Checked for any earlier such thread but couldn’t find one.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 26 September 2022 19:22 (two years ago) link
George Gissing
― link.exposing.politically (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Monday, 26 September 2022 19:26 (two years ago) link
Gilbert Frankau.
― Fizzles, Monday, 26 September 2022 19:28 (two years ago) link
Harold Frederic
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Monday, 26 September 2022 19:29 (two years ago) link
xpost Extraordinarily popular at the time, and i found to my astonishment at the weekend, also wrote poetry. The only novel i attempted to read was almost unbearably boring.
― Fizzles, Monday, 26 September 2022 19:30 (two years ago) link
Peter de Polnay
*forty novels in 45 years*
― Fizzles, Monday, 26 September 2022 19:31 (two years ago) link
again, v popular. again, very hard to find any worth these days, though i think he was favourably mentioned by Julian McLaren-Ross somewhere.
― Fizzles, Monday, 26 September 2022 19:32 (two years ago) link
Another Peter de...
Does anyone read Peter de Vries any more?
― Fizzles, Monday, 26 September 2022 19:33 (two years ago) link
Edward Jenkins
― SincereLee 'Scratch' Perry (President Keyes), Monday, 26 September 2022 19:34 (two years ago) link
There's a book on this topic, The Book of Forgotten Authors by Christopher Fowler. Here's an article about it, hilariously the hyperlink to the book on his publisher's website is now a 404.https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20171010-the-great-writers-forgotten-by-history
― link.exposing.politically (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Monday, 26 September 2022 19:37 (two years ago) link
J.G. HollandWilliam BlackJ.W. DeForestHjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
I like these btw
― SincereLee 'Scratch' Perry (President Keyes), Monday, 26 September 2022 19:38 (two years ago) link
Arnold Bennett
― lord of the rongs (anagram), Monday, 26 September 2022 19:38 (two years ago) link
Another Peter de...Does anyone read Peter de Vries any more?
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 26 September 2022 19:39 (two years ago) link
George MeredithSinclair Lewis
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 26 September 2022 19:40 (two years ago) link
― lord of the rongs (anagram)
In a college course on the British modernists, my professor said in ref to Woolf's attacks on Bennett, "Ha, ha, actually, Arnold Bennett's a pretty good novelist!"
Ever heard of Alexander Baron or Mary Elizabeth Braddon?
I'd say Braddon is no longer "forgotten." Lady Audley's Secret has 22, 573 ratings on Goodreads, for example.
― SincereLee 'Scratch' Perry (President Keyes), Monday, 26 September 2022 19:41 (two years ago) link
Sinclair Lewis― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, September 26, 2022 3:40 PM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, September 26, 2022 3:40 PM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink
It Can't Happen Here got a bump after the 2016 election. It along with Arrowsmith, Babbitt, and Main Street appear to be print as "The Essential Sinclair Lewis."
― Infanta Terrible (j.lu), Monday, 26 September 2022 19:56 (two years ago) link
if i’ve read them they don’t belong in this thread, so sinclair lewis def doesn’t
― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Monday, 26 September 2022 19:59 (two years ago) link
Sir Walter Scott was once the towering novelist in English, roughly equal in stature with Dickens. Now, he's a dim blip on a fast receding horizon. And who reads John Galsworthy nowadays?
― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Monday, 26 September 2022 20:00 (two years ago) link
_Another Peter de...Does anyone read Peter de Vries any more?_Good one! A friend once decided to lend me his copy of _Slouching Towards Kalamazoo_ which I eventually returned years later unread except for the first page or two.
― Fizzles, Monday, 26 September 2022 20:13 (two years ago) link
Mrs. Alexander (Annie Hector)Margaret Oliphant
― SincereLee 'Scratch' Perry (President Keyes), Monday, 26 September 2022 20:17 (two years ago) link
Have read some Mrs. Oliphant, as she was credited in the anthologies where I found her---don't remember other particulars, but thought she was very good.
― dow, Monday, 26 September 2022 21:01 (two years ago) link
Mervyn Peake
― the floor is guava (Ye Mad Puffin), Monday, 26 September 2022 21:07 (two years ago) link
oliphant still has several regular readers at my library (granted it's a strange one); have seen bennett, braddon, and gissing all go out too.
― devvvine, Monday, 26 September 2022 21:11 (two years ago) link
Some of the long-book high modernists -- Robert Musil, Ford Madox Ford, John Dos Passos -- feel this way to me. Still famous, I think, but read?
