Which author's will live on through history?

[Vronaqueen]

I was in class the other day, and we started discussing the longevity of our contemporary authors. Given J.M. Coetzee's recent Nobel Prize win and other accomplishments in the literary world, I thought he would at least last for a few more decades. Anyone else have any thoughts?

[Tabac]

Those who know how to use the apostrophe.

[den]

Aside from stating the obvious... :rolleyes: Aldous Huxley I hope lives on and on in his writings...

[AbdoRinbo]

Those who know how to use the apostrophe.

Tabac is one among the happy few who have the luxury of being a flawless intellectual.

**** civility.

[Munro]

Contrary to Tabac's comment, but not necessarily refuting it, most of the authors that our culture continues to study and value from before the 19th century saw grammar, and to a greater extent spelling as irrelevant to their writings, as the English language was only formalised with set rules in the aforesaid century, or thereabouts (I couldn't say the exact period precisely).

It's a question that I've been thinking about for a long time, and I always think about it when I read a book or read about an author, whether contemporary or passed, and I wish I knew the secret myself so I could write my own set of modern classics to be studied in the next century onwards. :) We were talking about it in my English class, and basically it seems an author needs to provide a mixture of mass entertainment, contemporary comment or relevance and universal relevance to live beyond their age in their writing, as well as changing literature as a movement with their writing, or supporting and representing the movement they are apart of that has changed literature.

I'm being very vague and it is something that could be argued forever, and I try to keep in mind that it isn't very important either. Society will choose which authors are important to it, it's not something that can be forced let alone speculated accurately.

[Sindhu]

Those who know how to use the apostrophe.

Tabac is one among the happy few who have the luxury of being a flawless intellectual.

**** civility.
AbdoRinbo, I never thought I'd say this, but you just said what I wanted to say the moment I read the post you quote, but was too inhibited to say. It's been niggling at me since then, so, Thanks!

[Vronaqueen]

Not to say that talking about grammar is irrelevant, but I have a hard time seeing any of the contemporary novels of the past 10 years living on as classics 50 years from now. Publishing houses are so concerned with selling power that they ignore literary content--for example, the rise of "chick-lit" But, I could be wrong

[Otto von Bismark]

I think that firstly, grammar is greatly over emphasized today, especially by pseudo-intellectuals (or actual intellectuals who are simply the type who enjoy tearing others down) and by the educational systems of most English speaking countries.

Almost none of today's great authors (if you contend that *any* of today's are) hold doctorates in English literature or the linguistic rules of the language. Most of them present entertaining ideas, and their publishing houses are the ones who correct minor grammatical errors. Sometimes the intentional breaking of "commonly accepted grammatical rules" is simply necessary to craft an intelligent sounding sentence. The rule prohibiting the cessation of a sentence with a preposition is one that has been ridiculed by many authors and of course, Winston Churchill. Also, beginning a sentence with a conjuction is something that is at times simply more pleasing "aesthetically" as opposed to crafting a sentence around *not* beginning with a conjunction.

Grammar cannot be completely ignored, if it were then only the writer would understand exactly what message was being conveyed. However, as much as you can create a science out of the English language, do not forget that to convey a story or a strong emotion you cannot be constrained by the bounds of scientific laws and rules.

Of today's authors I cannot think of one which I can see being remembered fifty years from now. I think the problem is, most especially in the fiction genre, is that fiction has been too compartmentalized and cheapened.

Basically when it comes to fiction you have: mystery, science fiction, fantasy, romance, et al. Anytime an author intends to create any sort of work these days they simply try to copy the "norm" in whatever genre they intend to write. This has had the result of lots of moderately talented authors pumping out cheap dime novels that have completely deluded the fiction market.

Gone are the days when fictional autobiographies such as David Copperfield or adventure novels like Treasure Island will be appreciated by the masses.

When it comes to other forms of writing though, I think we have some modern authors who may live on for many years after their own demise. Especially in the history and political science departments. These are forms of writing in which you do not have to be creative in the same way as you must in literature (that is if you are using a more constrained definition of the word.)

I think that Henry Kissinger has produced several treatises that will live on many years from now, and David McCullough in the history department.

When it comes to literary works along the lines of those we saw from the early 20th century I do not thing our society will produce any replicas in the near future.

[irapass]

<edited>

[IWilKikU]

yeah the apostrophe is pretty cool, but what I hate is the friggin semi-colon!!!!

