Which contemporary writers will be still talked about 100 years from now

[hannah_arendt]

Don't know if GoT will last 100 years (probably partly depends on whether Martin lives to finish it and how good it ends up being), but Martin himself has been a force in science fiction for over 40 years and has won numerous awards, so I think his longevity among genre fans is pretty certain.

I liked two first parts of GoT. I wonder whether he knows how to end the story.

[JBI]

I liked two first parts of GoT. I wonder whether he knows how to end the story.

There's a difference though from reception as an author and as an adapted author. I would wager many people who have taken to the tv series would not take well to the books.

As for cultural resonance, well, I think his works are particularly plot driven, and do not really excite beyond a plot level, but that is just my opinion.

[hannah_arendt]

There's a difference though from reception as an author and as an adapted author. I would wager many people who have taken to the tv series would not take well to the books.

As for cultural resonance, well, I think his works are particularly plot driven, and do not really excite beyond a plot level, but that is just my opinion.

You are right, I think. It`s just a story without any deeper thought, philosophy and so on. However it can be a good material for a series.

Have you read something of David Gemmel?

[NedSiegel]

That is a very good question. Certainly not the Dan Browns of the world. For the English language, Maybe Salman Rushdie. He has a unique enough style.

[IJustMadeThatUp]

I will second Murakami.

Perhaps Eugenides also?

[JBI]

I suspect the short list will be 5-6 names. That's generally how literature gets sifted. 5-6 authors will remain, and about a dozen poets, in an anthology sized kind of book. We really have too many works and not enough time - nobody in 100 years will be able to read and talk about all these authors, regardless of how good. It's like the Renaissance, how many English language sonnet writers do we have? How many are discussed? Discussion involves a sort of community of readers, for the nonspecialist that limits every age to less than a dozen authors.

[MorpheusSandman]

There are several I could name that I hope will be talked about, but when I really look at things objectively, I don't see how the poetry of John Ashbery can be forgotten. He was arguably as influential to the second half of the 20th century as Eliot was to the first half, and, IMO, even more original, challenging, and brilliant.

[mande2013]

As for there only being 5-6 major figures per generation I'm not so sure. If we look at the early 20th century, say before World War II, there are certainly more than that. We have Joyce, Faulkner, Woolf, Eliot, Pound, Kafka, Yeats, D.H. Lawrence, Proust, Gertrude Stein, Henry Miller, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Hemingway, and I'd say every single one of the aforementioned figures is here to stay. As for writers currently living it's hard to say, but I'm sure Pynchon will stand the test time. I'm not too sure about Rushdie. I just can't take a guy who marries the hostess of Top Chef seriously, no matter how literary his work is. Cormac McCarthy might endure. Don DeLillo as well. Ian McEwan, Martin Amis, Philip Roth, Toni Morrison, and even Gabriel Garcia Marquez are seen as being "middlebrow" by way too many intellectuals for me to be sure they'll survive. Nobody ever calls Pynchon or DeLillo "middlebrow". Although he's only a film critic, I think Jonathan Rosenbaum remains a brilliant arbiter of culture in general and an intriguing counterpart to the often reactionary Harold Bloom.

[AuntShecky]

Assuming that there will be such a thing as "100 years from now," I wonder if the question should be "Will people still be reading?" Despite the emergence of up-to-the-minute electronic devices posed to make books obsolete and the undeniable popularity of on-line surfing, maybe reading for pleasure will be an esoteric activity enjoyed by a precious few. By way of illustration, the teaching of penmanship, a skill once considered a quality of an educated person, is disappearing from school curricula.

What happened when movies arrived? I hate to burst anyone's treasured bubble, but movies killed Vaudeville. They said television would make movies obsolete. On the other hand, the movie industry are still going strong -- at $10 a ticket! And tv watching is surviving despite -- or maybe because of --the saturation of DVDs, cable, and the Internet.

So maybe books ( in some form) will always be around as well. At least, let's hope so.

[JCamilo]

Aunt, books wont be always around us simple because they werent here for more than 2000 years of literature. Be the air, be the press, be the internet, texts will be there for people to read.

Now, all those names, the thing I guess we can for sure say is that memory is form of forgetfullness. We forget, we remember. Then all those guys today should first give us a break and be in some dark place, where we cannot remember it for while. If they return, then, they may survive for quite awhile.

[kev67]

As for there only being 5-6 major figures per generation I'm not so sure. If we look at the early 20th century, say before World War II, there are certainly more than that. We have Joyce, Faulkner, Woolf, Eliot, Pound, Kafka, Yeats, D.H. Lawrence, Proust, Gertrude Stein, Henry Miller, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Hemingway, and I'd say every single one of the aforementioned figures is here to stay. As for writers currently living it's hard to say, but I'm sure Pynchon will stand the test time. I'm not too sure about Rushdie. I just can't take a guy who marries the hostess of Top Chef seriously, no matter how literary his work is. Cormac McCarthy might endure. Don DeLillo as well. Ian McEwan, Martin Amis, Philip Roth, Toni Morrison, and even Gabriel Garcia Marquez are seen as being "middlebrow" by way too many intellectuals for me to be sure they'll survive. Nobody ever calls Pynchon or DeLillo "middlebrow". Although he's only a film critic, I think Jonathan Rosenbaum remains a brilliant arbiter of culture in general and an intriguing counterpart to the often reactionary Harold Bloom.

Well Dickens was middlebrow and he still survives.

What happened when movies arrived? I hate to burst anyone's treasured bubble, but movies killed Vaudeville. They said television would make movies obsolete. On the other hand, the movie industry are still going strong -- at $10 a ticket! And tv watching is surviving despite -- or maybe because of --the saturation of DVDs, cable, and the Internet.

Unless civilization breaks down altogether (which it might) then books will survive. Books have already survived radio, cinema, TV and computer games. I think there will always be people who want to read.

[maxphisher]

I'll go ahead and toss Kazuo Ishiguro into the hat...