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Monday, 26 September 2022 21:11 (two years ago) link
has anyone not writing a disraeli biography read a beaconsfield novel?
― devvvine, Monday, 26 September 2022 21:13 (two years ago) link
Mervyn Peake― the floor is guava (Ye Mad Puffin), Monday, September 26, 2022 10:07 PM (nineteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink
― the floor is guava (Ye Mad Puffin), Monday, September 26, 2022 10:07 PM (nineteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink
No way, I read Titus Groan just this year.
― link.exposing.politically (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Monday, 26 September 2022 21:28 (two years ago) link
I still want to read Peake, also Gissing's New Grub Street, sounds v. relatable. Did read a lot of Dos Passos a few years ago, but seemed like would have been best read in high school (later confirmed by ILB founder Scott Seward). Enjoyed the Ford memoir I read, haven't gotten to the novels. Will read my copy of The Man Without Qualities when I can dig it up.
― dow, Monday, 26 September 2022 21:53 (two years ago) link
eephus' list are all authors I've thought I should read at some point or another and never did, so you might be onto something there (xp)
For some reason I read a couple of Sinclair Lewis books in high school (on my own, not for class). I was assigned Galsworthy in college, but it was his plays for a course on modern drama. A friend gave me a copy of Titus Groan not too long ago, so definitely not Peake.
Booth Tarkington, maybe?
― rob, Monday, 26 September 2022 21:55 (two years ago) link
Booth Tarkington is a GREAT one. Probably looking at old Pulitzer winners is a good way of finding likely candidates.
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Monday, 26 September 2022 22:00 (two years ago) link
Sir Walter Scott was once the towering novelist in English, roughly equal in stature with Dickens.
Probably greater in stature actually.
― Narada Michael Fagan (Tom D.), Monday, 26 September 2022 22:02 (two years ago) link
I don't like Gissing, afraid he's often like "what if Dickens or Zola was a tory who hated poor people and thought they deserved all they got?"
― link.exposing.politically (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Monday, 26 September 2022 22:11 (two years ago) link
Wanna read BT's The Magnificent Ambersons. (Just now finally got irony of family name btw.)
― dow, Monday, 26 September 2022 22:14 (two years ago) link
I did read Lewis's Kingsblood Royal: rising young pillar of a Minnesota community is urged by his daddy to investigate family tree, which may be like title says. Turns out key ancestor, whom they knew to be Canadian immigrant, was originally Haitian---Creole at least. Youngblood conceals findings from father, and self for a while, but eventually is told by out Black people of Minnesota race crimes, one of which (been so long, can't recall) may well be the Duluth lynching which some Minnesotans think is referenced in first verse of Duluth native's "Desolation Row." Novel, even by Nobel Prize winner, seems to be pushing envelope of late 40s, when civil rights was said by proto-McCarthyites and some others to be subject to Commie plots.
― dow, Monday, 26 September 2022 22:35 (two years ago) link
Robert Musil, Ford Madox Ford, John Dos Passos
Musil recently had a minor revival with new translations coming out and I read Man Without Qualities several years back. I've read Ford's most famous novels, and thought his Parade's End trilogy much better than The Good Soldier. Every time I try to read anything of Dos Passos I bog down before I get to page 20.
― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Monday, 26 September 2022 22:56 (two years ago) link
I figure very religious novelists are less read today, like E.P. Roe who was hugely popular and is probably now just read by Christians.
― SincereLee 'Scratch' Perry (President Keyes), Monday, 26 September 2022 23:19 (two years ago) link
― SincereLee 'Scratch' Perry (President Keyes)
oooh, how about lew wallace?
first one to come to mind was james branch cabell
do people read, like, james clavell? james a. michener? how about clive cussler, author of the extremely popular "dirk pitt" series of novels? how about don pendleton, whose character mack bolan, the executioner, was the inspiration for marvel comics' "punisher", and is really the guy cops _should_ be celebrating?
― Kate (rushomancy), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 00:40 (two years ago) link
J.F. Powers?
