Voices of the Past and Their Precarious Persistence

Forgotten Authors, C.S. Lewis’s Long Tail, Cases of Neglect, Easy Offense, More

¶ Fading from view. A quarter century ago the Los Angeles Times Book Review ran a symposium featuring thirty-six well-known authors listing neglected writers they believed deserved greater attention. As an artifact, the symposium is a study in itself.

To begin with, only twelve on the roster are still alive. In the last twenty-four years, twenty-four pa…