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in CategoryBOOKS </today/category/books>
</today/2009/8/4/in-which-the-drought-hits-texas.html> In Which
These Are The 100 Greatest Writers Of All Time
</today/2009/8/3/in-which-these-are-the-100-greatest-writers-of-all-time.htm
l>
</today/2009/8/3/in-which-it-was-a-week-that-never-stopped.html>
DateMonday, August 3, 2009 at 1:35PM
The 100 Greatest Writers of All Time
by WILL HUBBARD and ALEX CARNEVALE
/Other lists of this kind have been attempted, none very successfully.
We would like to stress that there is a crucial difference between "an
important writer" and "a great writer"; the latter is at this time our
sole interest. We will account for some of the names that did not make
this list in a later dispatch. There is nothing bad to say about anyone
we list here, except in some cases that they were anti-Semitic or
racist, hated women or hated men. Literary crimes are usually relative,
the caveats of which we shall enumerate:/
*100. Joseph Conrad*
Prose stylist nonpareil, he addressed the dichotomy of race, the
loneliness of existence. /Heart of Darkness /became a paradigmatic work.
It is hard to read today, but no less important. Conrad was born to a
family of Polish nobles. He did quite a bit of gunrunning see /The
Arrow of Gold./ You've got to be batshit crazy to have an ambition, as a
child, to visit Central Africa. Recommended reading: /The Secret Agent./

//
*99. Honor de Balzac*
The /gestamtkunstwerk/ ('total work of art') was all the rage in Europe
early in the last century, but Balzac was on the case almost a hundred
years before. The man started writing just before midnight and worked
until the sun went down the next day, eventually producing 100 novels
and plays he called /La Comedie Humaine/. We've never really liked
realism, but /Le Pere Goriot/ is one of the mode's best. His mother came
from a family of haberdashers. There had to be a realism before there
could be anything else, probably. Recommended reading: "The Girl With
The Golden Eye", "The Marriage Contract" from /La Comedie Humaine/.
*98. Czeslaw Milosz*
The greatest artist Poland would ever spawn, Milosz was still composing
vital poetry until his death in 2004. He was constantly reinventing
himself as a writer, but remained pretty much the same person after he
took home the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980. Born a Lithuanian, he
became a U.S. citizen eventually, and dissected the intellectual
attraction to communism in his masterpiece /The Captive Mind/.
**
*97. George Bernard Shaw*
When we speak of 'wit' in the theater we owe a debt to G. B. Shaw. In
fact, his scripts are so funny there's hardly any reason to see them
performed. /Pygmalion/'s a great play, but his writing after WWI, most
notably /Heartbreak House/, is darker and better.
*96. Wallace Stevens*
Anti-semite? Sure. A little old-fashioned? No doubt. Was he one of the
greatest poets of the twentienth century? No question. You might say
that Stevens never quite seems like himself, which is a towering
accomplishment, because he never quite sounds like anyone else either.
Recommended Reading: 'Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,'
'Anecdote of the Jar,' 'Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction'.
*95. Rumi*
We prefer to keep our religion, poetry, and booze in separate
containers, but we know a lot of ex-hippie poets who swear by this guy.
The Coleman Barks translations are the gold-standard. Born in modern-day
Afghanistan, Rumi might as well have been a god.
*94. W.G. Sebald*
No writer so little acclaimed in the first part of his life lived a
second one in literary style in the West. Sebald can reasonably contend
to have invented much of this country's creative nonfiction, and that is
simply a glint of his admirers. It is for good reason that he is taught
in every graduate writing program in America: his novels of
half-remembrance are brilliant interlocking art pieces; seen whole they
completely explain the violence in the middle half of the 20th century.
Recommended reading: /The Rings of Saturn, The Emigrants./
**
*93. Robert Hayden*
Hayden's reputation is sure to be burnished by time. Sure, he had
influence on an entire generation of African-American poets; but it is
the sustained quality of his verses that we now have to contend with.
His was an intellect of constant seriousness, mapping the tragedy of his
own heart. His vision of language and life, in elegy or eulogy, is among
the most impressive achievements in the arts. Recommended
reading://"Those Winter Sundays", "October,"/Selected Poems./
*92. Henry Miller*
It's fun to talk about Henry Miller at parties, and it took us a long
time to realize that those who denounce him first made their
acquaintance with Miller's least representative work, /Tropic of
Cancer/. It's an important book, but mainly for the history of American
censorship. The correct way to fall in love with Miller is through his
exquisite nonfiction, most notably /The Collosus of Maroussi/ and /Big
Sur and the Oranges of Heironymous Bosch./
//* *
*91. Robert Heinlein*
Morality without end, purpose in the unreal. He got so much better as a
writer you can imagine him as one of his humble characters, toiling
endlessly at something larger than himself and maybe impossible. Is
there any more fun you can have than /Stranger in a Strange Land? To
Sail Beyond Sunset? The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress? Starship Troopers?
