Followup, more or less, on this thread about the distinction between “fiction” and “literature”:
Of authors currently writing and publishing, and new books now coming out, which do you think will be esteemed enough that, 50 years from now, high-school English teachers will make them assigned reading? Or English profs at the college level? Who will be deemed worthy to take a place alongside Homer, Chaucer, Melville, Twain, Bronte, Joyce, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Hemingway, etc.? Who will become part of the canon?
Stephen King. Really. Critics are already beginning to realize his books may be literature (at the very least, they will still be in print in 50 years).
I wouldn’t be surprised at all–I’ve had this feeling for years. Years ago, I was doing research on Tennyson and noticed the contemporary criticism on him read an awful lot of like the current criticism of King.
I’ve read Idylls of the King and, so far as I can see, Tennyson and King have practically nothing in common. The 19th-Century writer to whom King is most often compared is Dickens. (Probably because each of them takes a very long time to tell a story and fills it with lots of details.)
I wavered on David Foster Wallace. At the end of the day, I think he’s going to have the most success as an essayist, not a novelist. His novels will show up in more specialized college courses, though, but not surveys.
If it helps us frame the question, here are the books assigned to me in a college literature class in the early 90s (estimated IIRC publication date in parentheses):
Albert Camus’ The Fall (late 50s).
Walker Pearcey’s The Last Gentleman (early 60s)
Doris Lessing’s *Briefing for a Descent into Hell * (late 60s)
John Cheever’s *The Falconer * (mid 70s)
Graham Greene’s, *The Human Factor * (mid 70s)
Italo Calvino’s *If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler … * (mid 70s)
John Updike’s *A Month of Sundays * (early 80s)
Saul Bellow’s *The Dean’s December * (early 80s)
Oh, I meant to add that I agree with the selections of Stephen King and John Irving. Some of the authors mentioned I thought were already in the canon!
I’m such a big fan of Douglas Coupland that I’d like to see him find his way into the canon . . . but I’m afraid future generations might regard his novels as so much aimed at one generation, GenX, that they are irrelevant to all later ones.
I couldn’t disagree more strongly than on Stephen King, whom I can’t read now, and whose writing I can’t imagine will survive another five years past his death. The man is a turgid, bombastic wretched prose stylist spinning ludicrous plots (that often fade as the story progresses) with weak, vapid characters. I’d bet the farm on this.
But seriously, King represents an important popular niche. Even if arguably flawed, I’d see several of his better books (Carrie, Shining, Dead Zone, Stand) or novellas/shorts assigned in classes along with HG Wells, Poe, Kafka, Burroughs, and other “respected” fantastical authors.
Kazuo Ishiguro. I just read Never Let Me Go and found it beautifully well-written, exceptionally crafted, funny, and poignant. Then I read The Remains of the Day and that was just as good.
I need to hunt down his other stuff; any recommendations?
I’ve read Idylls of the King and, so far as I can see, Tennyson and King have practically nothing in common. The 19th-Century writer to whom King is most often compared is Dickens. (Probably because each of them takes a very long time to tell a story and fills it with lots of details.)