We know he's one the biggest and most consistent selling authors for the gen x'ers and millennials on here. We know he's still very much well read today.
But will his novels still be read in the same that Poe, Asimov, Lovercraft, Henry James are? (just using those as horror/speculative writers as an example)
by Famous_Obligation959
35 Comments
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Long live the King.
Yes. Dickens was the biggest best-seller of his day too.
Yes. He’s published too many books that were hugely popular for some of them to not still be known in a hundred years. Also his books have already proven they have staying power. It’s been almost 50 years since he published Carrie and The Shining, and they’re still extremely popular today. I don’t see why they wouldn’t still be read in a hundred years.
I’d say most of them not widely, but I feel a lot of them are considered and will maintain classic status. It, The Shining, The Stand, maybe Carrie and Pet Semetary. Forgetting I’m sure a few other prime examples. Sure
Certainly some. He’s the 20th century American Charles Dickens. Plenty will probably be left to the side, Pickwick Papers style, but people will still be reading a lot of it.
Probably some will be remembered. Some 19th century authors are still being read but rarely the entire canon. Dickens, Austen, the Brontes, George Elliot, Jules Verne, and H.G. Wells are remembered for one or two books for the most part. I know some people have read them all but some of their novels just haven’t stood the test of time.
For instance, War of the Worlds and the Time Machine are classics exploring deep issues. OTOH the War in the Air seemed prescient but hasn’t aged well.
Sure, at least some of them. People still read Agatha Christie, Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Dickens, etc. While he is known as a “horror” writer, his writing is what it is because he knows people. The Stand and IT and Pet Semetary aren’t amazing because of Flagg, the clown, and Gage Creed. They are amazing being King understand the nature of people, and the tendencies of how people behave doesn’t really change. Reading The Stand during Covid you can clearly see how well he understood how people would behave in those scenarios, for example. And Covid won’t be the last pandemic we see.
From a certain point of view, we are half way through, since Carrie came out 50 years ago. Yes that makes me feel old and yes I also get that OP’s question was about a century from now…. But yeah.
100 years isn’t what it used to be. By that, I mean that access to materials is much more prevalent than it was in the last century.
When the Beatles first came into the scene in 1963, no one would have predicted that they would still be among the most popular bands 60 years from then, but here we are. Good books, movies, music have resilience.
Interestingly poe, lovecraft and king are all from the same rough area. Its like ‘in every generation is born a writer from the new england area that writes about weird shit’. And yes. King will be remembered
He’ll probably still be writing them
Yes, I think his closest comparison as far as what I think his legacy will be like is Agatha Christie
The novella ‘Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption’, which was adapted into the critically acclaimed and beloved by most, film, ‘The Shawshank Redemption’, alone will carry him into the future for at least two centuries. Self sacrifice and redemption are timeless themes.
Then you have ‘Carrie’ ‘The Shining’, ‘It’ ‘Misery’, ‘Stand by Me’, et all, stories that were also adapted into films of which have each become culturally significant and socially defining.
I believe that even without his stories being adapted into films, the stories and their themes were weighty enough on their own to last generations, and continue to teach their lessons.
Because I loved the film adaptation so much, I’ve only ever read his work ‘Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption’, yet from that alone, I can appreciate King’s literary gifts.
So yes, I believe he’ll stand the test of time, for a long time.
I am reading Lovecraft as of now on visual novel (manga by Japanese artist) and novel in hardcover with latest translation to my native language. it is already 100 years you know so I cant see why King wont stand the same test of time.
Oh, surely. He’s one of those authors that other famous authors cite as an inspiration. If anything, his death is likely to increase the prestige of his ouvre, as people with degrees start chiming in on how he “transcended the limitations of his genre” and “is okay for smart people to read now because this essayist from New York says I can”. Authors who sell a lot of books in genre fiction often get this sort of post-mortem reevaluation by the professionally intelligent classes, and King was made for it. Expect more of his books to end up on college course reading lists starting in about fifteen or twenty years, when he’s in the grave and the social environment he wrote about starts to pick up that old-timey nostalgia feel that helps classics feel like classics. He also wrote on writing and let some famous directors adapt some of his works, two classic strategies for getting people to remember you.
