4 ms·
Come on, almost all those novels are less than a hundred years old, and have only really been of influence to a small underworld of people - an underworld which
by nirnira 13y ago
Come on, almost all those novels are less than a hundred years old, and have only really been of influence to a small underworld of people - an underworld which is only now just starting to make a real impact on the world. Maybe in a thousand years those books will have shown their true influence, but right now, they're still far too fresh, and alternative.
The books on this list, however, are mostly centuries old (or even older) and were hugely influential to generations upon generations of humans - shaping untold thoughts, feelings, and actions - and laying the intellectual and emotional foundations of the modern world (foundations we take for granted, which is why we can take these books for granted).
- blumkvist 13y agoThere are a lot of authors on the list which are from the same time period. Mao, Marx, Freud, Orwell, Norbert Wiener, Kafka.
- jljljl 13y agoMao and Marx altered the course of nations. Freud and Weiner created fields which have had a major impact on medicine, education, social theory, and technology, and may of those impacts have trickled down into everyday life. You can make an argument against The Trial and 1984, but I'm skeptical many people will agree that they were less influential than any of the books you listed.
- blumkvist 13y agoI don't like comperative statements when talking about exceptional work. Can you say the Beatles are more popular/influential than Queen? How can you even decide something like that? The words themselves (exceptional,influential) do not have comparative/superlative forms. Agreed on Mao and Marx. I'd argue that HGW, Verne and Asimov created or helped significantly in shaping a literary genre which has a high impact on our psychological and cultural behavior and currently paves the way to our future. Whether their ideas last only a 100 years is irrelevant. Is Baroque, or better yet - Rococo - irrelevant? There will be a handful of books that make a big, permament paradigm shift in society as a whole (or in big parts of it). But in order for the authors who will write those books to be born, society has to constantly move and spawn new trends.
- nirnira 13y agoThe words themselves (exceptional,influential) do not have comparative/superlative forms. Sure they do. More exceptional. Most influential. What's not to love?