Posts Tagged ‘best sellers’
“When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before.”*…
But how do books become timeless, how do books become classics? And what relationship do they have to the best sellers and award winners of their time? Author Lincoln Michel has some thoughts…
Recently after a literary event, I was hanging out with some other writers and a conversation about older books led to a parlor game. One of us would read the titles of bestselling novels from a few decades ago and everyone else would try to guess the authors’ names. It was hard. Even with hints. We switched to National Book Award finalists, thinking we’d be more likely to remember acclaimed books than merely popular ones. We did marginally better. A couple titles were easy—your Pale Fires and The Haunting of Hill Houses—but most were not remembered. What was more surprising than the fact we couldn’t match names to (once) famous books was that many of the authors themselves were completely obscure, especially to the younger people present. We were writers and professors. If we didn’t remember these authors, who did? The conversation moved on but I think everyone came away with a reminder: literary fame is fickle and fleeting.
(Here, try it yourself. I’ll list the 6 National Book Award finalists for 1967 followed by the top 6 bestsellers of that year. NBA: The Fixer, The Embezzler, All in the Family, The Last Gentleman, A Dream of Kings, Office Politics. Bestsellers: The Arrangement, The Confessions of Nat Turner, The Chosen, Topaz, Christy, The Eighth Day. Many readers will probably know the authors of Nat Turner and perhaps The Fixer, but the others?)
I remembered this as I watched the debates about whether or not popular recent novels like Harry Potter and The Hunger Games will be read “in 100 years.” I don’t really care much about either series, but I am always a little surprised at how confident many are that what is popular now must necessarily be popular in the future. This is rarely the case. Few things endure, after all. And 100 years is quite a long time. 1924 is an almost unrecognizable world. The differences in technology, global politics, and culture are hard to grasp. This was a time period when vaudeville was still one of the most popular art forms and feature films barely even a thing. Those 100 years have seen the rise and fall of empires and much of culture move to entirely different technologies (video games, television, the internet, etc.) What will the world even look like in 100 years?
I’ll save the speculation for a science fiction novel, I suppose. But even limiting ourselves to literature, it’s simply the case that what endures has minimal correlation to either contemporaneous popularity or contemporaneous acclaim. Acclaim has a bit better track record—the names of early Pulitzer Prize winners are more familiar than the names of bestselling novels of the 1920s for example—but neither is a guarantee of anything…
… But it isn’t just some popular works that disappear. It is even the most popular ones. The Harry Potters and MCU films of yesteryear. Take Zane Grey, who was the most popular author of the most popular genre (Westerns) in his day. Grey was one of the first millionaire authors ever and his novels were adapted into over 100 films. He was so popular and prolific that even though he died in 1939 his publisher had a stockpile of manuscripts they published yearly until 1963! Almost no one reads him today.
Grey’s slip to obscurity points to one of the whims of literary fortune: genres rise and fall. Last month, I talked about how quickly the market moves in the near term—how writing toward the market often means you are writing for a market that will have moved on by the time your book comes out—and this is far more pronounced in the long run. The Western was once a dominant genre in American film, TV, and literature. Today? Not so much. There is the occasional work of course, but the Western’s prominence has been replaced by genres like superhero films and YA SFF. In 100 years, those genres may feel just as antiquated.
I could go on and on with examples of how art fades. Perhaps the most interesting question is what makes something endure. What makes a work speak through time to multiple eras and contexts? There are certainly works from 1924—100 years ago—that are read today: A Hunger Artist by Franz Kafka, Billy Budd by Herman Melville, We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair by Pablo Neruda, multiple books by Agatha Christie, etc. I would like to think that quality helps determine what lasts yet it is obviously more than that. Melville and Kafka, for example, both went through long periods of obscurity before being “rediscovered” decades after their deaths. They are two of my favorite writers, but I have to sadly admit it is possible they will lapse into obscurity again in the future (and perhaps be rediscovered yet again and then forgotten again and so on).
