I maintain that if people study American literature in 2110, they will study Stephen King and Tom Clancy more than any serious university professor who writes literachuah.

The late great Quentin Crisp once noted that Proust has been lauded for having the courage to leave nothing out. Crisp opined that he should be condemned for not having the intelligence to edit.

Dickens and Twain were the popular novelists of their day; Dickens was actually serialized in magazines (I think Twain was too). “Does Little Nell live?” was a question asked of passengers returning from Britain (where the most recent installment of “The Old Curiosity Shop” had been published but had not made it to America’s shores yet)

James Joyce and Proust drive the perception, but for every one of those or the thick Russian tomes (you have to acquire a taste for them), you can get Dickens, Kipling, Twain, or even some Hawthorne with shorter novels and more action driving them.

If only we could hook readers on some of those easier classic works. However, the professors tend to like to promote Faulkner over Hemingway, for example, to winnow out the masses from the acolytes to join them in the priesthood.