(1) A hundred bucks says this is the most interesting post I read this month. Ten bucks says this year.
(2) If you don't know who Robert Caro is, listen to his interview with Conan O'Brien on the podcast Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend.
(3) If you like Raymond Chandler, read Dashiell Hammet!
(4) I am very depressed about how few people enjoyed some of my favorite authors, because that means you can be a certified genius and still not get through to people.
(5) I am very heartened about how few people enjoyed some of my favorite authors, because that means *I* can be a certified genius despite not getting through to people.
I came here to say that Chandler and Hammett feel totally different to me! I'm one of the Chandler-but-not-Hammetts. Out of the "hardboiled style" authors I've read, which I think is Spillane, Hammett, Richard S. Prather, and Jim Thompson, my favorites are the latter two. Chandler is like the Ray Bradbury of noir: lush, emotional, quite vulnerable. Very different vibe imho. I know most people feel differently! But I take this poll as evidence that, at least, there's a subset of readers who distinguish them sharply.
Hammett had great stories, Chandler also wrote great stories but had richer characters and was a better prose stylist. Film adaptations of either can be great, but I would rather sit down with a paper copy of Chandler any day. I had never thought of the vulnerability you mention, but yes, that too.
Your point is well-made. Incidentally, I just read "The Killer Inside Me" for the first time: what an absolutely bonkers book. I've never heard of Richard S. Prather--I'll have to check him out!
As to why Toni Morrison was not assigned reading for me in college, I think the answer is pretty simple: Beloved was published in 1987. I graduated from college in 1981. So there is probably a bit of a skew there. (That doesn't explain Melville though! In my case, "Bartleby the Scrivener" was assigned reading in High School, but not Moby Dick. (And certainly not the Actual Great American Novel, The Confidence Man: His Masquerade!))
I'm curious what ranking you'd get if you were to sort by (% "Like their work")/(% "Like their work" + % "Read their work").
Unlike the raw "Like their work" number, this would disentangle obscurity from enjoyment. Authors like Helen DeWitt would rise to the top because almost all respondents who had actually read them report enjoying the experience. Lewis and Nabokov would no longer be right next to one another because -- although their "% Like" numbers are identical -- only about half of respondents who read Lewis also like Lewis, whereas for Nabokov it's more like 75%.
(To get at the other side of the coin -- pure readership volume, disentangled from enjoyment -- one could make a separate ranking sorted by (% "Like their work" + % "Read their work").)
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Re: the Richardson Prize, have all the finalists been decided upon? I submitted a novel and I can't tell whether or not I've been eliminated. I've received a few emails from the official gmail account since the time of my submission, which seems to indicate that I successfully "made it into the system," but I didn't receive anything saying that my book had been selected as a finalist *or* that it'd been eliminated in favor of some other candidate.
It would be interesting to see them ranked this way. For example, only 30% liked Ted Chiang, but based on the graph, it looks like around 75% of those who read him liked his work.
All of the Samuel Richardson Prize finalists have been announced at this point.
I considered this, but I am not necessarily sure it’s a more meaningful way of measuring reputation. Authors that have a high reputation also have more people who attempt their work. Authors with a high reputation are also more likely to be taught in school.
My feeling is that if a writer is not well known or not often attempted, then that is in itself a form of judgement.
I also want to see them this way. I also wish there had been a "read and strongly disliked" option. I've read and liked most authors on this list, read and felt neutral about another good chunk (or lost their impression on my mind to time). But there are only maybe a dozen writers I LOVE as much as I HATE Cormac McCarthy and Jonathan Franzen and Nabokov.
That could be interesting... but, sometimes surveys like this work better with fewer options. Adding more dimensions has the potential to just make the data messier.
I remember a question about authors left out of the survey whom respondents felt deserved inclusion — was there anything interesting in those responses? Like, some author you assumed was obscure yet showed up in a significant number of responses? Or was it just a grab bag of names, with each respondent submitting names that few or no other respondents submitted?
Taking this survey drove home to me how steeped in modernism I am, and how even though I do read a lot of contemporary fiction, I tend to gravitate away from the more popular names.
Also, I think Hawthorne is great and that people who didn’t like him in high school should give him another shot. It may just not be well suited to the age group. (Though it was for me at the time.)
Wait wait wait. Shakespeare, Woolf, Eliot, and Nabokov are the most popular and well liked? These are not easy to read! What the heck to make of that? I mean, wowsa!! My mind is blown.
So interesting! As an older English major with a master's, I marked only one author "Who?" Now she is at the top of my TBR list. I do have to wonder about the person literate enough to encounter and answer this poll but not know who Shakespeare was. I'd be tempted to contact them and ask if they're okay...
This is really cool! It also makes me want to break down the data in so many other ways... like, for the assigned in HS/college part, could that be visualized as "% assigned in high school" next to "% assigned in college for the subset of English majors in the survey"? Anyways, thanks for putting this together and sharing it.
