Perspective is everything. Will anyone care in 100 years if you don't do your reading for class this week? Will the world be any different? Probably not - time heals all wounds, after all. Yet life isn't futile. Different people put different marks on the world every day, and there are people writing books and making movies that reach millions of other human beings.
But perspective matters no matter how big your audience. And time, in addition to healing pesky wounds, eventually gives us a new angle on things. Of all the big names in entertainment, which ones deserve historical recognition? In 100 years, which filmmakers or musicians or novelists will America hail as the creative geniuses of our era? When new encyclopedias are made, what creative minds will make the cut?
Do we have a new John Lennon? A modern-day Hitchcock? A Charles Dickens for the new millenium?
Don't expect this line of thought to be simple. Much of what we consider art comes in forms that didn't even exist before the 20th century. When exposed to it every hour of the day, we take recorded music for granted; historically, however, it's a new and novel luxury.
Therefore, even if we believe that McCartney and Lennon made sweeping changes to the shape of music, we can't compare the Beatles to Beethoven. The Beatles weren't just composers but were also performers - and, dare I say, sex symbols - whereas music from previous centuries exists only on paper, heard only as we perform or record it anew. When Leonard Bernstein conducts a performance of Beatles songs, then we can start analyzing Lennon fairly as a composer.
The same goes for film. The history of the medium is too short to draw any grand parallels. Not even theater compares properly - screenwriters and playwrights don't work the same way.
What we can consider, however, are books. Though the publishing industry takes a different role in our lives today than it did in the Victorian era, the concept of the medium remains unchanged. And unless modern art is all garbage - an interesting and ridiculous argument to pitch - there must be someone out there that's going to be on the required reading list in 2100 the way that Charles Dickens is today.
You ask: who? Can we even spot a great mind while they're still at work? How do we decide today who we'll respect tomorrow? Isn't it possible that someone who gets no respect now might become one of this era's "signature" artists later?
Of course. But the fact that this person may not be taken seriously now does not mean that he's languishing in obscurity somewhere. He could be someone as big as Stephen King.
In fact, let's just say it: he could be Stephen King.
Why not? It's not as though Dickens was unpopular in his time. Between 1837 and 1861, he released 17 of the best-selling novels ever seen in the Victorian era - sometimes more than one in a year.
Meanwhile, King stands as the best-selling novelist in history - a fact usually stated with derision rather than reverence. But maybe, just maybe, the public isn't a bunch of louts. Hold back the angry, torch-bearing critics: maybe King's numbers are good because his writing is good.
Books don't have to be confusing or unpleasant to read in order to be great. In fact, if the point of writing is to affect people with words, perhaps popular writing is more important than we give it credit for. King's work speaks to people; if it didn't, they wouldn't buy it. Yes, his books are exciting and easy to read, but they're not simple. Books like It, Misery, and Insomnia - even some of his grim, early works like The Long Walk - run deep enough for any English class.
Literary critics shouldn't be afraid to embrace the popular from time to time. They turn up their noses at many successful things - and many of those things are trashy indeed - but it's vital that those noses turn up for the right reasons. There's no point in rejecting something simply because other people like it.
Of course, unpopular art may still be great in retrospect. Vincent Van Gogh may be an overused example, but as a now-famous painter who sold only one piece before his death, his case is a potent one. There's no doubt that brilliant artists get overlooked in the world. Sometimes there are just too many rocks in the world to spot every gem.
If we can look at books in relation to past books, however, we can examine our new artistic media relative to their own shorter histories. Maybe we can't compare the Beatles to Beethoven or Hitchcock to Ibsen, but we can analyze our current art by using the past century as a baseline. The Beatles are a good standard to use for comparing other bands - from Pearl Jam to Third Eye Blind to Green Day - even if you can only say that they don't come close. And maybe we can't compare Hitchcock to those before him, but we can certainly use him to discuss the historical importance of Robert Zemeckis or Steven Soderbergh.
Leaving the question: is there a modern-day equivalent to the Beatles or to Hitchcock? That's a lot harder to say. The long histories behind literature and publishing make it easier to step out of our culture and look for patterns. Edison only invented the phonograph in 1877, and the recording industry is still young enough that it's hard to tell if the Beatles were a singular phenomenon. And few directors can match Hitchcock's prolific life - over 60 directing credits in film and television and a career that spanned from silent films to color ones - making it hard to draw many significant parallels.
So when it comes to books, my money's on King. No one's going to forget him, even if he has given up writing as he claimed recently. He's popular for all the right reasons. But for film and music, it's a waiting game. Hitchcock and the Beatles will never be forgotten, but it's impossible to pick out any spiritual siblings from the past decade with any confidence at all.
