It seems to me that, if you want to obtain literary immortality, you have to steer clear of comedy as a genre. As a die hard fan of comedy in all its forms, I find this depressing, but there's no getting away from it. Humour changes over time and yesterday's rib ticklers become today's stuffy boring prose that has to be ploughed through in ninth grade. I wonder if, Shakespeare apart, any comic author has genuinely withstood the assault of Time (and by that I mean 200 years or more - anything less than that is probably too soon for language to have changed enough to make that funny-boring switch). And even Billy's comedies are held in high regard for the majesty of their prose and their insights rather than their humour.
Mystery novels, on the other hand, probably get more intriguing with age. I say probably, since, as a whole, the genre is rather young. However, it kinda sorta stands to reason. The mystery is unlikely to simplify over time. On the contrary, the reader of an old mystery novel has the added challenge of having to account for the cultural and technological state of the day and age of the story. Thus, the plot only ends up thickening, and adds to the overall flavour of the story. Considering the current popularity of older whodunnits (The Sherlock Holmes Books, The Poirot Series, The Father Brown Stories), I may not be pulling this opinion completely out of my arse.
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