Which author's will live on through history?

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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

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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 ;)

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.

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.

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'.

Tolkien
Dick
King
Rowlings
Munto

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.

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.

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.