The Greatest Author of Fiction of the Past 200 Years: Who?

[Extollager]

I am leaving the criteria for greatness undefined, for the moment. I think that the accumulation of nominees will itself help us to decide what greatness is. It is up to you as to whether you think the greatness of the author himself or herself should be factored in.

I nominate Dostoevsky.

 

[j d worthington]

I'm not sure such a question even has meaning. As you hint, everything hinges on your criteria for defining "greatness". If you mean most influential, you may, just possibly, be able to pin a single writer down as such (though I sincerely doubt it). If you mean greatest as far as literary values... I think that is simply too darned slippery a subject, and "it can't be did!". If the former, the name that comes to mind in my case is Poe... not because others haven't written better stories in many ways (they have) but because he essentially defined the essence of the short story ever since his era, and helped to create a wide variety of such; he has also had tremendous influence internationally, either directly or secondarily. Through his tendency to put his theories of fiction into practice he has, I think, done more than any other single writer in this regard of "definition of fiction" (or at least the short tale).

However, he up against stiff competition in many ways, and it will be interesting to see what others think. But, to be honest, as I said, I gravely doubt the question itself has any "content" in any more than a strictly personal sense.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

I nominate Dostoevsky

But I can only read translations?

If we insist more than a one book wonder, and significant output is part of "greatness"?
I dunno ... maybe Dickens. Though there are loads of Authors I like better (Joan Aiken, C.J. Cherryh, Ursula Le Guin, Terry Pratchett, Harry Harrison).

I think it's an impossible to answer meaningless question really.

 

[cgsmith]

I think it's an impossible to answer meaningless question really.

True.

If you mean greatness as best quality. An author with a single book should be considerable. Though it does sound a bit wrong when there are authors who wrote and wrote and wrote.

For a single work, 1984, I'd nominate George Orwell because it simply blew me away. Never read a book that came to a finer point.

Sadly I don't have any other nominations to make, I'm simply not well read enough to pick someone out of the last 200 years

 

[Brian G Turner]

200 years is far too broad a list IMO, as we're basically going to end up with a list of all the literary classic authors.

FWIW, Charles Dickens is still one of the most enduring.

 

[Extollager]

After some more people respond with their nominations -- all necessary reservations about "the greatest" having been expressed -- it may be interesting to set the nominations together and see if one or a few stand out.

For example, I love Dickens and have no doubt of his being great. But if I put Dostoevsky next to him, I'm reminded that the Russian's imagination is far more compelling when it comes to the creation of women characters -- to take one important topic. Dickens is a wonderful storyteller, but his writings generally do not compel the active intellectual wrestling that Dostoevsky invites and even requires. Dickens's imagination is compelling when it comes to the theme of imprisonment (e.g. in Little Dorrit), something no doubt related to Dickens's father's imprisonment for debt. But Dostoevsky takes the topic much farther, in The House of the Dead etc. In writing thus I'm not belittling Dickens. He is a great writer. When I read him, I may think: "Yes, everyone says Dickens is great. But -- he's really great!" And yet Dostoevsky --

But I'd like to see more nominations, whether of authors not yet mentioned, or that agree with a nomination already made.

 

[Randy M.]

I don't think it's a meaningless question, but it's the equivalent of a Rorschach test: Looking at it, what you see may say more about you than about the writer or literature.

And in spite of that I'll offer an answer:

I've enjoyed Poe and Dickens. I haven't read Dostoevsky. I've read some Melville and Moby Dick is a great novel. But the writer who has most impressed me is William Faulkner: As I Lay Dying is a fine novel; Light in August is some kind of great; The Sound and Fury is even greater and yet it isn't as compelling and moving and disturbing as Absalom, Absalom, essentially a mystery story that isn't a who-dun-it so much as a why-dun-it, each theorized motivation more disturbing than the last. Faulkner also wrote excellent short stories: "That Evening Sun"; "Barn Burning"; "A Rose for Emily"; "The Bear"; "Spotted Horses"; among others. And in all of it he wrestled with the legacy of the Old South and the inheritance of the New South, with a people whose most cultivated and cultured could barely survive while its most ferocious and selfish thrived. Further Intruder in the Dust preceded To Kill a Mockingbird by a decade, telling a very similar story perhaps, oddly, a bit more optimistically.


Randy M.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

Poe would be in the running for me, as well as Pat Conroy, Ray Bradbury and Charles Dickens.

 

[Extollager]

But, to be honest, as I said, I gravely doubt the question itself has any "content" in any more than a strictly personal sense.

Oh, I don't think the situation is quite as bad as that. For example, I think many people who'd ever consider thinking about such a question would allow that great authors must speak to many good readers and not just tickle them personally; they can distinguish between "my favorite" and "great."

I think there is merit in making a good-faith effort to identify who might be "the greatest." Doing so invites us to think seriously, though not necessarily solemnly, about our reading, and all of us here at Chrons, I suppose, spend a lot of our lives reading.

