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Friday, January 28, 2011

The (12) top writers (English-language, not living) without whom my life would not be the same

My friend Bill posted on FB a query, asking his friends to (quickly) list the 12 greatest/their 12 favorite vocalists - and it provoked a lot of thinking (at least on my part), so let me propose a similar challenge: list (quickly) your 12 top writers, the 12 writers without whom your interior life would not be the same. To narrow the field a little, let's say writers of the past (i.e., not alive today) and let's say also English-language writers. OK? Wait, wait - obviously everyone's list is going to start with the same writer, so let's just get Shakespeare off the stage right away and add 12 more from here. Here's my list (unranked):
1. T.S. Eliot. What? That anti-Semite? But his poems were the first complex ones I knew and loved, and I still go back to his work again and again. So to balance him:
2. Allen Ginsberg. Not necessarily the greatest but the most influential and accessible. No poet opened my eyes more to the possibilities of writing than Ginsberg.
3. William Carolos Williams. Guided me through college.
4. Keats. His odes and some of the sonnets - I return to again and again, still.
5. Forster. On basis of Passage alone.
6. James. The novellas.
7. Updike. I came upon him somewhat later. The Rabbit books will be read forever.
8. William Maxwell. Still not fully appreciated. So Long, see you tomorrow is one of our great works of literature.
9. Joyce. Ulysses is too great for any one mind other than Joyce's to comprehend.
10. Faulkner. Obvious American heir to Joyce.
11. Hemingway. Obvious counterpart to Faulkner.
12. Raymond Carver. Obvious heir to Hemingway.

And there are so many I left off! And no women, what's the matter with me? Well,let's just assume this was the 12 male writers list - more to come in future posts.

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