For all that “enduring” always seems to be twinned with “masterpiece” in blurbs on book jackets, I find that there’s a whole category of works that are enduring, but not masterpieces. And within the category, there’s a range, from the highly readable and compelling (Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca), to the godawful (Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead). This genre, if it can be called that, is sustained by authors who have spent their entire career churning out books that, for all their lack of literary status, have never lost their readership – people like Agatha Christie and Leon Uris and Georges Simenon and Charles Dickens (I say to provoke).
So what are your nominations – books, authors, anything else?
Though his work was almost entirely short fiction, I think H.P. Lovecraft should qualify here. He’s sometimes fun to read, and was influential on horror and sci fi writers and moviemakers, but he was also a pretty godawful writer.
I would say that some artists have masterpieces and then a whole lot of works that are quite forgettable or so-so or almost there but not quite. People including Dickens and the like, have books that endure because they clearly represent a specific time and place. I would question if works such as “Oliver Twist” or “A Tale of Two Cities” might be considered masterpieces, in comparison to Dickens’ other books, not counting short stories. I also question if an author whose work has endured endless reprints, and film/TV/radio/play adaptations, in that sense, has works that are far more than enduring. Or else we could just say “popular” in some way and leave it at that.
For example, Stephen King books are certainly popular and continue to be so, but how will they be looked at in 50 years or 100 years and onward? I could hardly call out any one King book that I would say rises above the rest and deserves any kind of hallowed place in a museum for lack of a better way of expressing it. I would place the film adaptation of The Shining way up high in terms of Kubrick’s filmography. However, over time, will the film outlast the book?
I would look for a way to separate “enduring” from “popular” and see if there are any masterpieces left over. We also have “influential” too, in the case of people like Lovecraft, and of course King who turned horror writing into an extremely hot commodity in the late 80s and 90s.
Ravel’s Bolero. Considering his numerous genuine masterpieces, such as the Piano Concerto in G major, the Rhapsodie espagnole, Tombeau de Couperin, Alborada del gracioso, etc., not to mention a lot of great chamber music such as the String Quartet, the Sonata for Violin and Cello, the Piano Trio, Chansons Madecasses …
Why on Earth would anybody bother with that vapid silliness of Bolero? Ravel himself didn’t think much of it.
Two of my favorite writers from the 50’s are still in print – Thomas Costain (historicals) and A. J. Cronin (stories where if there was a movie, it’d have to star Gregory Peck) – but another favorite isn’t – Frank Yerby.
Maybe they’re enduring just for me. I never see mention of them, anywhere.
People keep reading Nora Roberts, and she’s been around for quite awhile.
Most of 19th Century French literature would probably be in here (and the British horror stories like Dracula and Frankenstein), but lots of those are studied as literature in scvhool simply because there are enough impressive tales from that time period that there can be enough people to have carved out a place for them in the scholarly world and declare themselves “scholars.” Moving from 19th Century through post-modernism and onto modern day it becomes pretty obvious that if anything written a hundred and fifty years ago was written today it would be ignored by scholars as unworthy garbage.
The Count of Monte Cristo, Sherlock Holmes, The Lord of the Rings, etc. may not have had deep messages embedded in them–but that doesn’t mean that anyone who read those stories may not have become a different and better person for reading them. Nor that people won’t be effected more by a story they care about and thoroughly enjoyed than the deepest and most thought-provoking nobel prize winner.
However, it’s clear that, as time goes on, King’s reputation as a writer is growing, and even literary critics are beginning to believe he may be a major American author. Clearest evidence that he is being accepted by as a literary writer is the fact he has had stories in The New Yorker. Twice.
I don’t agree, though I’m shying away from a discussion of what a masterpiece is. Some of the authors you cite – Dumas, for one – I’d definitely throw in the enduring non-masterpiece category. Scupper cited Lovecraft, who makes for a perfect example. I’ll note in passing that it helps to be dead, and the longer the better. That’s what makes me wonder about Michener and Uris and Irving and King. A.J. Cronin, I believe, is hanging in there. He wrote so much, and was so widely printed, that his novels are pretty much inescapable if you spend much time rooting through old books.
What is it they call Ravel’s Bolero? Ah, yes, music to fuck by.
