[bloggergirl]

In whose 'literary' eyes is 1984 a minor work? It's an important piece in the 20th C. literary canon.

And you've completely discounted the post-modern literature of post-WWII, including Nabokov (!), DeLillo, Franzen, Morrison. Them's fighting words.

[dextorious]

"""In whose 'literary' eyes is 1984 a minor work? It's an important piece in the 20th C. literary canon."""

It mostly has political (in the broad sense) importance, not actual literary one. ("Brave New World" is even worse in this regard, but it also has the same kind of importance).

"""And you've completely discounted the post-modern literature of post-WWII, including Nabokov (!), DeLillo, Franzen, Morrison."""

I said there are "a few exceptions to prove the rule". Nabokov could be one, true, but surely not DeLillo, Franzen and Morrison, and not crap like Rothman, Pynchon et al.

[DaveMebs]

Updike? Fowles? Asimov? McCarthy?

Obviously listing a bunch of names isn't going to prove the argument one way or the other, but I think it's a bit unfair to claim that all post-WWII literature is crap mod a few exceptions. Sci-Fi basically didn't exist before 1940.

I think it is more relevant to look at the 19th century vs. 20th century.

[copper]

> Sci-Fi basically didn't exist before 1940.

Um, seriously? What genre would you place either of The War of the Worlds or 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, then? That the books manage to get a lot of things wrong doesn't really alter the fact that they were early, very popular examples of science fiction (and there were a lot more dating back to before WWII, when SF really took off.)

[demallien]

Not to mention a little known author going by the name of Rowlings. I've read a lot of books, but I've never seen such an indepth treatment of racism as you find in the Harry Potter books.

[apu]

FYI, you can put quotes inside asterisks to italicize them, rather than python-style triple-quoting.

  *This is an example*

This is an example

[dextorious]

And, to qualify my answer, I'm thinking Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Hoffmann, James, Balzac, Poe, Stendhal, Dickens, Melville, Flaubert, Hugo, Conrad, Mann, Proust, Lawrence, Rilke, Kafka, Fitzgerald, Gide, Hemingway, Faulkner, Wolfe, Miller, Musil, etc...

[DaveMebs]

I don't think you can really compare the last 50 years (anything more recent and it's really hard to judge how 'great' an author will be) with a 150 year period. Especially when you are including the Lost Generation which was, frankly, contemporary in 1945. Hemingway hadn't even published "The Old Man and the Sea" at that point.