Novelists No One Reads Anymore

What was the name of the guy who wrote Seven Who Fled again? He was in the comeback kid mode around here for a hot minute.

The Flower Beneath the Foot
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The Flower Beneath the Foot
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*please don't change it
The Flower Beneath the Foot
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Zane Grey? Louis L'amour?

(not answering James's question; just wondering if anyone still reads 'em)

What Are You Reading
The Flower Beneath The Foot
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Grey L'Amour
Fall '22
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James Gould Cozzens.

wow Winston Churchill really was a giant at the time

His first novel to appear in book form was The Celebrity (1898). However, Mr. Keegan's Elopement had been published in 1896 as a magazine serial and was republished as an illustrated hardback book in 1903. Churchill's next novel—Richard Carvel (1899) — was a phenomenal success. The novel was the third best-selling work of American fiction in 1899 and eighth-best in 1900, according to Alice Hackett's 70 Years of Best Sellers. It sold some two million copies in a nation of only 76 million people, and made Churchill rich. His other commercially successful novels included The Crisis (1901), The Crossing (1904), Coniston (1906), Mr. Crewe's Career (1908) and The Inside of the Cup (1913), all of which ranked first on the best-selling American novel list in the years indicated.[2]

That quote about novelists vanishing, when compared to musicians or filmmakers, rings pretty true. I wonder if a lot of it has to do with stylistically a lot of writing simply becoming unfashionable or dull compared to other eras, which might lean more into poetry or a sort of hardboiled realism, or working in a genre which has fallen into complete disfavor. For example I've got to believe there were so many writers of western novels which will never see the light of day again, whereas western films and music influenced by the west will always have a huge audience. L'Amour and Grey are obv largely unfashionable (maybe the latter has been since he was obliquely zinged in The Third Man) but they'll always be known.

Peter Benchley probably sticks around in the public consciousness exclusively due to Jaws. I'd be curious to see if Mario Puzo would have suffered a fate of being forgotten, too, if The Godfather was never filmed.

Michael Swanwick wrote a pamphlet-length essay on why Cabell's reputation fell. Swanwick's theory was that the uniform edition did it. Cabell collected all of his very uneven books into a series, and tried to force all the stories into a common legendarium. (Heinlein was influenced a lot by Cabell, and tried doing the same.) The simpler explanation is that the world after 1929 got too serious for Cabell's brand of ironic comedy, and he starved his imagination by temperament and circumstance. The same happened to Flann O'Brien, who was also influenced by Cabell.

I read Cabell as a boy, which is the only time for that. The oldest member of my family saw me doing so and said, "Well, well, well. So Cabell is still read."

Cabell disappoints but in real life he was brilliant. He was a prodigy in classical languages and was asked give lectures in college while still in his teens. (Unfortunately his emotional development stopped there.) A few years later the Teddy Roosevelt administration tapped him for a career in the diplomatic service. He would have been ideal for that (he had the languages, the intellect, and the polite obnoxiousness) but in those days diplomats had to be independently wealthy and Cabell wasn't.

I remember Spider Robinson from the same period, but found him unreadable even then. Cabell was extremely limited, but within his narrow bounds he had wit. Robinson didn't even come up to Douglas Adams standards. Robinson was the guy you must have met once, who makes a play on words for no reason and laughs uproariously at his own joke. Or takes a familiar song, changes one thing in the lyrics to something different, and then sings the entire song to you. Later he had a sort of fan culture in the days of Usenet. ("alt.callahans." I never spent any time there, but a woman I loved did, which was awkward.)

Cabell's close friend was the writer Joseph Hergesheimer, who was also acclaimed in the 1910s and 20s. Hergesheimer was famous for his stories of emotional drama among the very rich. He wasn't very rich himself, but he made money and bought a large country house. The Depression killed his career too. (In a letter in old age, Cabell answered his correspondent's question. "Hergesheimer? I seem faintly to recall the name.")

I thought about Zane Grey earlier but would guess there's cowboy afficionados out there

Thought about Jacqueline Susann too but same rules apply I guess, still historically noteworthy

Ben Hur vs. Quo Vadis FITE

But Flann O'Brien is still very popular! In ILx circles anyways

Flann O'Brien will never not be read.

What was the name of the guy who wrote _Seven Who Fled_ again? He was in the comeback kid mode around here for a hot minute.

(not answering James's question; just wondering if anyone still reads 'em)

― Les hommes de bonbons (cryptosicko)

sort of a related question that one, _genres_ that have fallen out of favor probably they have at least niche followings. i was at powell's i think before the pandemic and they had a whole section, for instance, of nautical adventures. i think my brother read some of the horatio hornblower books. he's kind of big on old niche fiction, he's really into doc savage. i didn't know nautical fiction was an entire genre, though i guess it stands to reason.