;;;;;;;; ARGH!!! Really the only think its good for is winking ;)

[IWilKikU]

and not even that anymore with these darn emoticons!

[stavrokin]

Otto von Bismark gives me a wonderful literature class

some paragraph is not easy to me and i have to reread them

[crazycaleb]

basically it seems an author needs to provide a mixture of mass entertainment, contemporary comment or relevance and universal relevance to live beyond their age in their writing,

I think that that is an important thing to consider. Many of what we consider to be classic novels had important political comments that had universal relevance (1984, Brave new world, etc). Can you think of many books that are like that today? I think there are many books which have an entertainment value that is superior to most classics I have read, yet they have no real commentaries on society or politics. That's not to say that they don't stimulate the mind or anything like that, but it definitely does seem that for a book to be studied in years to come, it has to have some sort of commentary that scholars can dissect and write essays about. Like the Lord of the Flies, 1984, or A Brave New World. You don't see HP Lovecraft being taught in class, though his stories are some of the most imaginative that I've read, and that's because he didn't make political/cultural commentary.

Still, if I was teaching a class in the future, I would definitely include some authors of today. Neil Gaiman's "American Gods" and "Neverwhere", and Alan Moore's "The Watchmen" would be on that list (particularly the watchmen, as it does have a lot of political, cultural, and most importantly philosophical comments).

I also agree with Otto that in non-fiction we do have a lot of good works to pass on to the next generations. Stephen Hawking should probably be added to that list 8) and HP Lovecraft wrote some pretty insightful letters that could be considered great nonfiction, but basically no one will ever read them :P

[stavrokin]

Lolita is a book built on groups of magic words. Although the author insisted on the meaninglessness of his writing, only inventing some beautiful sentences, it dose create wonderful impression on readers, even people who read other version feel strong influence.
As to whether Lolita is really meaningless, every one entertains his own opinion. However, as far as I know few people could master language as Nabokov does. I haven’t read Lolita’s original version which is too hard to a foreigner. I want to know the opinion of those who compared the way of Nabokov to that of modern grammatical enthusiasts. What I believe, if you could play the language like the author of Lolita, we could almost ignore the meaning covered by the words. The structure and the rhetoric and the puns and loading of fancy phrase substitute for commentaries on societies and human beings. Is this pure art unworthy of being praised? If there is a contemporary author whose interest is on words building to extreme degree, I think his art will have great longevity. In short, art can live without meaning.


Secondly, whether grammatical rule is obstruct which limits authors to express freely? Actually, there are some people who find the gap between the language and the other shore, like Lacan. But so unfortunately, the limitation of language seems to become a such stereotype excuse that every moderately talented authors can turn to and make the abuse of language reasonable.

Thirdly, the reason why the writers of writing history and science will live on longer probably is that almost everyone is able to pump out cheap dime novel through his poor life experience but the fewer has enough talent to create science and historical events without really rich knowledge.



:P
excuse me to steal some phrase from your posts, i'm a language learner.

[eji]

Those who know how to use the apostrophe.

Amen, brother.

Contrary to the many assertions to the contrary in this topic-hopping thread, grammar is indeed an important element of writing and shouldn't be ignored in the slightest. There are a formal set of techniques one must master before deviating from them, else the rationale for the break as well as its force are lost. Those who point to Picasso's primistivist paintings, for example, shouldn't overlook the fact that the man knew how to draw anatomically perfect humans.

It's become ever so fashionable to wag fingers at the pedant and say that grammatical rules are merely standardised forms of the arbitrary, holdovers from a previous century, etc, etc, and furthermore Yeats' spelling was atrocious, etc, etc ... and what it amounts to is a lot of more-egalitarian-than-thou rubbish. Tabac claimed to be neither perfect nor a smug intellectual: he merely made a wry remark about punctuation. We need more linguistic policemen (not in terms of censorship, of course; don't misinterpret me) like him to uphold certain standards and prevent students from unwittingly perpetuating mistakes or falling into "anything goes" mindset. I doubt very much that Vronaqueen was trying to make a radical artistic statement with that egregious possessive/plural error.

Now, the subject was about contemporary writers, wasn't it?