I'll propose that one quality the great author will need is "adequacy." A good reader* must believe that this author isn't just good at some specific, limited literary situation. Often, our youthful favorites are authors of this type -- in my case, Lord Dunsany. But as we grow, we become interested in, and capable of understanding (at least to a degree), vast tracts of human experience and concern that we wouldn't have been very ready for at age 12. Dunsany was good or great in the narrow range he made his own, but frankly most of the human dimension is hardly present in his work. What does he have to say worth a moment's attention about friendship, or work, or family life, or why men stupefy themselves (Tolstoy's phrase), or guilt, or grief (not self-pity, but grief), etc.? Yet to point out these absences is not to sneer at Dunsany. Sometimes one of his stories might be just the thing (although I confess I can hardly read him any more).

By contrast, some authors mentioned already do have this adequacy or comprehensiveness, at least quite a lot. They reward good reading, and indeed one of the best ways to become a good reader is to read them -- perhaps even read them aloud.

One obstacle to the discussion of greatness will be non-rereading. This discussion is open to anyone here, but I think people who rarely reread would almost not be able to say much. Great writing invites and rewards rereading.

*A good reader pays attention to what (s)he reads, gets himself/herself out of the way, gives the author sufficient opportunity to accomplish a literary task, and so on. A good piece of writing invites and rewards good reading (alert, non-narcisstistic, etc.). Thus I would argue that Connell's "Most Dangerous Game" is not really good writing, fun though it may be to read, because when one actually pays attention to it, the story falls apart.

 

[dask]

Just 200 years? No problem. Jack Vance!

 

[Fishbowl Helmet]

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley for inventing Science Fiction.
Jules Verne and HG Wells for pushing it along.
Arnould Galopin for inventing Doctor Omega, and thereby Doctor Who.
KH Scheer and Walter Ernsting for creating Perry Rhodan.
Arthur Conan Doyle for creating Sherlock Holmes.
Walter B Gibson for developing The Shadow.
Lester Dent for creating Doc Savage.

But in the end, when you get right down to it... it's gotta be Edgar Rice Burroughs. No question.

 

[j d worthington]

Dale: I think your point about a "good reader" is very much spot-on, as is the point about re-reading. I'd say that, in order for a writer to be considered anywhere near "great", he must be re-readable... not just once or twice, but in such a fashion that, the more one visits that writer's works, the more depth and relevance one finds. Which, by the way, brings in a slight defense of Dunsany. I would say that there are, indeed, a fair number of stories where he addresses one or another aspect of the things you mention, with a considerable insight and compassion. In my view, at his best, he uses an ironic approach to such things in order to deepen the emotional levels he is addressing. I don't see a great deal of self-pity in Dunsany (if that is indeed what you are implying), but I do see a fair amount of disgust with certain tendencies in humankind.

And, incidentally, this is another reason I highly recommend a reassessment of Cabell's work, though I think it best to read the Biography in the intended order to get the full effect. While ostensibly addressing, essentially, the "romantic" attitude toward life, what he is dealing with is a great deal broader than that simple phrase would indicate, and his approach varies considerably in the various volumes of that work. There is, for instance, no little tragedy and a tremendous amount of compassion and genuine love of the human animal, and a very deep insight into both our foibles and strengths. I must admit that I find it rather a pity that he is regarded as either a "humorist" or a writer of "ironic fantasies", as these are very limited aspects of what he managed to do with consummate skill and artistry. Whether he could be considered "great" in any sense, I'm not sure... though, to be frank, I would personally classify him as a superb writer whose work only continues to impress me more the older I get and the more I read him.

As for what I said earlier about any conception of "the greatest" being nonsensical save on a personal level, I stand by that. I do not mean that which simply appeals to a particular reader (which is quite a different thing), but any attempt to more or less objectively pick out any single "greatest" writer of fiction is, to me, destined to failure. Even among the very greatest, there is a rather wide variety, and no single writer will meet even a moderate number of the criteria for "greatest" of the past 200 years. The field of choices, and the reasons for asserting their greatness, is just too vast to be narrowed down that much. "Among the greatest" -- yes, I can see that being a truly valid formulation; but a single greatest? No, I don't think it's possible.

 

[dask]

Mistake, sorry.

 

[dask]

Anyway, if re-reading is a requirement for being great then you leave me with no alternative but to nominate --- Stan Lee!

 

[hitmouse]

A tie between Jane Austin and PG Wodehouse. Obviously.

 

[cuddlyappliance]

I don't think you can pick just one as there are so many genres. For crime you could flip a coin to choose between Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. For horror is it King or Lovecraft. For fantasy is it Tolkein or Lewis Carroll.

 

[Extollager]

I'll propose that one quality the great author will need is "adequacy."

"Comprehensiveness" might be a better word for what I had in mind.

 

[Extollager]

.....no single writer will meet even a moderate number of the criteria for "greatest" of the past 200 years.

Have you read Dostoevsky's major novels? If so, really you don't think he does, in fact, meet a moderate number of the criteria that good readers would agree are attributes of literary greatness?

