The 100 Most Influential Writers of All Time (2 page)

Naguib Mahfouz

Albert Camus

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Jack Kerouac

Flannery O'Connor

Toni Morrison

Wole Soyinka

Sir Salman Rushdie

J. K. Rowling

Glossary

For Further Reading

Index

O
pen a book—any book. In it you'll find words, of course, but look closely and you'll also find art, crafted, in detail, by a writer proud enough to sign his or her name to the work. In a book, or in any piece of writing, words are joined together at the whim of the author. Sentences are created, paragraphs and stanzas formatted, chapters built, and stories told. In a book or a poem, a play or a short story, everything is there, on the page, for a reason: To show, to tell, to convey a message. Most works of writing, quite simply, are meant for reading. The great ones, however, by the most talented and ingenious authors, are for study. In such works—
The Old Man and the Sea
, by Ernest Hemingway,
Moby Dick
, by Herman Melville,
Hamlet
, by William Shakespeare—it's the art one finds within that sets them apart from the rest.

So how is it possible to whittle down a list of influential writers—artists of the written word—to just 100 people? That's the challenge—making choices, based on the evidence, and to ultimately compile a reference that does its best to envelop world history and disparate cultures, varying values, and regional tastes. Many individuals included in this compilation, including the three mentioned above, are paradigms of English literature. Others, such as Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Aristophanes, hail from ancient Greece. Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin, a Russian writer of the early 1800s, is a founder of modern literature in that country. Leo Tolstoy, also of Russia, was a novelist, essayist, and dramatist, and is most famous for his novel
War and Peace
, considered by many to be one of the greatest books ever put into print. The 13th-century Sufi poet R
Å«
m
Ä«
is known today as a musically influenced master on subjects like mysticism, love, and spirituality.

The sheer panoply of nationalities represented in this book, as well as variances in style and theme, brings up an
interesting question. Can Lu Xun, the founder of modern Chinese literature and a huge influence on Communism in that country, rightfully be compared to someone like Emily Brontë, the English novelist who is remembered for writing one great masterwork,
Wuthering Heights
? Perhaps, but their spheres of influence are so different—Brontë's in the English-speaking world, Lu Xun's, for the most part, in China and the East—that a direct comparison would certainly be difficult. Writers are influenced by the places in which they live and the cultures in which they are steeped. They are all “greats,” and they all have had influence on their respective readerships.

As the title of this book indicates, all those featured in this collection are influential. Through their work, they've reached out to the masses, touched the hearts and souls of millions, and left their mark on the world. But how exactly is influence defined in this case? Perhaps it's the ability of one person, through his or her writing, to change the way the world thinks. Jack Kerouac is a prime example. Kerouac, an American writer and the literary leader of the so-called Beat Generation, achieved instant fame when his second novel,
On the Road
, was published in 1957. Kerouac typed the book on one long scroll of paper. Written like a jazz piece, it seems spontaneous and improvised, a fluid and furious work of art that could almost be read in one long breath, cover to cover.

On the Road
captures readers' imaginations, takes them for a ride, spins them around, and makes them dizzy. It paints a picture of America like no other novel before it. What's more, the book has dared countless readers to explore the world themselves, to take to “the road,” either literally or in their imaginations, just like Sal Paradise, the book's narrator.

Perhaps a writer's influence is determined by timeless prominence, the ability to remain relevant hundreds of years after initial publication. Several of the authors in this book fit that bill, particularly Jane Austen. Her penned explorations of everyday life in middle-class England are timeless classics primarily because her characters have many of the same foibles, and become embroiled in many of the same situations, as contemporary citizens the world over in the present day.

Not only are Austen's books required reading in many school curriculums, but the author's works have permeated modern culture in a way she never could have predicted. Movies and television miniseries based on her novels have proved quite successful, and groups dedicated to the reading and discussion of Austen's work are virtually everywhere; national and regional chapters of the Jane Austen Society dot the globe. Several authors have paid homage to Austen by writing fictionalized accounts of her life or using the themes and style of her novels as the inspiration for their own narratives. This ability to sway audiences so deeply, and in so many ways, a century or more after the fact is arguably the very definition of influential.

