I'd still rather read Pride and Prejudice or The Pickwick Papers than
the latest Diana Gabaldon novel.
Which I think brings back the point that we are too close to the
twentieth century yet to look at it objectively. Pickwick and Oliver
Twist were serial novels, hardly considered "literature" in their
time. Shakespeare was just a playwright. But how many other novelists
and playwrights from those eras do we still read?
It depends on who "we" are. If you're an English Lit student, or have
similar tastes, you read many more Elizabethan poets and playwrights
than Shakespeare (the novel was not an established form then) and many
more Victorian novelists than Dickens. Most of whom are considered
"literary greats," but many of whom were just hacking out popular
culture that sold when they wrote the stuff.
The thing about the 20th century is, that so much more has been
published, that it's much harder for the works of any fiction writer to
emerge from the sea of other stuff as even existing, let alone great or not.
I'll tell you who I think the greatest 20th century writer is so far:
Gene Wolfe.
Fran
Lavolta Press
http://www.lavoltapress.com
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