/His juveniles are in some ways even more brilliant, bringing his dream
of the stars to audience poised to inherit it. Recommended reading:
/Farmer in the Sky/, /Tunnel in the Sky, Between Planets, Citizen of the
Galaxy/
*90. Lorine Niedecker*
She was a recluse from Wisconsin who loved the Imagists. She wrote to
Louis Zukofsky, she kept writing in her bizarre island home. Her nature
poetry is better than anyone else's nature poetry, her confessional
poetry is fresher and more accessible than Plath or Sexton. She was
funny, and could be so sad. She is the marvelous product of a strange
and relentless world. Recommended reading: "For Paul", /Collected Poems./
//* *
*89. George Eliot*
Born Mary Anne Evans in 1819, she wrote /Middlemarch, Daniel Deronda,
/and /Silas Marner/, a threesome that must rank with any of the finer
achievements of realism in fiction. Yet her breadth of character and
theme took on so much more. This is a writer that had common sense,
verve and intricate knowledge about the unfolding of human events.
Eliot's ouvre is astonishingly mature for its time, and remains readable
today.
* *
*88. David Mamet*
The quintessentially Jewish-American dramatist, his conquests of poetry
and fiction were minor. But he exploded the idea of the American play,
creating an exciting new vernacular that brought crowds, excitement and
controversy to the stage. Famous for shutting down an all-female
production of his masterpiece /Glengarry Glen Ross/, Mamet is an able
theoretician, and maybe the most important Chicago Jew of all time.
Recommended reading: /American Buffalo, The Duck Variations, Boston
Marriage./
*87. Derek Walcott*
Born on the island of St. Lucia in 1930, Walcott is the most important
poet of the Carribean, and an enduring voice in international letters.
His epic poems, bringing classicism to new places and forms, are major,
and his command of the short poem is as adept as Auden's, a man Walcott
admired greatly. His "Eulogy to W.H. Auden" gets us every time. Also,
Walcott's achievements in the theatrical realm are not to be overlooked.
Recommended reading: /Omeros, The Arkansas Testament/.
* *
*86. Isak Dinesen*
Denmark's greatest writer, she was born Karen Dinesen, and she would
write about the strangeness of her life in Kenya with her husband.
Carson McCullers arranged for her to meet Marilyn Monroe; they danced on
a tabletop together. She wrote "Out of Africa" about her time with her
husband in Kenya; "Babette's Feast" was her finest story. She was more
delicate with her prose than her storytelling, but both are worthy of a
place here in this best of all possible lists.
*85. Maryse Conde*
She is to the novel what Walcott is to the long poem. Her intricate
templates for Carribean novels are massively impactful reimaginings of
Western themes, replete with other places and attitudes that she
experienced. Better than John Irving or Richard Price, her chronicling
of the French attitude towards its possessions is her very
autobiography. Recommended reading: /I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem,
Crossing the Mangrove, Segu./
* *
*84. Joyce Cary*
Relentlessly funny, incredibly inventive, and one hell of a writer. His
comic trilogy was the height of modernism at the time. A voice that
comes from the future, born with knowledge of the past, buoyed by the
good humor of the present. The much-traveled Irishman wrote the most
sterling address to colonialism we ever had. But mainly, he loved being
an artist, and he was one of the finest his country would ever produce.
Recommended reading: /The Horse's Mouth, To Be A Pilgrim, Mister Johnson./
* *
*83. Frank O'Hara*
The gay American New York poet whose confessional and addictive
personality made him funny and fast. He wrote some of his poems in a
room with his friends; he fucked well and seriously; he redefined the
modern by looking in the mirror. Sure he has a few misfires, but he's so
fearless, never afraid to take chances, to say something more revealing
of himself than is absolutely necessary. Recommended reading: "A Step
Away From Them", "Autobiographia Literaria", the new /Selected Poems./
//
*82. Gabriel Garcia Marquez*
His story /A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings /is a great relief to high
school kids everywhere, its magic remedy to the stale fare of English
authors overstuffing their textbooks. Not sure what his master fiction
/100 Years of Solitude /is meant to remedy, but every college kid from
Los Angeles to Prague has a copy. Amazingly he is still alive, although
he does not write anymore. He said his piece. Recommended reading: /The
Story of A Shipwrecked Sailor, An Evil Hour, The Autumn of the Patriarch./
*81. Ernest Hemingway*
He was a talented novelist and short-story writer who was larger than
life. Like his less talented peer F. Scott Fitzgerald, his writing can
occassionally seem dated and stale, but there is no denying his
influence, and his finer work ranks with the supreme achievements of
American fiction. "Hills Like White Elephants" is great the first time
you read it, but only the first time. This remains true of much of his
works. We find it strange to think he was made of flesh and bone, and
not smelted parts of several decrepit Civil War era bronze statues.