A great writer must be comprehensive, as I suggested above. In reading him or her, we do not feel that there are numerous tracts of human experience and value to which he or she is oblivious. Moreover, the writer is able to evoke such tracts impressively -- with imagination, emotional force, and intellectual perception -- not just incidentally. One doesn't feel that the author leaves out, or wishes to leave out, something important to our experience and the meaning of our lives. I don't mean that a great literary work gets everything in, but as we survey an author's works we are impressed by how he or she searches out or bodies forth so much of our life.

This is true of Dostoevsky. It's just about true: you name it, Dostoevsky knew it, knew it deeply, evokes it convincingly, somewhere in his major works. I don't think people usually think of him as a writer of note with regard to the human experience of the natural world -- and there's something in this charge; and yet, even here, well, I have to think of Alyosha's joyous night.

By contrast, though I've enjoyed Thomas Hardy's tales and novels, I don't feel that his work should be said to show this quality of comprehensiveness. He can achieve magnificence, I think -- to test that, I'd reread The Mayor of Casterbridge. But I have my doubts... doesn't he, for example, seem to suggest that the world is populated by adults? But Dostoevsky can write with passion and discernment of (or should I say "from") the lives of youngsters, e.g. in The Brothers Karamazov. ...There are children in Jude the Obscure, but it is getting towards 40 years since I read that one, and I don't remember that the children are all that compelling, complete, etc.

You may say that a writer might not need to write of children in order to tell a given story. Of course! On the other hand, shouldn't we be impressed when the story the author has to tell includes so much of life? Conversely, if the story a writer has to tell needs only a little of human experience for its full and complete literary realization, we may rightly admire the work, but it will not compel the admiration that a more comprehensive story deserves if it is fully realized in all its parts.

So again I suggest that we may, in fact, work towards an articulation of what literary greatness would be and then nominate authors who have helped us to see what it was we were looking for when we tried to think about what literary greatness was.

I was fortunate in that my teachers didn't give me big doses of literary theory; we read books. Now as I reflect on 40+ years of reading and reading some of the great works, I have come to perceive that literary greatness is real; its shape may be discerned, to a degree at least, by reasoning upon my reading experience. I have touched aspects of greatness again and again till I have come to have some sense of what it feels like; I can scent it. Not surprisingly it often leads me to where other readers have gone, who've testified of their own experience of the greatness of Dostoevsky and Shakespeare.

Surely this is valuable. If it is a good, though, I don't think it must be seen as a good that excludes lesser goods. I can still have my favorites even while knowing that they may not be great -- at least, that they are not great as Dostoevsky and Shakespeare are great. But my imagination would have been impoverished if I had been content, as a reader, always to keep circling around just my favorites.

 

[anivid]

Alexandre Dumas !!

 

[j d worthington]

Have you read Dostoevsky's major novels? If so, really you don't think he does, in fact, meet a moderate number of the criteria that good readers would agree are attributes of literary greatness?

Of course I do. I have no problem conceding that Dostoevsky is a great writer -- I would go so far as to say one of the very greatest. What I object to with your opening question is the idea that anything like literature (or any other art) can be narrowed down to a single greatest. No matter how great any individual writer may be, I think there are likely to be at least a few others (and, given the history of the past 200 years in literature, I would say a fairly large number) who would have as much of a claim to the title. Other than that, I have little -- if any -- objection to any of what you say here. As I say, it's this single aspect which causes me to balk. Perhaps I'm being pedantic here, but I really think I'm not. I very much think that, beyond a certain point -- that is, once one has conceded all which you say here as being the earmarks of greatness -- it really does come down to personal taste in choosing a single writer.

A great writer must be comprehensive, as I suggested above. In reading him or her, we do not feel that there are numerous tracts of human experience and value to which he or she is oblivious. Moreover, the writer is able to evoke such tracts impressively -- with imagination, emotional force, and intellectual perception -- not just incidentally. One doesn't feel that the author leaves out, or wishes to leave out, something important to our experience and the meaning of our lives. I don't mean that a great literary work gets everything in, but as we survey an author's works we are impressed by how he or she searches out or bodies forth so much of our life.

In the main, I think this is valid, but I think there are indeed writers one can honestly claim were great who do not quite achieve this (at least in their major writings, and perhaps some not at all). But this may well fall under the caution you describe in your opening post.

However, entering into the discussion with yet another name, I would strongly suggest Honoré de Balzac. Certainly, within the compass of his Comédie humaine, (let alone when including his other works), there is little or nothing which he overlooks as far as the range of human experience; nor does he lack for "imagination, emotional force, and intellectual perception" in covering any aspect of this. In fact, I would say he is at very least on a par with Dostoevsky; at times his superior. He has, by more than one "great" novelist, been called "the father of us all", and with reason. So I nominate Balzac as worthy of the title we are discussing here, whether we keep it to singular or (more realistically, in my opinion) expand it to an admittedly select and elite plural.