I’m surprised nobody’s mentioned Hilary Mantel yet.
Good one! How could I forget Mantel!
These are seriously old people. Can we stick to people who are still alive and writing?
How about Colsen Whitehead for a start?
It takes a while to establish a reputation, which is why the names tend to be older. But I see your Colson Whitehead and raise with Ta-Nehisi Coates. And there’s Junot Díaz.
Yeah? So just how old were the people in the OP in the 1960s?
I’ll spare you the Googling. Colsen Whitehead is 50. Not one name on that list was as old as 50 in 1960. Only two were over 50 in 1969.
But were they considered “literary titans” at the time, or did that recognition come later?
A good point. If you had asked somebody in 1960 who were the literary titans of their time, they probably would have named authors like du Maurier, Hemingway, O’Hara, and Steinbeck instead of Cheever, Heller, Salinger, and Vonnegut.
I agree, though things changed very rapidly in the 60s.
The larger point of the OP is true, too. We do not have a literary culture that is in any way similar to that of the mid-century.
The New York Times #1 bestseller is Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens. It’s been on the list for two years and sold seven million copies. I know nothing about the author. I couldn’t even tell you whether it’s literary fiction or not. (It sounds literary, but there’s also a murder to be solved.)
Is that just my ignorance? Does everybody else know her?
Where the Crawdad’s Sing is one of those things that seem to defy expectation. Folks in the Publishing world can’t really explain it:
Owens is known for other things (controversial stuff in dealing with poachers in Africa). However I’m not sure her novel would be considered “literature” in the same way as some of the names mentioned. Has more of Charles Frazier sort of feel from what I’ve read about it.
Anyways, as to the OP, I’m surprised no one has mentioned Marilynne Robinson. And Colson Whitehead, as previously stated, definitely belongs on the list.
That is the gist of my discussion. We don’t elevate literary figures into the popular culture like we did in past decades.
Eh… we do, but not the folks who write ‘literature’. Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, George R.R. Martin are most definitely in the popular culture. ‘Genre fiction’ writers have become far more popular and well known than have ever been before.