Who are today's literary greats?

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Shadow_Ferret

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Early 20th Century literature had several big name writers producing amazing works, among them Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck, and Fitzgerald.

Who, in your opinion, are the literary equivalents of those writers currently being published today?
 

Cybernaught

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Karren Russell, Amy Tan, George Saunders, T.C. Boyle, Cormac McCarthy, Michael Cunningham, Sam Lipsyte, Stephen Dunn, Don Delillo, Junot Diaz, Jhumpa Lahiri, Haruki Murakami... Too many contemporary greats to list.
 
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Perks

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I'd throw in Kazuo Ishiguro, Julian Barnes, Jeffrey Eugenides, and I'd likely get some pushback on this, but I'd say Barbara Kingsolver and Stephen King.
 

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I'd throw in Kazuo Ishiguro, Julian Barnes, Jeffrey Eugenides, and I'd likely get some pushback on this, but I'd say Barbara Kingsolver and Stephen King.

I don't know who Kingsolver is, but is King considered literary? I would put him more in the genre category, but then I've only read some of his early horror novels.
 

Torgo

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I don't know who Kingsolver is, but is King considered literary? I would put him more in the genre category, but then I've only read some of his early horror novels.

King is a great novelist. He's absolutely terrific. I think 'literary' is more a term of approbation than a description, so I'm happy to call even his most genre novels 'literary' (as I'd be happy to call Chandler's genre-defining PI novels literary.) But that's a whole other debate.
 

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Elizabeth Strout would definitely be on that list.
 

gothicangel

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I don't know who Kingsolver is, but is King considered literary? I would put him more in the genre category, but then I've only read some of his early horror novels.

When I was at university I took a module in Gothic Literature, and we read The Shining. So, I think it's fair to say there's a place for him within Modern Gothic, alongside writers like Anne Rice and Iain Banks.

Add Iain Banks to that list for me. :D
 

DreamWeaver

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I don't know who Kingsolver is, but is King considered literary? I would put him more in the genre category, but then I've only read some of his early horror novels.
To me, part of being great is transcending genre. I personally think Stephen King has a pretty good chance of turning out to be a literary great, or at least having some of his books migrate into the literature section in the future equivalent of a bookstore. Look at Edgar Allen Poe :D.
 

zarada

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Add Toni Morrison, Patrick Suskind and Richard Bach.


edit: also, David Wroblewski and Michael Ondaatje
 
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zarada

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King is a great novelist. He's absolutely terrific. I think 'literary' is more a term of approbation than a description...

this. King can really spin a story. SO MANY stories (he's so amazingly prolific... i sometimes wonder if he's [only] human :tongue)
 

Jamesaritchie

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I don't know who Kingsolver is, but is King considered literary? I would put him more in the genre category, but then I've only read some of his early horror novels.

Many, many literary writers write genre stories, and many, many genre stories are most certainly literary. King has written some of the best of these.

Have you read The Body. How about Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption? Or his stories in The New Yorker? As one literary critic put it, if King weren't so well known as a horror writer, he'd be considered the best living literary writer we have.

But even a straight horror story can be as literary as any other story out there. Literary is what you have to say about the human condition, and how well you say it, not whether it is or isn't genre.

Take a look at the literary greats from past ages, and think how easily a great many of their stories would fit into one genre or another.
 

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Will I get egged if I said Terry Pratchett?
 

Ken

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Early 20th Century literature had several big name writers producing amazing works, among them Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck, and Fitzgerald.

Who, in your opinion, are the literary equivalents of those writers currently being published today?

Ask me no questions, I'll tell you no lies.
 

ap123

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Ask me no questions, I'll tell you no lies.

I don't get it. :Shrug: Are you saying you don't think there are any modern greats, or you don't agree with the ones listed for the early 20th?
 

eyeblink

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I would put Joyce Carol Oates on any such list, and she's the person I've read more by than any other writer, living or dead.
 

mccardey

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Lots of those. Also Marilynne Robinson.
 

Lady MacBeth

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Another vote for Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood. Has anyone mentioned William Trevor?
 
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