The King of Our Age

[swan_tower]

A while back my husband and I got into a conversation about the iconic writers of different eras — the people where, if you can remember a single person who wrote in that time period, they’re the one you think of. Chaucer. Shakespeare. Austen. Dickens.

This led, of course, to us debating who from the current era might be That Writer two hundred years from now. It’s a mug’s game, of course, trying to predict who’s going to last; the field of literature is littered with names who were expected to be classics for the ages, many of whom are now utterly forgotten. But a mug’s game can still be fun to play, especially when you’re making idle conversation over dinner.

The way I see it, the author in question is likely to exhibit some combination of four qualities:

1. They’re popular (though not necessarily critically acclaimed just yet),
2. They’re at least moderately prolific (no one-book wonders here),
3. They’re working in a genre/medium/field that is especially characteristic of their era, and
4. Their work reflects the social issues of their time.

(Notice I say nothing about quality in there. I do think that quality matters, but I also think our ability to judge what qualifies as quality, from the perspective of later generations, is deeply suspect.)

I said to my husband that I fully expect the writer of our age — defining “our age” as the late twentieth to early twenty-first century — to be someone in the field of speculative fiction, i.e. science fiction, fantasy, and/or supernatural horror. There has undeniably been a boom in that mode of storytelling in the last few decades; I suspect that, as a result, those works may be remembered for longer than many of the quietly mimetic tales of literary fiction. (In fact, if I’m being honest with myself, I suspect that the Writer of Our Age is more likely to be a movie director — Spielberg’s a good candidate — than anybody in prose fiction.)

Popular, prolific, working in spec fic, reflecting the social issues of our era . . . .

My money’s on Stephen King.

He’s already acquired a veneer of respectability that he sure as hell didn’t have a couple of decades ago. His works are being taught in college courses. He caters — I mean the word in a non-derogatory sense — to a broad audience, and generally writes about very ordinary blue-collar types, in a way that can be read as social commentary, whether it was intended as such or not. There are other authors who may be remembered, as much for their impact on the field as on their works (J.K. Rowling for the YA boom, George R.R. Martin for being the most famous epic fantasist since Tolkien, etc), but I don’t expect their work to be read much outside of specialized circles a hundred years from now. They’re probably the Christopher Marlowes of our era, doing some pioneering work, but generally only read by people who are exploring that genre in greater depth.

I’m curious whether other people agree with my assessment, though. Are there other authors you think are more likely to be remembered in the long term? If so, who and why?

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[malkingrey]

I think you're right. Stephen King, more than anybody, has a valid claim to being the Charles Dickens of the present day.

[swan_tower]

Which would have been an absolutely incomprehensible statement thirty years ago. <g>

[landofnowhere]

Pratchett also ticks your boxes.

I don't know how his pop culture references will hold up with time, but then you could say the same of Shakespeare... but then Pratchett doesn't have quite the same way with words. It would be interesting to see how the *weirdness* of his books will age -- the bits that are written in deliberately archaic style won't have the same effect.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Pratchett's a little too referential, I think? Too meta. You'd have to know the stuff he's referencing to get the value of what he's doing. Which is awesome as its own thing, but I don't know how well it will hold up over time.

[landofnowhere]

I think future scholars will appreciate the referential-ness. Not sure about everyone else.

Thinking about this, the broader cultural awareness of Shakespeare/Austen/Dickens is largely based on modern adaptations -- so another criterion to consider is adaptability to other media. With today's media, this means that plot, character, and character interactions are more important than other features of an author (such as narrative voice -- which is why I disagree with LBS).

However, it's hard to predict what will be most successfully adapted in the future -- because in the medium term, adaptations require getting the IP rights from whoever controls them, and in the long term we don't know what sorts of future media will emerge as vehicles for adaptations of print works.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

True, media adaptations will contribute significantly to how much an author is remembered.

[maribou]

AGREED. I've been claiming that Stephen King with be this century's Dickens since sometime before 1999. (I know I was saying it to customers at the bookstore pretty much as soon as I started working there, because they would be all awkward about wanting his stuff... but I'm not sure when I thought of it, just that it was before then.)

You explain why very well.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

He's definitely somebody with staying power on the scale of decades, which is more than a lot of authors can say.