I think knowledge of contemporary authors also tends to be more geographically limited. I took the survey and I am from the UK (though living in France) and I have heard of (even if I haven't read that much of) all the American authors on your list who are set-text "classics" in the US but not really in the UK (like Melville or Faulkner) but I had not even heard of most of the contemporary US examples. (Whereas I have certainly heard of, if not read, all the high profile UK/Irish equivalents.) I appreciate most of your respondents were from the US, but this is another possible contributory factor.
You are right! Non-American respondents had significantly less familiarity with contemporary US writers (and vice-versa, American writers were less familiar with contemporary UK writers). The effect is about half the size of the English-major gap, but quite real.
This would've biased the data more if I had included more contemporary UK writers in the survey (if I had, it would've made contemporary American writers look more popular than their British contemporaries). As it was, it doesn't alter the relative rankings too much, but if you filter for just American or just non-American respondents, the graphs look a little different.
As always, I like your essays. This one was particularly interesting. I think I'd heard of all but 2 of your 100 authors, and read at least something by 90+ of them.
Next time, try Claude for your charts and data analysis, seems to be the consensus out here.
Oh, you bet. My only personal use of AI is to find refs via Google's. Which is pretty good, and free. For my Wikipedia stuff etc.
Incidentally, you might like Alastair Reynold's latest novel, "Halcyon Years". VERY twisty tale of Yuri Gagarin reincarnated as a PI on a troubled generation-ship. Slow start, but he's rolling now, 2/3 in. Paul di Filippo has a good review up at Locus:
So many thoughts!
(1) A hundred bucks says this is the most interesting post I read this month. Ten bucks says this year.
(2) If you don't know who Robert Caro is, listen to his interview with Conan O'Brien on the podcast Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend.
(3) If you like Raymond Chandler, read Dashiell Hammet!
(4) I am very depressed about how few people enjoyed some of my favorite authors, because that means you can be a certified genius and still not get through to people.
(5) I am very heartened about how few people enjoyed some of my favorite authors, because that means *I* can be a certified genius despite not getting through to people.
I came here to say that Chandler and Hammett feel totally different to me! I'm one of the Chandler-but-not-Hammetts. Out of the "hardboiled style" authors I've read, which I think is Spillane, Hammett, Richard S. Prather, and Jim Thompson, my favorites are the latter two. Chandler is like the Ray Bradbury of noir: lush, emotional, quite vulnerable. Very different vibe imho. I know most people feel differently! But I take this poll as evidence that, at least, there's a subset of readers who distinguish them sharply.
Hammett had great stories, Chandler also wrote great stories but had richer characters and was a better prose stylist. Film adaptations of either can be great, but I would rather sit down with a paper copy of Chandler any day. I had never thought of the vulnerability you mention, but yes, that too.
Your point is well-made. Incidentally, I just read "The Killer Inside Me" for the first time: what an absolutely bonkers book. I've never heard of Richard S. Prather--I'll have to check him out!
In fairness I should say I read Prather >20 years ago now /o\ I got super into him but have not revisited. He's VERY pulpy.
As to why Toni Morrison was not assigned reading for me in college, I think the answer is pretty simple: Beloved was published in 1987. I graduated from college in 1981. So there is probably a bit of a skew there. (That doesn't explain Melville though! In my case, "Bartleby the Scrivener" was assigned reading in High School, but not Moby Dick. (And certainly not the Actual Great American Novel, The Confidence Man: His Masquerade!))
I'm curious what ranking you'd get if you were to sort by (% "Like their work")/(% "Like their work" + % "Read their work").
Unlike the raw "Like their work" number, this would disentangle obscurity from enjoyment. Authors like Helen DeWitt would rise to the top because almost all respondents who had actually read them report enjoying the experience. Lewis and Nabokov would no longer be right next to one another because -- although their "% Like" numbers are identical -- only about half of respondents who read Lewis also like Lewis, whereas for Nabokov it's more like 75%.
(To get at the other side of the coin -- pure readership volume, disentangled from enjoyment -- one could make a separate ranking sorted by (% "Like their work" + % "Read their work").)
---
Re: the Richardson Prize, have all the finalists been decided upon? I submitted a novel and I can't tell whether or not I've been eliminated. I've received a few emails from the official gmail account since the time of my submission, which seems to indicate that I successfully "made it into the system," but I didn't receive anything saying that my book had been selected as a finalist *or* that it'd been eliminated in favor of some other candidate.
Hi! Sorry about this, let me check to see what is going on with your submission.
It would be interesting to see them ranked this way. For example, only 30% liked Ted Chiang, but based on the graph, it looks like around 75% of those who read him liked his work.
All of the Samuel Richardson Prize finalists have been announced at this point.
I considered this, but I am not necessarily sure it’s a more meaningful way of measuring reputation. Authors that have a high reputation also have more people who attempt their work. Authors with a high reputation are also more likely to be taught in school.
My feeling is that if a writer is not well known or not often attempted, then that is in itself a form of judgement.
That's fair! Also a good reminder that this is a survey about their reputation, not necessarily their quality.
