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What makes a great author? Well, one possible test is, as mentioned by others, whether his works are still read a hundred years from now (I doubt that will be the case with Crichton). That's more a practical definition than a theoretical one though, and in my opinion it doesn't necessarily define "great" authors, but lasting ones. All great authors are lasting, but all lasting authors are not great - however, most lasting authors are in fact great authors. On a theoretical level, I'd put the argument this way: Literary works use lies to achieve one or more of 3 objectives: 1) entertain, 2) expose new ideas, 3) expose deep pieces of ages-old wisdom. I think that in order to be "great", an author needs to at least have a firm foot in the third category. Michael Crichton was certainly a good author, and very talented at 1) and even 2) sometimes, but did he ever convey any piece of eternal wisdom in his works? I sure didn't find any. This is not to put him down - being a good author is a hard enough achievement. But being great is something else. Some examples of "great" authors, in my view: Dickens, Shakespeare, Kafka, Thomas Mann, Herman Hesse, Gabriel Garcia Marques, Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, Tolstoy, Dostoievsky, Tchekov, Jane Austen, James Joyce, Hemingway, Romain Gary... Not all of them are 100 years old, although, sadly, all of them are dead. |