I do think that some contemporary fiction will survive the ravages of time and fashion, though not by the authors who are most visible. Eggers? He'll vanish, most likely in Foster Wallace's shadow. Coetzee? That's debatable. Sebald's work will live on. So will Andrei Makine's, William Boyd's and perhaps Alessandro Baricco's. No, I haven't yet spotted a Konrad, Bellow, Dickens, Borges, Proust or Nabokov among this (my) generation, but I'm hopeful in spite of the same push toward commercialisation and compartmentalisation that so worries our Prussian dictator friend. Still, we have no idea which obscure writer the academics will exhume in a century's time and say, "Alas, they hardly knew ye!"

[crazycaleb]

We need more linguistic policemen (not in terms of censorship, of course; don't misinterpret me) like him to uphold certain standards and prevent students from unwittingly perpetuating mistakes or falling into "anything goes" mindset

You certainly have a point; there does need to be a standard. However, I think many people (myself included) are just tired of people making posts in a thread for the sole purpose of correcting grammar.

It's kind of like when you're telling someone a story, and you say "the other day me and my friend" and they suddenly interrupt and say "my friend and I". It's just sort of rude, especially if they correct little mistakes like that all of the time (people majoring in english tend to do this, and it's bloody annoying).

The internet, particularly message boardlike these, tend to gather a lot of intellectuals, and many of these intellectuals seem to love showing off, oftentimes making posts posts in threads that they don't care about just to correct someone's grammar. If tabac had corrected the grammar and then actually provided his/her thoughts on the subject, it would have been fine (in my opinion, anyway). But when you see people posting under threads just to correct a grammatical error all of the time, it's kind of annoying. It just gives off that whole image of a snide pseudo-intellectual who tries to look smart and witty by bringing others down.

To use your police metaphor... There's a difference between an honest policeman trying to do his duty, and the policemen who use their power as a means of compensation ;)

[Woland]

First post. Watch out for grammar police!
They are watching...

Baudelaire, Nabokov, Bulgakov, Eliot, Garcia Marquez,

Ill go out on a limb and say Stephen King will be studied in the future. Not for any comment on the human condition but as a reference for popular culture.

[Jarndyce]

There are definitely some contemporary writers that will be read in the future. I think writers like Don DeLillo and Thomas Pynchon will have cemented a spot for a while. Jose Saramago certainly should have. Garcia Marquez, as mentioned above, will almost certainly be well-regarded and read for quite some time to come.

[blp]

He doesn't seem to be widely known in the West, but, based on reading just one of his books, I'd say Kenzaburo Oe's in with a chance. I absolutely agree about Sebald deserving to be remembered and Eggars deserving to be forgotten. I think American Psycho is a really excellent book that ought to be read for years. So is Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

My pro-grammar views are on record elsewhere on this site. Bad grammar has often shown itself to me clearly to be symbiotically related to bad thought. That said, Joan Didion, seen by many as a paragon of good style, wrote recently that she 'never learned the rules of grammar'.

[EAP]

Tolkien
Dick
King
Rowlings
Munto

[Daniel A. C.]

I think Leonard Cohen will be remembered, or at least should be remembered. I'm not huge on poetry, but he is the only modern poet that I really enjoy, and he is also one of the only songwriters, in my humble opinion, whose lyrics are really great literature.

It is odd to me that people only remember him for his songs and poems from the sixties, as I think he has been steadily progressing and refining his work ever since. The songs on his last two albums contain some of my favorite poems.

I think people might not take him as seriously because he's a recording artist. Also, he's got a new book of poetry coming out this month.
http://www.leonardcohenfiles.com/

To add to the historians mentioned above, I think people will continue to read E.J. Hobsbawm - I had a prof. who said it is a testiment to how great a historian he is that he is a Marxist and is still so well respected.

As for novels, I can't think of any really great ones from the last 25 years or so. I don't know much about theatre. Maybe our memorable literature will be more films and music than novels, plays + poems.

[Gawaine]

Cohen is masterful. He has a distinctive way with words that few poets seem to touch me with. I admit, I am not much of a fan of his music, but his prose is so strong.

[mono]

Assuming that the beginner of this thread mostly aims at contemporary authors, or semi-contemporary authors (since, obviously, now-famous authors have withstood the test of time), I have a bit of a list, including Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Leonard Cohen (agreed with others), Dan Brown (for better or worse :p), J.K. Rowling (again, for better or worse), Amy Tan, Ernest Hemingway, Billy Collins, Sylvia Plath, Hunter S. Thompson, Robert Frost, Alice Sebold, Stephen King, David Sedaris, Eric Schlosser, Joyce Carol Oates, Zora Neale Hurston, and Langston Hughes.