Novelists No One Reads Anymore

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.

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.

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)

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?

J.F. Powers?

Thought Powers got revived by NYRB.

I bet Executioner books are still read by gun show types

99% sure my dad still reads clive cussler

I'll see your James Michener and raise you Herman Fucking Wouk

"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]"

Feel like the most canonical answers so far are

Arnold Bennett
George Meredith
James Branch Cabell

I 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.

Meredith mentioned here:

Bonfires In The Sky: What Are You Reading, Winter 2021-22?

Doesn’t work on zing though

Bernard DeVoto
A.B. Guthrie Jr.

^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.

I read a George Meredith book last week!

Which?

btw, James, I didn't know this thread was for obscurities we hadn't read.

It was Beauchamp’s Career. I liked it.

those sound like worthy lost authors, but I haven't heard of any of them

I've been thinking about more pedestrian works

Years ago I loved Len Deighton's espionage trilogies - Berlin Game, Mexico Set and London Match, and also Spy Hook, Spy Line, Spy Sinker and Faith, Hope, Charity. Looking him up today I'm surprised to read that he is still alive

I just looked to see when the Mack Bolan the Executioner series ended. 2020!

Yeah, a lot of popular spy novelists from the 50s/60s not named Ian Fleming or John Le Carre are pretty obscure these days.

Oliver Optic

ok I guess, not sure what you're mad about

Leon Uris maybe too obvious but also maybe I missed the Uris revival. James Clavell already noted. I kind of think those types of novelists who wrote those astronomically long works which inevitably were turned into eight hour mini series are perfect for this thread. John Jakes!

Which?

btw, James, I didn't know this thread was for obscurities we hadn't read.

Although now that I look, some of the names mentioned (even by me) are still in print. But still in print is one thing. Being in print plus the cachet of a new edition with foreword by Michael Moorcock like a recent edition of Titus Alone I just got is another thing.

But the cover says the intro is by another guy, David Louis Edelman.

Booth Tarkington is a GREAT one. Probably looking at old Pulitzer winners is a good way of finding likely candidates.

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Monday, September 26, 2022 5:00 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

There was a good New Yorker article a couple of years ago about Tarkington's changing reputation. Here's how it begins:

A trick question: Can you name the only three writers who have won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction twice? Faulkner, yes; Updike. And? Hats off if you came up with Booth Tarkington. And yet his two prize-winners—“The Magnificent Ambersons” and “Alice Adams,” just reissued in one volume by the Library of America—are not even the most commercially successful novels of his extraordinarily successful career. Nine of his books were ranked among the top ten sellers of their year (up there, pre-Stephen King, with Zane Grey and Mary Roberts Rinehart), and the outlandishly dissimilar “The Turmoil” and “Seventeen” were the No. 1 sellers in consecutive years. And then there’s “Penrod,” probably the most beloved boys’ book since Tom and Huck, though I can’t recommend a stroll down that particular memory lane.

There are thirty or so novels, countless short stories and serials, a string of hit plays. And there were countless honors: Tarkington was not only commercial but literary—not just the Pulitzers but in 1933 the gold medal for fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which Edith Wharton and William Dean Howells had won previously. As early as 1922, the Times had placed him twelfth (and the only writer) on a list of the twelve greatest contemporary American men. “Yes, I got in as last on the Times list,” Tarkington commented. “What darn silliness! You can demonstrate who are the 10 fattest people in a country and who are the 27 tallest . . . but you can’t say who are the 10 greatest with any more authority than you can say who are the 13 damndest fools.”

As for booksellers, in 1921 they voted him the most significant contemporary American writer. (Wharton came in second. Robert Frost? Thirteenth. Theodore Dreiser? Fourteenth. Eugene O’Neill? Twenty-sixth.) Nothing ever changes. Some forty years earlier, a comparable poll ranked E. P. Roe and Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth at Nos. 1 and 2, with scores of votes each. At the bottom of the list—with two votes—came Herman Melville.

How to explain this remarkable career—the meteoric ascent to fame, the impregnable reputation over several decades, and then the pronounced plunge into obscurity? If you read all his fiction (which I strongly advise not attempting), you find a steady if uninspired hand at the helm. Slowly, painstakingly, Tarkington had taught himself to write reliable prose and construct appealing fictions; he was unpretentious—always literate but never showy. You could count on him to catch your interest even if he failed to grip your imagination or your heart. And he was always a gentleman.

The article finds that Tarkington turned into a hack as he got older and concludes that "ultimately what stands between him and any large achievement is his deeply rooted, unappeasable need to look longingly backward, an impulse that goes beyond nostalgia."

