What makes a Major American Author? When first asked this question, I already knew what it meant to me. It is not how many Pulitzers someone has won or how many books have been sold, it is how did I feel at the end of the book and would I read it again? However, others may not agree but that is exactly my point. All people are different and enjoy different things. Certain authors are very popular and people decide they are considered “Classics” but why? I may not enjoy an author but that doesn’t make them a bad author or not major. The cliché, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” is the way we should look at this question. It is through personal judgment what makes an author great no matter what the Wall Street Journal or Barnes & Noble’s says.
“And adds Picasso with a sigh, even after everybody knows they are good not any more people really like them than they did when only the few knew they were good” (Stein, 88). Picasso could never express the situation better. To be honest, I am not a person to go with what everyone deems worthy of time. I enjoy authors that create a world I can escape the rest of the world. Edgar Allen Poe may be deemed insane and morbid, but his works differentiate from most which creates a mystique. Important qualities for works I read contain a plot with equal imagery as dialogue. For such reasons, I enjoy some play writes as Arthur Miller but his work for The Crucible was lacking the fast pace story I enjoy. Nicholas Sparks The Notebook may be one of my favorite books. Romance and true love qualifies for the top of my list yet I also love stories with happy endings. In Spark’s other books, they end tragically. I may praise it while reading but I would never reread it. Every person’s major author has the readers begging for more and trying to go through the wardrobe as the children of C.S Lewis The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
The books and authors you read display your desires and wants. It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks of the books you read anymore than the clothes you wear. I enjoy romances with happy endings with little to no major conflict. The Major American Author’s List consists of who each person sees deemed worth no one else but you.