Which 21st century hacks will be remembered a century from now?

GIB

Rowling has already outsold Tolkien about 2:1, not even 20 years after her first book.
This keeps me up at night.

This is literally all she'll be remembered for: making lots of money.

its obscene if you think about it.

she looks like the pink hair chick in star wars

>Harry Potter isn't anything particularly special

Oh boy it's this hot take again. Yes, Harry Potter seems a bit dull once you hit adolescence and can see it for the hedonistic cartoon that it is, but you faggots always underestimate how good this stuff is to kids. You cannot understand the mind of a 12 who reads Harry Potter, it's like injecting heroin from outer space directly into your fucking heart. When I read this shit as a 10 year old kid in the late 90s/early 2000s it was my whole world, whatever Rowling tapped into here is a more powerful force than probably even she understands. Whatever it does, it does it better than any YA before or since, so to call it "nothing special" is a brainlet decree. There is something very special about Harry Potter, it's just hard to see it when you are older and cynical.

Me

OP here, I'm fully aware that Harry Potter is great compared to the rest of modern young adult literature. I loved it when I was a teenager. When I said it "isn't anything particularly special" I was comparing it to great literature that has withstood the test of time.

>pink hair chick in star wars
Laura Dern, user. Her name is Laura Dern. Please go watch Blue Velvet and David Lynch's other work.

It still doesn’t deserve to be canonised in any fashion at all. Its not even as special as Frankenstein or the crysalids

Every time someone criticizes Harry Potter on here inevitably someone like you pops up and babbles "it's for kids! You're being cynical!" The problem with this argument is in today's world millions and millions of adults consider Harry Potter to be a brilliant work of art. Someday these manchildren will canonize Harry Potter even though it doesn't hold a candle to other canonized genre fiction/young adult fiction.

>J.K. Rowling
>earned $1.15 billion
>call her a hack

While I agree that Harry Potter is overrated by culturally stunted adults, he's right about its appeal to children. I read the first Harry Potter book when I was in sixth grade, and I fucking loved it. The other book that blew me away was Redwall, which I read when I was eight or nine. Unlike the Redwall books, however, Harry Potter has a coherent narrative across as well as within the books. Even though I've outgrown Harry Potter, this last fact is actually a fairly serious accomplishment that few authors manage.

Yes, it is a problem that huge numbers of now-adults can't bring themselves to move on from HP. Literary culture is absolutely not being properly transmitted between generations. But that has nothing to do with Harry Potter.

>doesn't hold a candle to other canonized genre fiction/young adult fiction.

What works do you think are better, and why?

Without quibbling over definitions of "hack" and "remembered" (e.g. yes Hardy is "remembered' but probably not by the average reader) I'd say --

William Gibson is absolutely a hack, but I think Neuromancer has made a big enough impression on culture to be relevant at least to specialists.

DFW wasn't a hack, even if I don't like him, nevertheless he will probably be remembered as more or less the patron saint of the Creative Writing MFA.

I agree with OP that there's a pretty good chance that the Harry Potter books will continue to be read in a hundred years although I wouldn't expect/hope them to be anywhere near as popular as now, though.

Why do you think Gibson is a hack? His writing ability?
I find his work to be a bit repetitive in nature when it comes in story telling as I find he tends to repeat the same style of narrative over and over, but I also used him as the bridge between regular genre fiction to literature as a teenager.
I don't think he's amazing by any means, but I personally think calling him a hack is rather extreme, since I think he does have some talent and there are far more writers deserving of the title.

He pretty much writes formulaic thrillers. There is some real originality in there but writing formulaic books to feed yourself is pretty much the definition of hack writing. I'm aware that some consider "hack" to be a purely derogatory term implying zero originality or significant creative thought; if that's the definition you're using then I would say he isn't.

>I find his work to be a bit repetitive in nature when it comes in story telling as I find he tends to repeat the same style of narrative over and over

For instance, I consider any writer who matches this description a hack. If you think "a hack, but still pretty good" is a contradiction in terms then you'll disagree, but I don't.

Fair enough. I made the assumption you were going by the zero originality definition.

Is this supposed to be a new pasta? Haven't been on Veeky Forums in a bit.
HP was good as a kid for me, and I even sort of enjoy it as nostalgic being an adult, but it clearly has no significant literary value.

Money doth not maketh man.

wtf how can you be so wise

I'm sort of mad this was the first post to make me audibly chuckle in a long time.

kek

Just use archaic forms of English. :^)

if you're supposed to judge the merit of a book in the light of its target audience as well(and you are) then yea, it's an adequate argument, you would do an injustice to HP if you didnt judge it as what it is
>The problem with this argument is in today's world millions and millions of adults consider Harry Potter to be a brilliant work of art
yep

She's also selling to a worldwide audience after her books came into film, and she's written more books than he did. The two can't be judged side by side unless you're a naval-gazing boor who wants to feel like le wrong generation

J.K. Rowling’s shitty liberal politics are closely mirrored by the series, DESU. It plays at being anti-fascist by setting up this grand resistance to the Big Bad Guy whose faction parallels white supremacists, but none of the blatantly fucked-up systemic problems that are inherent to the wizarding world are ever addressed, or even really considered to be problems at all.

Like, there’s a literal slave race used by wizards and the people who point out how fucked up this is are portrayed as wacky and out-of-touch.

Also, Harry Potter ends up basically becoming a cop in the ending.

Nothing will be remembered a century from now, the world will be a radically different dystopia beyond anything you can imagine.