i'm actually half-heartedly reading a harlequin romance now! _for the love of april french_ by a lady named penny aimes. my mom read harlequin romances by the bushel when i was young - i never touched them myself, they were For Girls, so i don't know how _for the love of april french_ stacks up, but i can _definitely_ see the appeal. only reason i haven't finished it is because all of my leisure reading tends to be dour nonfiction books about genocide and for some reason i've stopped enjoying reading for leisure as much as i used to. april french is pure fantasy - it's about a trans woman (of course, because i am a cliche) who meets a cis guy who isn't a chaser, an egg, or otherwise a fucking asshole but who is nevertheless into her. aside from that it was actually super relatable to my own life, which i can't imagine would be true about '80s harlequin romances. the titular april french is sort of a den mom at a local bdsm club, who by day works a job that's _very_ similar to my own, even considering that there are like three or four careers that have historically been open to trans women.

anyway. my feeling - and again i haven't read any '80s harlequin romances so i can't confirm - is that the idea of a "harlequin romance novel" has changed to adapt with the times, and that while the romance novel is probably even more of a niche concern than it was previously - nowadays i suspect that ao3 fills a lot of the niche that harlequin used to fill - there's certainly good quality writing still being put out by harlequin.

Flann O'Brien will never not be read.

I wasn't proposing Flann O'Brien as a subject for this thread. O'Brien and Cabell were both stuck and couldn't renew their imaginations.

What about Henri Barbusse? Feel like he would be difficult and lack the cache of say Celine.

My best friend at high school was an obsessive reader of Alexander Kent novels, was he ever a big deal? Certainly wrote a lot of books, and he only died five years ago.

What about Henri Barbusse? Feel like he would be difficult and lack the cache of say Celine.

i didn't know nautical fiction was an entire genre

OCEANS ARE NOW BATTLEFIELDS

Poster Boy Arnold Bennett is a Penguin Classics kind of guy, so while this definitely disqualifies for Type I Unread, not sure about Type II Unread. Maybe Type II should have subdivisions of the clade: Type IIa- famous for being unread, but still read and in print, Type IIb - unread and unknown by most but still in print but a publisher you know etc.

definitely need some empsonian classifications of that sort.

have read two Arnold Bennett's in the last couple of years - the card and Anna of the five towns. was figuring him for stoke's version of gaskell based on descriptions of the latter but the card was a bit of a knockabout. tptv shows the film from time to time.

gissing also, New Grub Street, slightly depressing

Most recent Arnold Bennett reference prior to this thread

i was right to say it

Lol

I think the important thing about Bennett is that Stoke is now widely understood as a racist shithole

So George Meredith doesn't seem to be in print with any publisher of note in the US but it seems maybe Penguin UK does have The Egoist.

So his Penguin Score is very low but non-zero.

**ahem** a more recent Arnold Bennett reference:

Bright Remarks and Throwing Shade: What Are You Reading, Summer 2022?

sort of a related question that one, _genres_ that have fallen out of favor probably they have at least niche followings.

Good point. In identifying Grey and L'amour, I was kind of thinking of them in these terms, and my suspicion, at least, is that the pop Western as a genre was basically replaced by the likes of Clancy, Grisham, Patterson, etc. There are undoubtedly some large gaps in that history; Stephen King might belong there, but I always think of him belonging to slightly different, if related, literary traditions. Basically, I'm arguing for Grey and L'amour as the "airport reads" of their day, if that makes sense.

Oh wait, sorry, maybe I was sorting by relevance instead of date.

lol

EIther that or I just can't read or something.

Stephen king has a new book in the top ten just this week

he's the new winston churchill

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSzJNQSkbi8

probably nobody still reading j.b. priestley? pretty big in 50s & 60s, lots of his books still in op shops (uk -"charity shops") - i read one once, was a sort of heavy handed satire of an arts festival

op shops is probably where you'd get a pile of answers for this thread but i seldom go into those places any more

Good one, Priestley. I always get him confused with J.R. Ackerley tbh who had a recent revival via NYRB, not sure how high he got on the Type-O-Hype-O-Meter.

At the risk of dragging out the big gun for dinosaur and aiming it at Stonehenge (DO U SEE?), there is a kind of hauntology associated with these kinds of authors.

lot of '90s "chick lit" & "lad lit" dudes in the op shops last i looked but i don't remember any of those authors' names & anyway maybe ppl still do read em idk

^^ those feel like a different category, as far as an omnipresent best-seller (Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain) that never entered a canon vs. one that endured for a while and has now petered out.

That said, not sure Millennials or Gen Z are getting into High Fidelity or Bridget Jones's Diary unless it's picked up from a Little Free Library.

yeah those are ubiquitous in the ol' LFL & i don't know if that means nobody reads em any more or if it means lots of ppl still read em

actually i realise that i don't have very much idea what other people are reading at all

probably nobody much still reading susan hill or andrea newman (also ubiquitous 2nd hand & both actually good imo)

this thread is a delight & i'm awed and charmed by many posts

I read a few J. B. Priestley plays in that same modern drama course I mentioned earlier. Maybe the instructor was some kind of freak?

SF/fantasy seems like a slightly different thing, but I hope no children are reading Piers Anthony like I did.

I'm curious if kids these days are into Baum or (older kids) Vonnegut? Is Kerouac too toxic masculine now? Bukowski? I feel like the category of "genuinely popular in my lifetime but now not read" is harder to fill. I remember my parents reading The Jewel in the Crown when the miniseries was on Masterpiece Theater—I assume that's a tough sell these days