[lowellboyslash.livejournal.com]

Depending on what you mean by "our age," my money's on Harper Lee, Margaret Atwood, or George Orwell. I think the late 20th and early 21st century will be primarily used by future scholars to represent dystopia, or at the very least, civil strife; they'll look for authors who are already elevated into the canon, but whose work remains "edgy." They'll especially be interested in language that seems characteristic of our time, and all of these three have very striking prose. (Go open To Kill A Mockingbird. I'll wait.)

If I have to pick just one of those three, I'd bet on Atwood, because (a) she has a much larger body of work than the other two, and (b) her work is frequently concerned with futurity and multitemporality, which is a feature your other examples share.

But all of that is cynicism, because the author I hope will make it is good old JK. She is, like Austen and like Shakespeare, a writer who wrote for love and to delight others; like them, she wasn't trying to make High Art (even if time and distance has elevated the others into that stratum). She raised a generation. I'd like to believe that counts for something.

[lowellboyslash.livejournal.com]

(Another feature your examples all share, by the way: they're all British, which isn't an accident. ::shakes fist at the colonial imperialism of the academy:: )

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Well, some of that is time period. There wasn't really much in the way of American literature in Shakespeare's day, much less Chaucer's. :-) (Narrative traditions, yes. But oral literature is a different beast.)

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Harper Lee wrote one very good book, but I think you need more than that to be remembered by the masses later on. Orwell only has two that anybody really talks about. (Also, they're both somewhat earlier than the era I had in mind.) Atwood stands a better chance, but I dunno -- I think she's the kind of writer we think will be remembered, but will mostly be beloved of scholars rather than the populace in the long term.

Whether or not JK Rowling sticks will probably depend on what else she does. I don't think HP alone is enough, but she's also still working, so who knows.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

We remember Chaucer for one work. :) Boccaccio, Virgil, Dante... Granted the competition is fiercer now.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Anybody working in the age of mass media is playing a different game than Chaucer was, yeah.

[landofnowhere]

But Chaucer did write other things, which helped support his scholarly reputation -- and without that, nobody would be reading him in English class. (He's not someone who has adapted well to the media age so far.)

Likewise Voltaire -- I think of him as /the/ author of the French Enlightenment, but I only know him for one short novel and a handful of quotations. I feel like he's the best analogue to Orwell here (whose future popularity will depend on how and to what extent our culture absorbs Orwell's lessons, as it has largely absorbed Voltaire's.)

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Jin Yong aka Louis Cha. He has only been selectively translated into English, but he is hugely popular, writers very exciting, dense, complex books and is very influential not only on other writers but on film-makers and musicians in the Chinese-speaking world.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I should have specified English-language -- world literature is well beyond the scope of my ability to judge.

[kernezelda]

Even before I finished reading the first paragraph, I thought of Stephen King. He knows people, he puts people on the page. The Shining is for my money one of the best books portraying alcoholism and how it can destroy a man and a family that I've ever read. It's scary not only for the very frightening supernatural elements, but for how real the struggles of the family feel, isolation magnifying every grating difficulty, the way the mind without outside input consumes itself.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Well, I did tip my hand a bit with the post title. ;-)

He definitely has some in-the-trenches experience with the problems he writes about.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

What 'age' range are we talking about? Would King displace Tolkien, or Tolkien be an earlier age?

Austen seems pretty close to Dickens, compared to the centuries of the previous gaps. (And Beowulf before Chaucer.)

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

"defining 'our age' as the late twentieth to early twenty-first century"

I'd consider Tolkien to be an earlier era. I'm not quite versed enough in these terms to be positive of my identification here, but he probably belongs to the modernist era, and I'm looking more at the postmodern. I mean, The Fellowship of the Ring was published in 1954 (and written way earlier); Carrie was published in 1974.

The gaps between my examples aren't hugely relevant, except insofar as before the printing press, being a Big Thing was a lot harder to achieve. There are seventeenth- and eighteenth-century authors who could be named as the ones remembered from their particular eras -- basically local peaks between the huge ones of Shakespeare and Dickens.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Oops, missed that detail, sorry.

[sarcastibich.livejournal.com]

I was thinking of Stephen King before I read your statement of such, so that gives support to his name.

But what about Gaiman? His work on movies and comics puts his name out into other media, exposing him to more people to review and consider him for The Ages.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Good point. I don't quite know if Gaiman has the "socially relevant" angle to the degree that King does, but on the other hand I wouldn't blink in surprise and go "really? Of all the writers, he's the one you remember?" He's plausible, even if my money isn't on him.