What Lasts and (Mostly) Doesn't Last

Recently after a literary event, I was hanging out with some other writers and a conversation about older books led to a parlor game. One of us would read the titles of bestselling novels from a few decades ago and everyone else would try to guess the authors’ names. It was hard. Even with hints. We switched to National Book Award finalists, thinking we’d be more likely to remember acclaimed books than merely popular ones. We did marginally better. A couple titles were easy—your Pale Fires and The Haunting of Hill Houses—but most were not remembered. What was more surprising than the fact we couldn’t match names to (once) famous books was that many of the authors themselves were completely obscure, especially to the younger people present. We were writers and professors. If we didn’t remember these authors, who did? The conversation moved on but I think everyone came away with a reminder: literary fame is fickle and fleeting.