Both hugely influential in their genres.  But, would you say they are household names?

Feb 8, 2020 3:25:25 GMT theend said:

Both hugely influential in their genres.  But, would you say they are household names?

No. Only authors who are household names are:

Tom Clancy
JK Rowling
Mark Twain
Charles Dickens
Maybe JRR Tolkien

No one even knows who wrote Hunger Games, Twilight, Shades of Grey anymore. Good fucking luck to sci fi and fantasy influencers.

I'd be surprised if more households than not knew Isaac Asimov.

Wife is big into books, these are household names to her:

JK Rowling
Dan Brown*
James Patterson*
Margaret Atwood
Maya Angelou
Neil Gaiman

*pregnancy brain caused this to come out as Dan Patterson, which is NOT a household name

Can't believe she didn't say Clancy or Twain. Sheeesh

For what it's worth, I fucking love Dick

Feb 8, 2020 3:34:27 GMT 🤯 said:

Feb 8, 2020 3:25:25 GMT theend said:

Both hugely influential in their genres.  But, would you say they are household names?

No. Only authors who are household names are:

Tom Clancy
JK Rowling
Mark Twain
Charles Dickens
Maybe JRR Tolkien

No one even knows who wrote Hunger Games, Twilight, Shades of Grey anymore. Good fucking luck to sci fi and fantasy influencers.

I'd be surprised if more households than not knew Isaac Asimov.

Feb 8, 2020 3:38:02 GMT 🤯 said:

Wife is big into books, these are household names to her:

JK Rowling
Dan Brown*
James Patterson*
Margaret Atwood
Maya Angelou
Neil Gaiman

*pregnancy brain caused this to come out as Dan Patterson, which is NOT a household name

Shit, we're idiots.
Add:

Stephen King
William Shakespeare
Ernest Hemingway
Agatha Christie
Emily Dickenson
John Steinbeck

She's guessing on...
Henry Thoreau?
George Orwell?
JD Salinger?
Franz Kafka?

And she seconded Charles Dickens (but still hasn't mentioned Twain or Clancy

I'll also add Kurt Vonnegut

Michael Creighton?

Definitely Doctor fucking Seuss.

And Roald mutha fuckin Dahl.

I think Wife knows books too well.

Some of these authors she's name dropping are no-names to me

R.L. Stein and Stan & Jan Berenstain

Harper Lee?
Edgar Allen Poe
Walt Whitman
Oscar Wilde?

...

Nicholas m-f'n Sparks!

Fuck these transcendentalist assholes.

She don't know Dick.

How the fuck is that possible!?

Now she's saying Dante and Voltaire. Get the fuck outta here. What's next? Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone?!

Definitely came onto PW to do something, but got distracted and now totally forgot what.

Fuck it, you know what, I bet more households than not know Dick.

Dick and Lovecraft not close.

The only one pi didn’t mention that I thought of was Grisham.

🤯 is cracking me up in this thread. Gummy night? I don't really know what your gummies are. For the longest time I thought you meant like gummy bears- the old candy  Now I know it's some kind of CBD thing. Or at least I think it is? You'll have to explain it to me one day.

Anyway, I've heard of both,  and have probably read every single Lovecraft story. Many multiple times. So they're both household names to me.

But I didn't know who Justin Bieber was for the longest time (to use just one example) and have no idea who most of these "celebrities" are. My 71 year old mom is more attuned to what is popular than I am. So I'm a terrible judge of who is or isn't a household name.

Many authors are household names in Britain. We were the leaders of high culture, after all.

Charles Dickens, Dan Brown, J.K. Rowling, Tolkien, Stephen King, Agatha Christie, Beatrix Potter, Jane Austen, the Bronte Sisters, Orwell, Conan Doyle. That's just off the top of my head, I'm sure there are many more.

I could never get into Lovecraft, but Edgar Allan Poe is phenomenal. Not many people know that he invented the detective story. "Murder in the Rue Morgue" is a Sherlock Holmes story that predates Sherlock Holmes. Conan Doyle even has a subtle dig at Auguste Dupin (Poe's detective character) in one of the early Holmes stories. I wouldn't say either are household names, although Poe is the more famous name, mainly because of The Raven. Also that episode of the Simpsons based on the Telltale Heart.