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 00:53 (two years ago) link
Thought Powers got revived by NYRB.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 00:55 (two years ago) link
I bet Executioner books are still read by gun show types
― SincereLee 'Scratch' Perry (President Keyes), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 01:01 (two years ago) link
99% sure my dad still reads clive cussler
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 01:14 (two years ago) link
I'll see your James Michener and raise you Herman Fucking Wouk
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 01:15 (two years ago) link
"Historians, novelists, publishers, and critics who gathered at the Library of Congress in 1995 to mark Wouk's 80th birthday described him as an American Tolstoy.[2]"
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 01:16 (two years ago) link
Feel like the most canonical answers so far areArnold BennettGeorge MeredithJames Branch CabellI even seem to remember something the subject of the original post said about Meredith, have to go look for it. Of course all the other answers are welcome as well, although some authors that have been named seem to have had recent enough revivals to be disqualified, such as Mervyn Peake, as someone has already brought up.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 01:19 (two years ago) link
Meredith mentioned here:
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 01:25 (two years ago) link
Bonfires In The Sky: What Are You Reading, Winter 2021-22?
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 01:26 (two years ago) link
Doesn’t work on zing though
Bernard DeVotoA.B. Guthrie Jr.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 01:31 (two years ago) link
^these two were on the reading list of The Other (Honors?) English Class one summer in high school so I checked them out at the time but don’t think I have heard much mention of them since.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 01:33 (two years ago) link
Tbf those writers have been out of fashion for a looong time. They still got reviewed and sold well but back in the 90s I never met anyone in a writing program who was interested in Updike or Bellow. Cheever was popular though.
― There’s a Monster in my Vance (President Keyes), Thursday, 29 August 2024 03:30 (one month ago) link
In or out of print---and a lot of that's cyclic, as with recorded music---when there's not a big publicity campaign, incl. in college courses, a lot of writers and their readers settle into isolated relationships, niches not arenas. Bookstore readings can be exciting and make me squeal like the other geeks in a can, sure--never gonna be like going to see Oasis, I'm told! And that's fine. Writers love to talk, hence all those dope Paris Review interviews, because letting fly in the spotlight is a great form of procrastination (also selling yourself on the writing)---before inevitable return to the page and the screen, all alone.
― dow, Thursday, 29 August 2024 03:56 (one month ago) link
And that's fine---even a bit before quarantine, I was getting to where I could take or leave crowds.
― dow, Thursday, 29 August 2024 04:09 (one month ago) link
Crowds not on the page or screen, that is. And choosy about the ones that are.
― dow, Thursday, 29 August 2024 04:11 (one month ago) link
https://classic.esquire.com/article/1963/7/1/john-filler
Not fair, he wasn't a novelist. What was he?
― alimosina, Tuesday, 10 September 2024 05:32 (three weeks ago) link
its been a story since the millennials that youngs don't want to watch old/black & white movies and i think its similar with books.
There's a very healthy millenial/gen z fandom for classic Hollywood, actually - lots of interest in female actors, reclaiming of figures like Dorothy Azner, deep dives into how fandom worked in that era via analysis of fan magazines, etc. A lot more for younger people to engage and identify with politically there than with those midcentury male authors imo.
― Daniel_Rf, Tuesday, 10 September 2024 09:14 (three weeks ago) link
I hated everything I read by Bellow, Roth, and Updike— I always figured it was because I am gay?
― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Friday, 27 September 2024 00:22 (one week ago) link
Ha, probably not quite
― The Clones of Dr. Slop (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 27 September 2024 00:28 (one week ago) link
Welcome, table.
I liked several Roth novels and many of Bellow's shorter things. With the latter I sense a connection between the Jewish raconteur tradition and the Cuban one, just being expansive and talking shit for its own sake.
Updike can go to hell.
― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 27 September 2024 00:52 (one week ago) link
The Updike I'd save is the little-discussed and very atypical 'Gertrude and Claudius' and some of the short stories.Bellow's novellas are usually wonderful.When Roth is on form he is pretty impressive.But I can absolutely understand anyone who can't be fucked with any of them, all things considered.
― Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Friday, 27 September 2024 01:22 (one week ago) link
James otm
― The Clones of Dr. Slop (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 27 September 2024 01:41 (one week ago) link
Don't lots of people read all three of these guys still?
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Friday, 27 September 2024 02:12 (one week ago) link
Roth is the only one of these who ever really sang to me. Updike I admire from a distance without liking. Bellow just seems full of himself and cold.
