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#1
08-30-2005, 09:18 PM
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Re: The best American author of the 20th century is....
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Quote: Are we counting TS Eliot as American or British? British, I assume. If we are counting him as American, he wins... ...and it's not close. [/ QUOTE ] Despite being born in St. Louis, critics consider him both American and British. And he can't be considered the best author cause he was a poet and not an author in the generally held sense of the word. 
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#2
08-31-2005, 01:31 AM
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Re: The best American author of the 20th century is....
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And he can't be considered the best author cause he was a poet and not an author in the generally held sense of the word. [/ QUOTE ] South Park mom's voice: "Wha what WHAT??!" An author writes. That much is indisputable. Whether he writes poems or prose is not "generally held." If you feel that Elliot failed to express as much or more in The Hollow Men or The Wasteland as Fitzgerald did in Gatsby or Miller did in either of the Tropics, well, that's just a matter of opinion.
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#3
08-31-2005, 02:02 AM
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Re: The best American author of the 20th century is....
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An author writes. That much is indisputable. Whether he writes poems or prose is not "generally held." If you feel that Elliot failed to express as much or more in The Hollow Men or The Wasteland as Fitzgerald did in Gatsby or Miller did in either of the Tropics, well, that's just a matter of opinion. [/ QUOTE ] An author responds. I don't deny that the two above mentioned poems are amoung the greatest works of English ("The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock" remains my favorite poem of all time incidentally). However, I think in "polls" such as this the term author should only include primarily prose writers because when comparing a poem and novel, there is no way of saying which one is a better work (The Wastelands vs. Farewell to Arms??) I am not espousing the merits of one over the other, I'm just saying let's compare apples to apples, not "Absalom,Absalom" to "Song of Myself"
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#4
08-30-2005, 10:38 PM
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Re: The best American author of the 20th century is....
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Are we counting TS Eliot as American or British? [/ QUOTE ] I say we keep credit for him for everything until he joined the Church of England, which gives us most of his great poems and cuts out the plays, which I mostly don't like. NT
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#6
08-30-2005, 06:23 PM
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Re: The best American author of the 20th century is....
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Stephen King by a mile [/ QUOTE ] The question was who is the best not who used to be a good writer but has been pumping out as many books as he possibly can before the public catches on to the fact he hasn't written a good book in about 10 years
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#7
08-31-2005, 01:45 AM
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Re: The best American author of the 20th century is....
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[ QUOTE ] Stephen King by a mile [/ QUOTE ] The question was who is the best not who used to be a good writer but has been pumping out as many books as he possibly can before the public catches on to the fact he hasn't written a good book in about 10 years [/ QUOTE ] Nope, I was answering the OP question. 'The Body', 'Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption' and 'It' are beautifully written, for example. I'd agree his later works aren't up to the same standard as these at all, though.
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#8
08-31-2005, 02:05 AM
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Re: The best American author of the 20th century is....
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Nope, I was answering the OP question. 'The Body', 'Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption' and 'It' are beautifully written, for example. I'd agree his later works aren't up to the same standard as these at all, though. [/ QUOTE ] As a King fan I regretfully must say that he won't be considered a 'great' until 75 years into the future. Dickens wrote commercially successful "fluff" but now we consider him a master.
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#10
08-31-2005, 04:25 AM
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Re: The best American author of the 20th century is....
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[ QUOTE ] Nope, I was answering the OP question. 'The Body', 'Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption' and 'It' are beautifully written, for example. I'd agree his later works aren't up to the same standard as these at all, though. [/ QUOTE ] As a King fan I regretfully must say that he won't be considered a 'great' until 75 years into the future. Dickens wrote commercially successful "fluff" but now we consider him a master. [/ QUOTE ] Well, anyone who reads a lot/broadly will consider it pretty obvious IF they read The Body or It, say. Each page is quality through and through, in the same way something like 'The Old Man and the Sea' is quality through and through. Unfortunately, his horror/'populist' rep will stop a lot of literary people reading him, and if they did, they'd keep quiet about what they thought anyway. Dickens is a great equivalent, BTW.
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Hybrid Mode
