It takes a while for people to be canonized, but hell yes. I'm 40 and by no means a championship reader, but here's a small set of folks alive or recently departed that will be part of the canon:
- Kurt Vonnegut
- Hunter S. Thompson
- Margaret Atwood
- J. D. Salinger
- Salmon Rushdie
- Neal Stephenson
- Colson Whitehead
But unless you think there's something special about today's literature, you have to wittle that down further, or over time there's just too many even for a 'championship reader'!
For sake of argument say that's an ordered list of your favourites. Why would you read Whitehead when you could instead read Vonnegut of yesteryear, last century, before that, etc.?
How do you pick something recent to read? A bestsellers 2021 list? Why cast aside something that eas an even better seller, just because it wasn't released this year?
There's just too much available, I don't think I could ever read something new, because I'll never (especially not at my rate, but nobody could) catch up with everything before it, about which more is known and had more time to digest and review etc.
Not really. That list spans 75-ish years of English literature. There are only about 400 years of (modern-enough-to-be-read-by-non-specialist) English literature. If your statement were true, we'd have to assume that there's only space for about 40 authors in the English canon. Even at my non-championship status, I'd guess I've read fiction by 150-ish authors. I'd expect people whose lives are focused on literature are an order of magnitude beyond that.
For me personally, it's usually random chance or personal recommendations that get me to read something from a new author. (I also mostly read things at least a couple decades old.) But a lot of authors basically reach the "canon" in their own lifetimes, at which point it's not a giant roll of the dice to read their recent books. Even when it is though, I mostly read for my own amusement. I'm not expecting any reward other than additional rolled eyes from friends at the bar. ;-)
- "These authors are already dead/or will be, and their books are already decades old, but they are very good according to me, even classic status worthy".
In that sense, it's an answer to TFA's question: "why read classic books" if we consider it as not just asking "why read classic==canonized books?" but "why read class==old books?"
And the answer is "because old books can be great, and contemporary books that are great will at some point be 'classics' themselves".
