It's questionable as to whether Time Magazine has any influence of its own nowadays, but that hasn't stopped them from continuing to publish their annual list of the world's 100 most influential people. The feature is one of those cute, marketable gimmicks that ensure a (certainly much-needed) boost in sales, but it does provide for some interesting fodder as to what qualities enable the quantification of an individual's influence. Apparently, whatever this logarithm involves, it doesn't look kindly on fiction writers.
This year's list is a frustrating mixture of self-congratulatory stunts—T. Boone Pickens and Ted Turner writing each other's profiles, Ashton Kutcher musing on the Twitter guys (he owes them for all that free publicity), Quincy Jones celebrating John Legend after the two just recently recorded a duet for Jones' upcoming album—with a commendable lauding of some of the world's giants. Inclusions like Captain Chesley (Sully) Sullenberger and Captain Richard Phillips raise the question of what actually comprises influence; yes, these two men are heroes, but beyond the scope of this year, will anyone recognize their names? And hasn't Phillips only been famous for about a month? Do their respective influences extend to the average person, who will never fly a commercial airliner or be taken hostage by Somalian pirates? Plus, elementary-school current events summaries, like General Chuck Yeager's 255-word recounting of Sullenberger's story, do little to impress upon anyone this significance; far more successful is Sullenberger's piece on Phillips, a nuanced and insightful tribute that makes both men look impressive.
Though if the list's values are any indication, Yeager's poor writing should be expected. This year's Time 100 made the bold choice of including only a single writer of fiction, Jeff Kinney, famous for his Young Adult series Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Of course, if you're like me and aren't familiar with Kinney, his books, or their influence, the heartbeat of a blurb written by an ACTUAL SIXTH GRADER! probably won't teach you anything worthwhile. Let's just say that Michiko Kakutani's job is safe.
That leaves us without anyone involved in the art of words and sentences (not to discount Kinney, but his work isn't about the craft). Now, there are two reasons I can think of for why the inclusion of even one significant novelist was neglected in favor of multiple representatives from film, music, theater, and basically every other cultural form.
- First, that it was some sort of meta-commentary by Time on the diminishing influence of creative writing as a cultural medium, a downfall that spiked in velocity this year with the death of John Updike and the continuing decrease in magnitude of the Great American Writer persona.
- Second, that Time couldn't name any.
I hope that it was the first, but I'm not exactly brimming with confidence. Intentional or not, it was an oversight; to decline to even acknowledge the existence of one of art's most enduring, evocative forms is delusional, and it's not like there weren't any choices. Philip Roth isn't dead—in fact, he released a book this year, and he's got two more ready for the next. Joseph O'Neill has influenced Obama with his latest novel, Netherland, although in Time's defense, that story broke after the list's publication. After all, it's not like anyone had noticed O'Neill before Obama started reading him. Oh, and Toni Morrison received raves for her book A Mercy, providing a perfect excuse to spotlight one of America's living legends whose masterwork Beloved is still widely read and studied.
Any one of these three demand inclusion on a list like this, and the overall absence of a fiction writer is egregious and unfortunate. You can't tell me that this group doesn't merit a representative, especially considering that we still educate our children and teenagers on a steady diet of novels. Maybe Time would prefer that we do let television raise the next generation.
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