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Friday, 27 September 2024 02:13 (one week ago) link
As I said on ILE:
I've read very little of Updike's fiction ("The A&P" used to bean English textbook staple, and seemed OK for that: dusty minor realism, but appropriate for the A&P, liked "The Lucid Eye in Silver Town," better, where maybe the same now ex-A&P kid and Dad go to NYC). I like a lot of his book reviews collected in Hugging The Shore and Odd Jobs: descriptions and quotes usually leave me with a clear impression of the book, whatever his verdict. So far, he's led me to some good stuff, although maybe it's too easy to be right about Henry Green (he does note various complaints). He tackles and seemingly clarifies some very complicated-looking non-fiction, though usually chooses fiction, usually novels. Also liked his book about painters, Just Looking, where I could compare his takes with good reproductions of the art, in a very large-page trade paperback, not coffee-table format, but vivid and handy.
― dow, Friday, 27 September 2024 02:16 (one week ago) link
Sure, people still read 'em; somebody still reads every writer mentioned on this thread.
― dow, Friday, 27 September 2024 02:17 (one week ago) link
SOMEBODY does, sure, but Roth, Updike, Bellow, I think you go to any Barnes and Noble and there are several novels by each of these guys in stock and ready for purchase, right? Like they haven't even really started the process of being forgotten. They're no Hergesheimer.
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Friday, 27 September 2024 04:12 (one week ago) link
sean thor conroe
― this train don't carry no wankers (doo rag), Friday, 27 September 2024 04:26 (one week ago) link
Hilariously I have a second-hand omnibus of Henry Green novels, signed by Updike. Just as he never seemed to have an unpublished thought, he must have signed _everything_. This thing was so valueless that someone bought it for me as a joke.
― Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Friday, 27 September 2024 06:20 (one week ago) link
Have to say I've never had much interest in those "big beast" post-American realist novelists - Roth, Updike, Bellow et al. They certainly haven't disappeared but I do think they are future candidates for novelists no one reads anymore. I mean, Norman Mailer has definitely faded from view, I'm not sure who reads him anymore and he used to be huge.
― Zelda Zonk, Friday, 27 September 2024 06:28 (one week ago) link
Post-war, not post-American!
― Zelda Zonk, Friday, 27 September 2024 06:29 (one week ago) link
Yes, they're not novelists no one reads anymore yet but they are def less widely read than 30-40 years ago and that tendency is likely to continue.
― Daniel_Rf, Friday, 27 September 2024 09:11 (one week ago) link
That’s the case with just about every author.
― There’s a Monster in my Vance (President Keyes), Friday, 27 September 2024 11:53 (one week ago) link
Not at all, authors are constantly being rediscovered.
― Daniel_Rf, Friday, 27 September 2024 12:07 (one week ago) link
I think there’s a pretty good chance Roth and Bellow will keep being rediscovered after going through a period of neglect.
― There’s a Monster in my Vance (President Keyes), Friday, 27 September 2024 12:10 (one week ago) link
Jeffery Farnol?
I keep seeing references to him - a favourite of Jack Vance and Norman Mailer - but never seen one of his books in the wild.
― jmm, Friday, 27 September 2024 12:31 (one week ago) link
just listened to a podcast in which millennial author Vinson Cunningham (b. 1985) was enthusing about Bellow
― jaymc, Friday, 27 September 2024 12:31 (one week ago) link
I wouldn't be surprised - by definition we don't know what the tastes and fads of the future will be - but in 2024 they're imo on the decline while contemporaries of theirs have held their spot or even gotten the rediscovery treatment already.
― Daniel_Rf, Friday, 27 September 2024 12:44 (one week ago) link
Not really sure how you’re seeing this. The big American Jewish novelists are always going to have a certain readership.
― There’s a Monster in my Vance (President Keyes), Friday, 27 September 2024 12:46 (one week ago) link
Not saying it's going to happen to Bellow et al, but huge novelists do sometimes go into decline and never recover. Looking at the wiki for Updike, I see he's one of only 4 novelists who have won the Pulitzer twice. Another being Booth Tarkington, who was a major novelist in his day, but will he ever have a renaissance? I doubt it.
― Zelda Zonk, Friday, 27 September 2024 13:00 (one week ago) link
This is from the NewYork Times TODAY:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/27/books/review/philip-roth-american-pastoral-gloves.html
― There’s a Monster in my Vance (President Keyes), Friday, 27 September 2024 13:04 (one week ago) link
William Dean Howells scowls at this thread.
― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 27 September 2024 13:06 (one week ago) link
Arguably this has already happened to Roth once! By the early 90s I feel like he was sort of considered a relic, then American Pastoral etc. came out and he had a kind of late career renaissance
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Friday, 27 September 2024 13:31 (one week ago) link
He was most def in a rut between 1988 and 1993.
― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 27 September 2024 13:34 (one week ago) link
Roth, Rut or Rule
― There’s a Monster in my Vance (President Keyes), Friday, 27 September 2024 13:44 (one week ago) link
Here's a few names:
Mary Augusta WardMary Wilkins Freeman
Both were popular (Ward hugely so) and critically acclaimed, but I guess there could only be one famous female turn of the century author and Edith Wharton got the prize.
― There’s a Monster in my Vance (President Keyes), Friday, 27 September 2024 14:41 (one week ago) link
Divine Right's Trip, by Gurney Norman, is a very late 1960s book, as the cover shows:
https://pics.cdn.librarything.com/picsizes/68/85/68851518e004f9a596878746a41444341587343_v5.jpg
The author is still around and appears to have become a regionalist writer with a correspondingly limited audience, so it may be unfair to include him in this topic.
― alimosina, Friday, 27 September 2024 17:12 (one week ago) link
"late-1960s"
― alimosina, Friday, 27 September 2024 17:13 (one week ago) link
xp Mary Wilkins Freeman seems to be remembered now mainly for her ghost stories, and mainly by specialists in that kind of genre fiction
― Brad C., Friday, 27 September 2024 18:03 (one week ago) link
Yeah, there are a few late Victorian era writers who dabbled in supernatural or sci-fi stories and are mainly remembered for those now.
― There’s a Monster in my Vance (President Keyes), Friday, 27 September 2024 18:05 (one week ago) link
William Dean Howells has a book of ghost stories, for instance.
― There’s a Monster in my Vance (President Keyes), Friday, 27 September 2024 18:06 (one week ago) link
hell, NYRB surprised me when they collected the few ghost stories Edith Wharton wrote (they're mostly good).
― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 27 September 2024 18:07 (one week ago) link
I do love that particular type of late 60s book design, also love Edith Wharton's ghost stories
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Friday, 27 September 2024 19:08 (one week ago) link
“Few”? She wrote heaps! And they are indeed great, as are her short stories more generally.
― Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Friday, 27 September 2024 23:15 (one week ago) link
i used to love saul bellow. he taught me so much. he could be spellbinding. i loved the fact that plot was beside the point in almost everything he wrote! dangling man, the victim, and seize the day were ahead of their time and i could totally see all three appealing to writers now. i don't know how many of you have read augie march but it is a crazy fucking book. you never need to read thomas wolfe. just read augie march. his sentences used to kill me. the language. his book about delmore schwartz is intense. roth could be similarly dazzling. just a one man band. unstoppable. and more punk rock then most punk rockers. Our Gang was punk before punk. that book is insane. Sabbath's Theater is just...so fucked up but kinda genius! i don't use the G-word much. i don't read them anymore though. maybe i will someday again. Stanley Elkin is the writer who stayed with me all these years. he's my spirit animal. i'm so jealous of him every time i read him. and, like his pal saul, plot was just an excuse to write a book. kinda like another big inspiration of mine, Peter de Vries. his books stay with me too. i am never far from one. they were so good at what they did.
― scott seward, Saturday, 28 September 2024 00:31 (one week ago) link
I don't particularly love Roth or Updike, but yeah, Bellow can be great (he can also be tedious). I need to re-read Augie March at some point. I think it will take a while for any of those three to be truly forgotten. Someone like William Styron I think is already further along with that process.
― o. nate, Monday, 30 September 2024 13:23 (five days ago) link
speaking of marthas vineyard, ex-ilxor beth parker used to do the flower and shrub landscaping for vineyard resident, friend of styron, and forgotten novelist Ward Just. he wrote NINETEEN novels! they are probably all out of print. maybe i should read one. they always looked so boring but i'm totally boring now.
― scott seward, Monday, 30 September 2024 13:51 (five days ago) link
In a column at Literary Hub in 2018, Susan Zakin wrote that "Ward Just is not merely America’s best political novelist. He is America’s greatest living novelist. To our discredit, he’s also America’s Greatest Unknown Novelist."
― There’s a Monster in my Vance (President Keyes), Monday, 30 September 2024 14:24 (five days ago) link