I also want to see them this way. I also wish there had been a "read and strongly disliked" option. I've read and liked most authors on this list, read and felt neutral about another good chunk (or lost their impression on my mind to time). But there are only maybe a dozen writers I LOVE as much as I HATE Cormac McCarthy and Jonathan Franzen and Nabokov.
That could be interesting... but, sometimes surveys like this work better with fewer options. Adding more dimensions has the potential to just make the data messier.
I remember a question about authors left out of the survey whom respondents felt deserved inclusion — was there anything interesting in those responses? Like, some author you assumed was obscure yet showed up in a significant number of responses? Or was it just a grab bag of names, with each respondent submitting names that few or no other respondents submitted?
seconding this question!
- "the exact same people who knew about James Joyce, C.S. Lewis, and W.B. Yeats often had no idea who Jonathan Lethem was." That describes me.
Taking this survey drove home to me how steeped in modernism I am, and how even though I do read a lot of contemporary fiction, I tend to gravitate away from the more popular names.
Also, I think Hawthorne is great and that people who didn’t like him in high school should give him another shot. It may just not be well suited to the age group. (Though it was for me at the time.)
A very old trope:
David Lodge’s novel Changing Places (1975).
In the book, a group of academics invent a parody intellectual game sometimes referred to as “Humiliation” (or informally, the “not-read” game).
The Rules (roughly):
Participants score points by confessing they have not read major canonical authors.
But the twist is:
…The more obvious or “essential” the author,
…The more shocking the omission,
…The more points you score.
So saying you haven’t read a minor Victorian novelist scores almost nothing.
But saying you haven’t read:
…Shakespeare
…Dickens
…Tolstoy
…Proust
that gets serious points.
The game satirizes:
…Academic competitiveness
…Intellectual insecurity
…Canon worship
…The strange prestige attached to cultural capital
I admit: I have read Nabokov’s “Pale Fire” several times. Loved it.
Next?
Wait wait wait. Shakespeare, Woolf, Eliot, and Nabokov are the most popular and well liked? These are not easy to read! What the heck to make of that? I mean, wowsa!! My mind is blown.
So interesting! As an older English major with a master's, I marked only one author "Who?" Now she is at the top of my TBR list. I do have to wonder about the person literate enough to encounter and answer this poll but not know who Shakespeare was. I'd be tempted to contact them and ask if they're okay...
Lizardman's Constant: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and-reptilian-muslim-climatologists-from-mars/
I think there’s a simpler explanation: the respondent was taking the piss.
Maybe I missed it, but I'm curious how many total people completed the survey
Danielle Steel! My queen! How dare they!
1. When Hemingway wrote "The farm was big. The day was cool. The cow said 'moo'"... I really felt that.
2. A Little Life has sold like 2.5 million copies!
This is really cool! It also makes me want to break down the data in so many other ways... like, for the assigned in HS/college part, could that be visualized as "% assigned in high school" next to "% assigned in college for the subset of English majors in the survey"? Anyways, thanks for putting this together and sharing it.
I think knowledge of contemporary authors also tends to be more geographically limited. I took the survey and I am from the UK (though living in France) and I have heard of (even if I haven't read that much of) all the American authors on your list who are set-text "classics" in the US but not really in the UK (like Melville or Faulkner) but I had not even heard of most of the contemporary US examples. (Whereas I have certainly heard of, if not read, all the high profile UK/Irish equivalents.) I appreciate most of your respondents were from the US, but this is another possible contributory factor.
Highly likely! I can probably check to see if non US respondents were less likely to know about US litfic writers and vice versa. I will report back.
You are right! Non-American respondents had significantly less familiarity with contemporary US writers (and vice-versa, American writers were less familiar with contemporary UK writers). The effect is about half the size of the English-major gap, but quite real.
This would've biased the data more if I had included more contemporary UK writers in the survey (if I had, it would've made contemporary American writers look more popular than their British contemporaries). As it was, it doesn't alter the relative rankings too much, but if you filter for just American or just non-American respondents, the graphs look a little different.
As always, I like your essays. This one was particularly interesting. I think I'd heard of all but 2 of your 100 authors, and read at least something by 90+ of them.
Next time, try Claude for your charts and data analysis, seems to be the consensus out here.
Yes also apparently it won’t turn them into autonomous weapons :) I should try Claude—ChatGPT is just the one I used first so I feel more locked in.
Oh, you bet. My only personal use of AI is to find refs via Google's. Which is pretty good, and free. For my Wikipedia stuff etc.
Incidentally, you might like Alastair Reynold's latest novel, "Halcyon Years". VERY twisty tale of Yuri Gagarin reincarnated as a PI on a troubled generation-ship. Slow start, but he's rolling now, 2/3 in. Paul di Filippo has a good review up at Locus:
https://locusmag.com/review/halcyon-days-by-alastair-reynolds-review-by-paul-di-filippo/
Was waiting for this, loved it. Surprised by many of the results here. Didn't expect Fitzgerald to be more popular than Hemingway.
Was Raymond Carver not part of the poll list?