-
gling by the path, like a row of tired folk tramping home
after a revel, shall be seen the few cottages of Merivale.
Northward, separated from the village by moorland, and
its own surrounding fields, the farm of Stone Park
stands naked, treeless and solitary ; southward, where
Walla flows from the upland austerities into a gentler
domain of forest and arable land, there extend regions of
cultivation with their dwellings in the midst.

All round about upon this day, the stone monarchs of
the land thrust sombre heads upward into a stormy sky.
Beyond Great Mis Tor something of the central desolation
might be seen

Isn't this every Tom Robbins book though? I made it through Another Roadside Attraction but punched out early from Even Cowgirls Get The Blues

― Elvis Telecom, Sunday, 11 December 2022 16:40 (yesterday) link

I once read an interview with him. Apparently your namesake Elvis Presley had one of those books in the bathroom where he, Presley, was found dead. Robbins took great pride in that, something like "The critics hate me, but I've got Elvis!"

B-b-but what about Willie?