Re:Blogger Finger
by GFischer on Monday July 19, 2010 @09:55AM
(#1528624)
" Nobody will remember who Dan Brown was 50 or 100 years from now."
Are you so sure about that? Let's take the most popular mass-writers from the 18th or 19th century and see if they're remembered now:
18th century (US): Susanna Rowson / "Charlotte: A Tale of Truth" - doesn't ring a bell for me, and has a very small Google Search result (60.000)
19th century (US): Harriet Beecher Stowe / "Uncle Tom's Cabin" - I think everyone has heard of it :) and it has 15 times as many results as Susanna Rowson (Dan Brown has 17 times as many as Beecher Stowe, fittingly)
I personally at least recognize most of the bestsellers from the 19th century - probably Arthur Conan Doyle's books or Alexandre Dumas could have been seen to be as bad as Dan Brown in their time (I'm not arguing that they are)
20th century: Agatha Christie - still widely read as I recall.
Are you so sure about that? Let's take the most popular mass-writers from the 18th or 19th century and see if they're remembered now:
18th century (US): Susanna Rowson / "Charlotte: A Tale of Truth" - doesn't ring a bell for me, and has a very small Google Search result (60.000)
19th century (US): Harriet Beecher Stowe / "Uncle Tom's Cabin" - I think everyone has heard of it :) and it has 15 times as many results as Susanna Rowson (Dan Brown has 17 times as many as Beecher Stowe, fittingly)
I personally at least recognize most of the bestsellers from the 19th century - probably Arthur Conan Doyle's books or Alexandre Dumas could have been seen to be as bad as Dan Brown in their time (I'm not arguing that they are)
20th century: Agatha Christie - still widely read as I recall.
sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_literature , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_fiction_au... , and related Wiki articles, and googling