Good find! As a kid I forced myself through some giant new volume of Penrod since the elementary school librarian said it was only for True Readers or something like that. The only thing I can remember about it was some gag about all the kids bumping into each other and saying "Pardon my bum."

Not to pick on Alfred but those NYRB J.F. Powers volumes have intros by the likes of Elizabeth Hardwick and Denis Donoghue.

David Ely
WIlliam Kotzwinkle
Richard Brautigan

Now wondering how the LoA edition of Tarkington fits in with my reissue rule, does it not really count because they kind of do it because of historical importance? Maybe my rule is BS? Don't really want to discourage people from submitting as many authors as possible that sort of fit, or disqualifying any author since somebody read them last week. Really thread should be interpreted as something like Out of Print or Out of Fashion.

Hmm. Kotzwinkle still going strong.

it's kind of true about brautigan, which is a fucking shame. he's one of my favorites and a big influence on my own writing style. he really got pigeonholed unfairly as a "hippie writer" i think.

do people still read william gaddis?

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v22/n24/august-kleinzahler/no-light-on-in-the-house

do people still read william gaddis?

i plan on reading the recognitions this year

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v22/n24/august-kleinzahler/no-light-on-in-the-house

― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs)

"Often described a “pugnacious” and a “pugilist poet,” August Kleinzahler’s reputation rests on his jazzy, formally inventive and energetic poetry, though he has also garnered notice as something of a bad-boy literary outsider prone to picking fights with the establishment."

oh look a "fight me bro" poet decided to fight the corpse of richard brautigan

how _unexpected_

so many science fiction and fantasy writers who have fallen into obscurity. spider robinson. harry harrison. both pretty beloved writers when i was in my teens. does anybody remember either of them?

Yes, but mostly in the way that they are good candidates for this thread.

Spider Robinson really forgotten. Can’t remember much about him except that I once thought he had a cool name but then didn’t really like his writing, being especially disappointed by The Sliced Crosswise Timewise Cafe or whatever it was. Seem to later recall some entry about some book in the sf encyclopedia where John Clute said “avoid reading the unfortunate childish introduction by Spider Robinson” or words to that effect.

Harry Harrison remembered mostly as the author of the book the film Soylent Green was based on, Make Room, Make Room! although the book didn’t have the famous punchline. He also came up recently as begin married to one of the sf wives, who had also been married to… Damon Knight? Lester del Rey?

Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon.

Evelyn Harrison became Lester del Rey’s third wife and died when they were in a car crash which he survived.

Harold Brodkey and John O’Hara both were more visible and important when alive than after. Not sure how much self-promotion, when alive, played a role in that.

John Clute said “avoid reading the unfortunate childish introduction by Spider Robinson” or words to that effect.

― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs)

can't possibly be as unfortunate or childish as harlan ellison's introduction to the american doctor who target novelizations. that thing was a masterpiece of cringe.

i got one! when i was young people kept attributing "those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it" to someone named santayana. i looked him up once. he wrote some novels. i can only surmise that at some point somebody must have _read_ him, that his name must have _meant_ something to someone.

oh, people _loved_ "jonathan livingston seagull" by richard bach when i was young. haven't heard of that one in a while. do people still read paul gallico's "the snow goose"? i only know it through the prog-rock concept album based on it.

oh, and jean m. auel! she wrote the "clan of the cave bear" books. one was published as recently as 2011! also, she's a portlander - i didn't have any idea!

Kleinzahler kind of a tough guy but with a sense of humor and not overly macho, more like a San Francisco James Salter in a leather jacket than Mailer or Hemingway. Or maybe like a distant cousin of M. John Harrison.

Was waiting for Jonathan Livingston Seagull to show up! Couldn’t quite remember the author’s name anymore. In fact have been considering this thread as somehow related to In every 70s US home ever

Auel another good one. Seems to show up crosswords occasionally although I haven’t been paying attention recently.

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.

"late-1960s"

xp Mary Wilkins Freeman seems to be remembered now mainly for her ghost stories, and mainly by specialists in that kind of genre fiction

Yeah, there are a few late Victorian era writers who dabbled in supernatural or sci-fi stories and are mainly remembered for those now.

William Dean Howells has a book of ghost stories, for instance.

hell, NYRB surprised me when they collected the few ghost stories Edith Wharton wrote (they're mostly good).

I do love that particular type of late 60s book design, also love Edith Wharton's ghost stories

“Few”? She wrote heaps! And they are indeed great, as are her short stories more generally.

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.

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.

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.

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."