Prize-winning authors, whose mastery of language and storytelling is acknowledged by prestigious literary organizations, may be considered highly influential as well. Toni Morrison is the author of the books
Song of Solomon
, (1977) which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, and
Beloved
(1987), which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. In 1993, Morrison became the first black woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

But Morrison's influence extends well beyond awards and honours. In addition to her status as a best-selling author, she is also a teacher, lecturer, and activist. Her
work in these arenas cannot help but inform her writing. Throughout her career, Morrison has delved into black culture and the black female experience in America. Through her novels, she has reached and influenced millions on a much more personal, socially conscious level. She's made readers think about issues facing society, about the implications of racism in America and the struggle that blacks and women—and black women in particular—continue to go through to secure their place in an often hostile world.

The same holds for Richard Wright, who brought protest fiction to the fore as an American literary movement. Protest fiction is that which tackles social injustice; in this case, racism. At a time when many publishing houses were reluctant to distribute books by or about blacks, Wright succeeded in getting first
Native Son
(1940), then
Black Boy
(1945), onto shelves and into readers' hands. Wright's success paved the way for future generations of black writers, which, in turn, helped strengthen the resolve of those in the civil rights movement.

With carefully crafted prose or a verse, a writer can influence individual allegiances, support or defame a political regime, or effect change by shedding light on an untenable situation. The Chilean poet Pablo Neruda is a case in point. In the beginning of his career, Neruda spoke of love and heartbreak, drawing heavily on his own romantic adventures and disappointments. After being named an honorary consul and being posted in Spain during that country's civil war, however, he denounced his early work and began to tackle more serious issues. The war in Spain polarized Neruda's political beliefs, which began to infiltrate his work. His poems soon took on the tenor of propaganda; he hoped to stir the masses into a patriotic
fervour with simple yet lyric passages and sombre, sometimes anguished, imagery. Through his writing he became, in large part, the voice of the Chilean people.

Neruda's activist tendencies eventually got him into trouble, and he wound up fleeing his native country in 1948 to avoid prosecution for openly criticizing Chile's right-leaning president. He returned years later and is now considered by many to be among the most significant Latin American writers of the 20th century.

The outspoken and rebellious nature of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's writings brought the wrath of his country's government down on him as well. A soldier for the Soviet Union during World War II, Solzhenitsyn spent eight years in a prison camp for criticizing Joseph Stalin. He later turned his prison experience into his first novel,
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
, which was an immediate success. Buoyed by the reception that book received, he continued to write works of fiction that were thinly veiled criticisms of the Soviet way of life. The government tried to suppress his masterwork,
The Gulag Archipelago
, a historical narrative of the Soviet prison system that blends fiction with firsthand accounts by the author and other former prisoners. That book resulted in him and his family being expelled from the country.

Political climates change, however, and Solzhenitsyn returned to his homeland after the fall of the Soviet Union some 20 years after he was exiled. At that time he was welcomed as a hero and credited with foretelling the collapse of the Communist government.

When all is said and done, perhaps what makes a writer influential is simply the ability to entertain, to keep readers up at night, turning page after page, just so they can learn what happens next. After all, the books of J. K. Rowling do not masquerade as political commentary or
allegory, nor do they have pretensions of winning the Nobel Prize in Literature—although several ardent fans have petitioned the Nobel committee on Rowling's behalf. No, instead Rowling's Harry Potter series is simply a tale well told, with a truly magical setting and characters that capture the reader's attention and affection. The one way in which Rowling's books wield strong influence is in getting children interested in reading again.

The truth is, influence can mean so many things and can be measured in so many ways. Those who read the works of any of the writers profiled in this book may very well discover an experience they've perhaps never had before. They might have their imagination sparked and be transported, however briefly, from the travails of the life they're living. An author's writing might, with its insight, highlight an injustice, leading readers to speak out themselves and demand an equitable resolution. Whatever the case, one can't read a work by authors such as those detailed here without being influenced in some way. That's the power of great writing. And that's the real reason we read.

(flourished 9th or 8th century BCE?, Ionia? [now in Turkey])

H
omer is the presumed author of the
Iliad
and the
Odyssey
. Although these two great epic poems of ancient Greece have always been attributed to the shadowy figure of Homer, little is known of him beyond the fact that his was the name attached in antiquity by the Greeks themselves to the poems. That there was an epic poet called Homer and that he played the primary part in shaping the
Iliad
and the
Odyssey
—so much may be said to be probable. If this assumption is accepted, then Homer must assuredly be one of the greatest of the world's literary artists.