To me, an author is a PURE icon if practically everybody knows who he/she is but practically nobody reads his/her books.
Shakespeare is an icon, certainly, but his plays are still widely performed and read, so he’s still very relevant as an artist. The authors in this category that I fond most interesting are the ones who have become pure icons, who are recognizable for their personae or symbolic value, rather than for their work.
An author can have a face/style everybody recognizes (Mark Twain, Tom Wolfe, Edgar Allan Poe), but he isn’t JUST an icon if loads of people are still reading and enjoying his work.
Gertrude Stein strikes me as a good example of an author who’s become an icon rather than a writer. She is very famous and often quoted. Everyone misquotes “a rose is a rose” and everyone uses the phrase “Lost Generation.” And yet, practically nobody reads anything she’s written, any more.
Santayana, too. EVERYONE quotes him regularly, to appear erudite, but hardly anybody reads him.
Backing up a generation, Jacqueline Susann was a literary rock-star who in fact worked very hard for her Q Factor. People who’d never read one of her books still knew who she was.
Another vote for Hemingway. What other author has a yearly look-alike contest in his honor?
I think you are spot on with Kerouac, and probably there with Pynchon, too. With Morrison, I think there is a test of time that she may not have achieved yet. I question your addition of Hitler and Marx, however. They were historical figures who have written, not necessarily writers who became historical figures. Allowing these two, one would have to also include; Churchill, Teddy Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and the like. If I read the OP correctly, the writer’s iconic stature must have professional writing at its core, which, at least in my mind, neither Marx nor Hitler did.
Ask 100 people “Who is Roald Dahl?” Get a photo of Dahl and ask “Who is this?” Ask “Who wrote Charlie and the Charlotte Factory?”
Like Ira Levin, most people has heard of Dahl’s books, but they have no idea of his name.
Actually, I doubt that very much. When I was a kid, and much older, Roald Dahl was a well known name. His books were favourites with us, and I know that remained true for future generations of kids, and his was a very recognisable name.
Having said that, it doesn’t count towards the OPs question, though, as I think his personal reputation is irrelevant. I don’t even know much about it even now, so his books still precede him.
Allan Ginsberg. Nobody reads him, but everybody knows him.
I have heard the phrase “I did it my way” attributed to Thoreau. As we all know, the authorship of the phrase is properly credited to Paul Anka.
On the other hand, the spirit behind the phrase does indeed summarize the life of Thoreau rather well. Perhaps we could say that the expression is in fact, more in Thoreau than in Anka.
There was a better comic writer…
…and then Alan Moore ate his heart and stole his power.
Yeah, some of these guys are infamous in their own worlds and Moore definitely qualifies in the world of comic books. Of course show his picture to someone on the street and they’re more likely to identify him as Charles Manson…
Dorothy Parker, even if half the words attributed to her were an urban legends. She was a damn fine poet.