To offer a theory though, I think what lasts is almost always what has a dedicated following among one or more of the following: artists, geeks, academics, critics, and editors. “Gatekeepers” of various types, if you like. Artists play the most important role in what art endures because artists are the ones making new art. Indirectly, they popularize styles and genres and make new fans seek out older influences. Directly, artists tend to tout their influences and encourage their fans to explore them. In literature that takes the form of essays, introductions to reissues, and so forth. In music, it might be something like cover albums as in the way Nirvana’s Unplugged introduced a new generation to older bands and musicians. Academics is pretty obvious. The older books with the best sales are mostly ones that appear on syllabi. And geeks and critics are the ones who extensively explore a genre or category’s history and proselytize their favorites. Editors are the ones who actually chose the older books to republish and can champion obscure books back into the public eye…
[ Michel considers the case of H. P. Lovecraft and other horror writers, starting with Mary Shelley and Frankenstein…]
… if you want to predict what will last I think you should look to what has partisans among dedicated readers—scholars, critics, genre nerds, etc.—rather than what merely sells well with casual readers. Specialists not popularists. And then what work seems influential among younger artists, such as work that seems foundational in a certain style or subgenre. That’s might get you in the ballpark, even if you will strike out more with most swings.
Another way for a work to endure is through the randomness of popularity in another medium. Many books last simply because a film or TV adaptation is popular, although often the books are simply eclipsed. Many younger people probably don’t even realize that Jaws and The Godfather were originally popular novels. (Film/TV can also popularize things in amusingly random ways. Recently, an anime show with characters named after older Japanese writers led to a surprising revival in the sales of Osamu Dazai’s novels…. merely because he shares a name with a character.)
Lastly, I do have to acknowledge that we currently live in the “franchise era” in which the biggest works are not actually individual works by individual artists, but sprawling multimedia empires with video games, movies, TV shows, action figures, and even amusement parks attached. Perhaps this means that the rare super franchises—your James Bonds and Harry Potters and Star Warses—can never die. I’m not entirely convinced. Even this shall likely pass. Time is fleeting. The brief candles flicker, even for sprawling multibillion corporate franchises. All we can do is write what we like and read what we love, and hope others like it too either now or in the future…
On the books that are remembered, rejected, repudiated, and rediscovered: “What Lasts and (Mostly) Doesn’t Last,” from @TheLincoln.
* Clifton Fadiman
###
As we contemplate the classics, we might send eerie birthday greeting to one of Michel’s examples, Mary Shelley; she was born on this date in 1797. The daughter of the political philosopher William Godwin and the philosopher and women’s rights advocate Mary Wollstonecraft, she spent much of her life editing and promoting the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley.
In 1814, Shelley eloped with then-17-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin… despite the fact that Shelley was already married. Shelley, the heir to his wealthy grandfather’s estate, had been expelled from Oxford for refusing to acknowledge authorship of a controversial essay. He eloped with his first wife, Harriet Westbrook, the daughter of a tavern owner, in 1811. But three years later, Shelley fell in love with the young Mary. Shelley and Godwin fled to Europe, marrying after Shelley’s wife committed suicide in 1816. Shelley’s inheritance did not pay all the bills, and the couple spent much of their married life abroad, fleeing Shelley’s creditors.
While living in Geneva, the Shelleys and their dear friend Lord Byron challenged each other to write a compelling ghost story. Only Mary Shelley finished hers– which she later published as Frankenstein.
Indeed, today is celebrated as Frankenstein Day.
“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking”*…
As the year draws to a close, some of us like to look forward, and some of us backward—and some way backward. Last month, while working on the not-at-all-controversial Books That Defined the Decades series, I was often surprised by the dissonance between the books that sold well in any given year and the books that we now consider relevant, important, or illustrative of the time. I repeatedly regaled my colleagues with fun and interesting facts like: “Did you know that in 1940 the best-selling book of the year was How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn? That was also the year The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and Native Son came out!” They made me stop eventually, and so I compiled all my comments into this very piece…
Some general takeaways:
1. The biggest bestsellers of any given year are not necessarily the books we remember 20, 30, 50, or 100 years later. (Something to remember when your own book goes on sale.)
2. Sometimes books take a little while to work themselves onto the bestseller list. Books suspiciously absent from the list of the year they were published sometimes show up in the next year, likely due to paperback releases and/or word of mouth (or they may have simply been published too late in the year to compete with the spring books).
3. People like to read the same authors year after year.
4. John Grisham owned the 90s.
5. There are so very many books, and we have forgotten almost all of them.
Here’s to remembering (the good ones, at least)…
A century of best-seller lists, compared with the books published in the same years that are well-remembered today: “Here are the biggest fiction best-sellers of the last 100 years (and what everyone read instead).”
* Haruki Murakami
###
As we turn the page, we might spare a thought for Henry James III; he died on this date in 1947. The son of philosopher and psychologist William James and the nephew of novelist Henry, he was an accomplished attorney, administrator (manager of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research and Chair of TIAA), and diplomat (e.g., a member of the Versailles Peace Conference).
