Literary durability

>> I think that great literature
>> will continue to be written, regardless of how the business side of
>> things changes, though I suspect relatively less light fiction.
>
> I feel the reverse.  Great literature tends to endure.  Light fiction
> dates within a few decades.

Everything has fads and fashions... I don't think idea that "great  
literature tends to endure" has any particular validity to it.

I wish I could remember the title of the book that described trends  
and fashions in the world of classical music. It had a lot of graphs  
based on the appearance of various works in the concert programs of  
symphony orchestras, and it was amazing how much things could change  
in fifty years. I'm not a real classical music aficionado, but I'm  
old enough to have seen this in my own lifetime.

Fifty years ago, if you'd asked someone to name THE Beethoven  
Symphony, it would have been the Fifth. Today, it would be the Ninth.  
Fifty years ago, Alfven's "Swedish Rhapsody" was almost as popular as  
a pop tune, while Pachelbel's Canon was unknown. Today, it's the  
reverse. Fifty years ago, virtually the only regularly programmed  
Dvorak symphony was "From the New World" (then referred to as his  
fifth, now as his ninth). Today, the New World is still dominant but  
his Eighth and Seventh are popular and frequently heard.

OK, great literature. You probably have to go back a century to reach  
the time when Longfellow's "The Song of Hiawatha" was taken  
seriously, but it was. It was regarded as a major achievement in  
American literature, and I'm sure it was expected to endure. Now it's  
practically a joke. In fact, today we would say the only important  
thing about it was the role it played in inspiring Dvorak's "From the  
New World!"

Books that were not necessarily considered _great_ literature but  
certainly were considered significant, important, contemporary  
literature, have vanished. In my high school, we read Dickens, but we  
also read, as assigned reading, _Cimarron_ by Edna Ferber, _The  
Citadel_ by A. J. Cronin, and _The Catcher in the Rye_ by J. D.  
Salinger. Of those three, two are utterly forgotten. In fact I'll bet  
there are readers of this mailing list who do not even recognize the  
name A. J. Cronin.

Conversely, Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys are not great literature by  
any standards I know of, yet they endure.

So does Kahlil Gibran.

There's always a certain amount of personal taste involved in naming  
authors as good who have not been officially anointed, but I, at  
least am surprised by the fading reputation of John P. Marquand. I  
don't think Sinclair Lewis' reputation is what it used to be. Does  
anyone still read the novels of Nobel laureate Pearl Buck? How about  
Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, whom I've never read because he  
was already pretty much forgotten by the time I was growing up. I  
don't think any of these people would have been relegated as "light  
fiction" in their day.

What I really think happens is that the reputation of older books is  
based on the opinions of influential tastemakers... literary critics,  
academics, etc. and waxes and wanes along with their careers and  
lifespans.






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