Philip K. Dick and the other sci-fi guys are pretty obscure names in the grand scheme of things. I've never been a sci-fi guy anyway. H.G. Wells wrote the only sci-fi literature I've enjoyed.

Feb 8, 2020 4:03:48 GMT Baker said:

🤯 is cracking me up in this thread. Gummy night? I don't really know what your gummies are. For the longest time I thought you meant like gummy bears- the old candy  Now I know it's some kind of CBD thing. Or at least I think it is? You'll have to explain it to me one day.

Anyway, I've heard of both,  and have probably read every single Lovecraft story. Many multiple times. So they're both household names to me.

But I didn't know who Justin Bieber was for the longest time (to use just one example) and have no idea who most of these "celebrities" are. My 71 year old mom is more attuned to what is popular than I am. So I'm a terrible judge of who is or isn't a household name.

There's probably CBD in them, but definitely THC. Gummies are just my go-to format of edible weed. Living that @fezz and shinobimusashi dream with my medicinal stash from Mass. You can tell quality control is suspect though, as each individual gummy is supposed to be 5mg but they're all cut in such wildly different sizes. Some have been like three times the size of others.

🤯, how can Wife not mention Stephen King??? That’s ridiculous!

Feb 8, 2020 15:54:27 GMT KJ said:

🤯, how can Wife not mention Stephen King??? That’s ridiculous!

To her credit, I blanked on him too

Feb 8, 2020 3:57:08 GMT mikec said:

Dick and Lovecraft not close.

The only one pi didn’t mention that I thought of was Grisham.

Good shout. Grish is like the Tom Clancy of Lawyers, right?

What are we meaning by household name here? From a random sampling of 16+ year olds, 70% would know they were an author if you said their name? Or would just recognise the name? Or if you gave them an hour to list every author they can think of, they'd be on it?

Feb 8, 2020 3:51:15 GMT 🤯 said:

Now she's saying Dante and Voltaire. Get the fuck outta here. What's next? Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone?!

I feel like Plato, Aristotle and Socrates are pretty close to household names over here, but people wouldn't immediately think of them if you mentioned authors. But take to the streets and ask people to name Greek philosophers and I think many would be able to name those three.

Dante's Inferno is certainly a household phrase, whether people actually know its origin or not.

Orwell and Wilde are two definite household names in the UK that may not be quite so in the States. Brontë sisters possibly fall into that category as well and maybe Agatha Christie, whereas there have been so many big adaptations of Jane Austen's work that she probably is more likely to be close to a household name in the US. Jeffrey Archer is an author (and a successful one) who is a household name in Britain, albeit more for his scandals than his books.

I feel like Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley would do surprisingly well on a poll of this sort of thing just because their names are always mentioned in relation to their famous books and related media in ways that most other's are not.

CS Lewis and Lewis Carroll feel like they are close to household names.

I think you'd get a good number of people naming Tolstoy and Dostoevsky if asked to name non-English language authors.

It is likely that Lovecraft is at his most well-known today. His influence seems to be acknowledged quite a lot these days and you see the term Lovecraftian mentioned a fair bit.

As far as "names" go, I've heard of Lovecraft. No idea what they're famous for but it's gotta be something if it sounds familiar. No clue about Philly.

Lovecraft is more known than Dick, but people know Dick's stories better than Lovecraft. I mean most people know We Can Remember it for Wholesale (As Total Recall), Minority Report and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (as Blade Runner), with many also knowing The Man in the High Castle. Maybe people know Herbert West Reanimator and the Colour out of Space by Lovecraft, or Call of Cthulhu. But the film adaptations are less known than Dick's.

Few actually read either author. I find Lovecraft more read than Dick, but Lovecraft only wrote two novellas (Mountains and Dream Quest) whereas most of Dick's work is novels.

If you read Locke and Key Ness that is where you heard Lovecraft most likely. Was the town Key House was in.

Also both are amazing authors.  

Feb 8, 2020 3:39:06 GMT 🤯 said:

For what it's worth, I fucking love Dick

sig worthy quote right there.

Both Dick and Lovecraft are awesome, but neither are really household names. They are absolute legends for the fantasy/Sci-fi/Horror crowd, but their mainstream appeal is a little lacking.

That being said, their stories are some of the most influential in their genre, and Dick's works have been adapted into some highly successful films (Bladerunner, Total Recall, and Minority Report being the biggest standouts) Lovecraft has been a major influence on every horror writer that has come after him.