But like his famous elders, he also wrote– in his case, biographies, for one of which (a life of Charles W. Eliot) he won the Pulitzer Prize.
Henry James III holding his sister, Mary Margaret, in his lap (source)
Convenience food for the soul…
There are more public libraries (about 17,000) in America than outposts of the burger giant McDonalds (about 14,000) or than the coffee titan Starbucks (about 11,000 coffee shops nationally).
“There’s always that joke that there’s a Starbucks on every corner,” says Justin Grimes, a statistician with the Institute of Museum and Library Services in Washington. “But when you really think about it, there’s a public library wherever you go, whether it’s in New York City or some place in rural Montana. Very few communities are not touched by a public library.”
In fact, libraries serve 96.4 percent of the U.S. population, a reach any fast-food franchise can only dream of…
To illustrate his point, Grimes built a click-and-zoomable map this past weekend during the National Day of Civic Hacking, using the agency’s database of public libraries. Each dot on the map above refers to an individual branch library (and a few bookmobiles), out of a total of 9,000 public library systems. His inspiration was his organization’s on-going project to map all 35,000 museums in the U.S.
Read the whole story at “Every Library and Museum in America, Mapped.”
###
As we renew our cards, we might check out Catherine Cookson; she was born on this date in 1906. The illegitimate daughter of an alcoholic, Cookson was raised in relative hardship in Northeastern England… a background on which she drew in over 100 books, which have sold more than 123 million copies. She was the most borrowed author from public libraries in the UK for 17 years; in 1997, nine of her novels were among the “ten most borrowed” books.
“So many books, so little time”*…
What’s a reader to do? The disciplined Matt Kahn has a plan: he’s reading– and reviewing– every one of the novels that reached the number one spot on Publishers Weekly annual bestsellers list, starting in 1913. All 94 of them.
Check out the list, and follow Matt’s progress at Kahn’s Corner.
On a related note, readers who followed last year’s Tournament of Books, might want to check in on this year’s.
* Frank Zappa
###
As we renew our library cards, we might send wistful birthday greetings to Douglas Noel Adams; he was born on this date in 1952. A writer and dramatist best remembered as the author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Adams surely, by merit, belonged on Kahn’s list. That will never be; Adams passed away in 2001. Still, one can honor his memory in a couple of month’s time by celebrating Towel Day.
WWMMD?…
Readers may have have found themselves in difficult spots and wondered, as your correspondent has, What Would Matthew McConaughey Do?
Thankfully, help is now at hand. A new site, thoughtfully titled What Would Matthew McConaughey Do?, dispenses wisdom-on-demand, as exampled in these responses to seekers past…
Q: Is it better to be loved or feared?
A: Loved. I’m loved by women in rural Tajikistan trying to achieve agrarian reform; I’m loved by women in Swaziland, fighting for the right to inherit property; I’m loved by women in Papua New Guinea who simply want a man that’s taller than 5’1– and doesn’t indulge in male insemination rituals.
Q: Best hair product?
A: I’m working on one now. It contains African cacao extract, caviar age-control complex, photozyme complex with “color hold,” white truffle oil, Champagne grape seed oil, Bulgarian Evening Primrose and Arabian Frankincense. The shampoo is inspired by enzyme therapy, and can be used to treat conditions ranging from digestive problems to cancer. It will retail for $745/bottle.
Q: Would you dive into a pile of snakes?
A: Hell YES, particularly if the lives of women and children were at stake. Of course, when you say ‘dive,’ I assume you mean ‘tear into’ and ‘through,’ not necessarily plummet into, correct? The last time I deliberately plummeted, it was into thin air, over the skies of Mozambique, and I had a flash back of childhood, in Texas, surrounded by Native American women, in a trance-like state, sweating, beading sweat, invoking the name of the Wind God Yaponcha…but I digress.
Q: I am gay and lonely and can’t seem to find the right guy… any ideas?
A: Nope.
Consult the oracle at What Would Matthew McConaughey Do?
As we revel in the reassurance, we might recall that it was on this date in 1992 that physicist Stephen Hawking set a British publishing record when his explanatory volume A Brief History of Time remained on the best-seller list for the 182nd week in a row (over 3 million copies in 22 languages). Still in print, the sales count is currently over 10 million.
You must be logged in to post a comment.