> I'd never argue with someone's favorites--that's quite subjective. But
> influential is a different matter. Lovecraft more influential than, say
> Kafka, Joyce, Proust, and Eliot? If you limit yourself to most
influential
> SF/Horror/Fantasy author, it might be more defensible, though even there I
> would be skeptical.
>
> Regards,
>
> Kevin
Then again there's the difference between influential and important. Joyce
and Proust are important life changing writers but how many other writers
have written like them, is there a school that's arisen around them?
Well, yes and no, influence is hard to trace, they could well have been
inspirational to many people. It's much easier to see the influence of
Lovecraft, goddammit the man has an adjective based on his name. The only
guy on your list who can make that claim is Kafka, and all to often
Kafkaesque just seems to mean 'I didn't understand this'.
That's not to say that it's better to be influential or important, just that
they seem to be different things (perhaps even mutually exclusive things:
influential means copyable, inportant means special, unrepeatable).
Even so, no matter how much I like Lovecraft I don't think I'd call him
either the most important or influential writer of anything so broad as the
20th century. Although the best writer of weird fiction probably does suit
him (but that always sound like damning with faint praise to me, no matter
how much I might mean it).
Matt
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