> I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the HN crowd doesn't care to distinguish between types of creative media
No snark: did/do you think anyone who has ever read Shakespeare is not aware of that? Even without literature teachers to explain the history and background, the format gives away that secret.
I think I agree with you that the context of an artistic work is a valuable lens through which to view it, but there are definitely timeless works of art, too. Don Quixote or most of Dickens come to mind.
Sure. But novels specifically require a greater-than-usual time investment, so they will appeal to a more niche crowd than a play, it's modern analogue, the movie, or a poem. And the length practically requires filler.
Most anyone aiming at timelessness avoids the novel format, which is far more geared towards time-killing entertainment. That doesn't mean you can't find timeless novels, but they're fairly rare. We remember Jane Austen, but not the endless legion of contemporaries inhabiting the same space she did.
Your examples themselves are instructive. Don Quixote was one of the very first novels ever written. Of course it's amazing. Dickens' novels were originally serialized in magazines, not published in full. It's a testament to his genius that they're as timeless as they are. His seminal work, A Christmas Carol was published in full, but it was a novella, not a novel.
I remember reading Anna Karenina and thinking the pacing could have been a lot tighter. The novel has almost from the beginning been pop fare, more of a business concern than an artistic one.
