Who are today's literary greats?

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kennyc

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I'll add a second vote for Octavia Butler. I love what she is trying to say about the human condition, though it's depressing. And I love how the story is about humanity instead of individual humans, yet it still manages to tell the individual stories of three characters at the same time.

Yes! She is wonderful!
Slightly off topic, but not completely, I ran across this a couple of days ago. Her notes/goals/plans from her notebook/journal in 1988: http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/01/octavia-butler-goals.html
 

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"Literary" is just a marketng term. The fact is that history will record the greatest contributions to the literature of our age, and I think we can all agree that King will be on that list.

King already is; his fiction is included in Ph.D. reading exams on the novel, American Lit and spec fic.

And his presence in anthologies like various Norton Anthologies used for under graduate English majors essentially establishes him in the canon.
 

Chris P

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I think King will be remembered for his massive popular reception, which translates into influence. How many writers were first inspired based on something of King's that they read versus a less-well received author who might have been more visionary, artistic, or had more technical merit?
 

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I think his biggest problem, besides just people being snobs about it, is the amount of material he has written. When he is good, he is really really good, but he's written a lot that is terrible, too.
 

kennyc

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Ellis Clover

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Margaret Atwood, Michael Chabon, Amy Tan, Stephen King, Jonathan Safran Foer, Haruki Murakami. Sebastian Faulks. Sue Miller is not especially well-known but absolutely wonderful.
 

HarvesterOfSorrow

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Gotta add Wally Lamb to the list. I'm jealous of how damn good he is.

And Stephen King, my hero, most certainly is a literary great.
 

lacygnette

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Do you think King will last? There are many authors, fabulously popular in their own time, who fade.
 

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Do you think King will last? There are many authors, fabulously popular in their own time, who fade.

King is already in the major literature textbooks; he'll last. He's already edging into the canon via novella and shorts.
 

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Do you think King will last? There are many authors, fabulously popular in their own time, who fade.

I've only read a few of King's books, but I believe he will.

Dickens was pretty popular and successful in his time, and he's lasted. In my opinion, it's because his characters are so memorable. I'm not saying King is Dickens, but I do remember his characters long after I've read the book.
 

dragonfliet

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Since this is becoming a debate: I'm not really on the King side of things. I think he's been influential, but I can't think of any single book of his that is particularly great. Carrie was pretty interesting, and his short stories are good, but it never feels particularly incredible to me. Just quite good. Not that it matters, in the end (or that this is in any way a bad thing). Only time and fate decides who lasts in the long run.

Absolutely great writers who no one has mentioned yet: Lance Olson, Angela Carter, Lee K. Abbott, J.M Coetzee, Kelly Link, Antonya Nelson, Jose Saramago, Janette Winterson, Carole Maso, Rikki Ducornet and Brian Evenson. I'm missing something huge here that I was trying to hold in my head while I scanned the thread, but it's gone. It kind of annoys me that only one person has mentioned Letham, who is fucking brilliance personified. Intensely personal and thoughtful writing and insanely inventive imagination.
 

lacygnette

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Hey dragon -
Yes to Antonya and Coetzee! The others are unknown to me - I'll have to look them up. Come on over and join us at Sloppy Joes...
 

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Also, Jonathon Franzen, Philip Meyers (The Son is a must-read), and though I haven't read any of his work beyond All the Light include Anthony Doerr.
 

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I repeat this entire post. I can't understand the scoffs at DFW fans, and maybe it's because I am one. Be it pretentious or mockable, the man was a genius. To deny it seems to misunderstand him entirely.

Definitely read what you can get your hands on from Junot Diaz. He and his stories have a way of taking hold of your guts and turning them around and back again.

Wallace, definitely. I went through a phase where my fan-girling for him had almost religious proportions. I'd definitly rank Infinite Jest among the most transformative reading experiences in my life. Of course that puts me in a certain category of DFW-fan which is easily mockable (it's the kind of preference you shouldn't admit to on dating profiles for instance, if you want to appeal to women at least, as it causes almost as much wariness as professed love for Bukowski, Pahlaniuk or the Beats).

Still, I think everyone who cares about literature should at least be able to see the appeal (even if it may not have much personal resonance or if over-identification with the characters might be a bit of a problem). I'm fairly confident that after the hype, the backslash and the backslash to the backslash, his relevance will persist.

Franzen however... eh. I found him readable enough, so I would probably co-sign your attestation of basic competence, but I've never met someone who's getting all starry-eyed about him. He generally doesn't evoke too much passion - rarely among his defenders, and, I would argue, not even among his detractors, who often focus more on his old-man-yells-at-cloud stick in his essays and other public pronouncements than his actual work. (My beef is that he mostly just affirms a view of the world already pretty familiar to me; he captures that accurately and there's probably some value in that alone, but it's not exactly an under-represented perspective on things; so far there hasn't been anything particularly eye-opening to me about reading him. And as far as mere elegance of prose goes, I like McEwan better.)

Anyone vouching for Junot Diaz? I haven't yet come around to reading him, but I've heard some good things.
 

ASeiple

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Up until last year I would have instantly answered "Terry Pratchett." But, well... He will be remembered as such, though, even if he's not quite "today's" literary great anymore. As far as the Stephen King debate goes, yes, I think that some of his work will be considered high literature. Not all of it, but that's fine. Dumas and Shakespeare had their share of unremembered stinkers, so it's no surprise that a lot of us are encumbered by the contempt wrought by familiarity.

As far as new(ish) names go, I can point to Dr. Jenna Moran. Her prose is pure poetry in ink. That said, she might not make it due to obscurity... most of her work that I know of is in the field of roleplaying games, and that's a niche of a niche at best. Still, if she gets a little more recognition, I could easily believe that her work would be enjoyed a few centuries down the road.
 
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