I think he’s comparable to Charles Dickens in a way. His novels have a certain level of prestige even outside the horror genre (novels like 11/22/63 and The Green Mile seem to break genre barriers). He also has quite a body of work of varying quality, like Dickens.
Also like Dickens, King has a particular pool of tropes he draws from: the alcoholic writer, the religious fundamentalist, the vaguely supernatural child…in the same way that Dickens did: the orphan, the forgotten child, the evil boss, the stern step-parent.
Now, I won’t say that all of King’s works are as deep as Dickens’s. After all, Dickens more or less established an entire aesthetic and thematic pallette (we still use the word Dickensian to evoke these), but I feel that King has a few solid contenders that could be broken apart and studied as pure literature: The Stand, IT, The Green Mile, The Shining, even Carrie, his first book, lends itself to a debate on who the real monster is.
Overall, I think Stephen King has made way too big a splash in the world of books to not be read in the future…..kinda like Dickens.
I read pop novels from a hundred years ago, I don’t see why it would be any different for future readers
H.P. Lovecraft endures.
Robert E. Howard endures.
Edgar Rice Burroughs endures.
These guys were all pulp writers, not high literature.
As long as horror is still a genre in a hundred years, King will be scaring people from atop “horror Olympus.”
I’d argue his first 10 or so novels as Stephen King (as opposed to Bachmann) will be on High School reading lists soon if not already there and will remain on many for centuries.
Carrie, Salem’s Lot, The Stand, and It are absolutely classics.
I mean he single handedly made scary clowns a trope of media. At least for that alone.
His books have already made it 50 years, but who knows.
Yep. The Stand and The Mist will be used as life manuals.
King is going to be revered in the same way that Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe are. They might not be as popular in 100 years but he’s got so much work out there that he will still be read and celebrated. It’s going to be interesting which works stand the test of time for him, though.
Well not *all* of them. Most major authors get a few books that become classics and I suspect he will be in that camp. What stands the test of time vs. what hits the zeitgeist are very different. Being popular now is no guarantee that future generations will go for him.
Keep in mind, if you look at a list of best selling authors from 100 years ago, a lot of them are now obscure, and now celebrated authors like F. Scott Fitzgerald don’t show up there at all. Here’s the list of the top 10 books of 1924 (likely were far more widely read than bestsellers today.) You may recognize a few names, but most of them are no longer widely recognized.
So Big by Edna Ferber
The Plastic Age by Percy Marks
The Little French Girl by Anne Douglas Sedgwick
The Heirs Apparent by Philip Gibbs
A Gentleman of Courage by James Oliver Curwood
The Call of the Canyon by Zane Grey
The Midlander by Booth Tarkington
The Coast of Folly by Coningsby Dawson
Mistress Wilding by Rafael Sabatini
The Homemaker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
I’m convinced he’ll still be releasing novels in 100 years.
Honestly a strong contender for “most influential writer of the 20th century”.
Absolutely
Yes. Maybe not all but a number of those are probably going to make it to people picking up some novels of the public domain just because.
Also some will make it not just because of quality but because they are very perfect insights to a time period and attitude of a certain demographic.
It’s funny(as an English Lit teacher) when I sing his praises as a master storyteller to my colleagues, eyebrows raise and eyes widen. My students, however, nod with understanding. I personally feel that his stories will transcend time and might even, understandably, come in handy when we need them most. 😉
There won’t be any readers in 100 years
Probably. I would bet on The Stand, The Shining, and 11/22/63 having some historical resonance. People downgrade him because (a) he’s a genre writer, and (b) he writes fast rather than putting a lot of time into revision—he has the talent that he could write that kind of literary fiction, but it’s not what’s into—but he’s absolutely relevant to our times and he’s a great storyteller.
Considering that Carrie was published 50 years ago, I’m going to go with “Yes”.
We still read Lovecraft.
I’d like to think in 100 years people will be read King and Lovecraft still.
I recently re-read Night Shift (it’s the first King book I ever read, back in 1987 or ’88, so I’m particularly fond of it): some of the short stories in it are more than fifty years old, and they are still as readable and as terrifying as when they were published. So yes, I think King will still be read in 2124, and beyond.