Recommended reading: /A Moveable Feast, A Farewell to Arms. /
*80. Carson McCullers*
Her masterpiece /The Heart is a Lonely Hunter/ was an immediate literary
sensation. Rarely is an important work so quickly recognized as such.
She wrote in a distinctly American idiom but her characters and themes
were flawless and important. After World War II, she lived mostly in
Paris. /The Member of the Wedding /is a slip of genius, a novel in which
we can believe.
*79. Flann O'Brien*
The Irish novel was never the same after this man conquered it. Between
/At Swim Two Birds/ and /The Third Policeman/, O'Brien wrote the road
map for experimental fiction, pulling the language apart before putting
it back together again. Born Brian O'Nolan, he married a typist. He is
the mad master, and his influence and import reigns supreme today, where
his novels are still among the funniest, most inventive things ever to
appear in English. Recommended reading:/Flann O'Brien At War: Myles na
gCopaleen 1940-1945./
//
*78. Julio Cortazar*
Half-Belgian, half-Argentinian, he was the modern master of the

experimental novel. /Hopscotch /is the most infuriating, the funniest,
most inventive. His parents split up, he dropped out of school. He later
died of leukemia. His titantic efforts in the short story genre have
little competition in any era of history.Cortazar gives the lie to the
idea that there are many different literatures by making one of them all.
*77. Saul Bellow*
The greatest novel of the 1950s begins, "I am an American,
Chicago-born." /The Adventures of Augie March/ makes /The Catcher in the
Rye /look like a fucking children's book. He followed it up with a
lively collection of novels that rank with the modern masters. A little
less success might have challenged him better, but as it is, he's the
greatest Jewish novelist of the 20th century, and that ain't bad.
*76. Jonathan Swift*
He survives among his satirist peers for distinctiveness of vision and
the impact of his classic essay /A Modest Proposal/, and the wonderfully
still-readable /Gulliver's Travels/, which basically foretold all of
modernity better than anyone else ever would or could.
Ezra Pound photographed by Richard Avedon*75. Ezra Pound*
Somewhere between the worst person who was a great poet and the greatest
poet who was an asshole sits Pound. After living with Yeats in Stone
Cottage, Ezra Pound married an artist named Dorothy Shakespear.
Previously, he had been engaged to Hilda Doolittle. In Paris, Hemingway
taught him to box, but he decided to become a composer instead. He fell
in love with the only violinist who could make sense of his
compositions. Later, in Italy, the two would try (and fail) to write a
detective novel in the manner of Agatha Chrystie. He then spent 25 days
in a cage outside Pisa for hating the country of his birth. His poetic
innovations and sense of the lyric are actually somewhat underrated, and
/The Cantos /must be the great long poem of the 20th century. It will
never be in Oprah's Book Club, but then again neither will any book of
serious poetry. The first 50 copies were printed on lambskin.
*74. Philip K. Dick*
Oh Philip was the conjurer, the mad genius. The completely humane. In
/The Man in the High Castle /he dismissed fascism with the cautious wave
of a hand. Was he the greatest prose stylist on two feet? No, but he had
his pathosthe lost, last moments of /A Scanner Darkly/, the incredible
pull of /Ubik/. He was like a free object spinning in zero gravity:
/Radio Free Albemuth; /his stories are so endlessly inventive it is like
he was starting them from scratch. Paranoid fuck.
*73. Percy Shelley*
Attended Oxford; read sixteen hours a day. It workedhe would write
lively novels, and poems that were representative of the time and the
place, and went beyond it. Seems to have survived his Wordsworth
obsession, as many after him would not. He wasn't that popular during
his lifetime, but his reputation lived on, and his work would remain a
touchstone for poets and fiction writers in the two centuries after his
death. Recommended reading: of the lyrics, we prefer "Ozymandias" and
"Ode to the West Wind"; the long-form and dramatic verse reached their
apices with /Prometheus Unbound /and /The Cenci/; the early Gothic
novels, most notably, /Zastrozzi,/ are a good companion on a
stormyautumn night, but you'll never find a copy.
*
72. James Agee*
The foremost journalist of his era, he also wrote a tremendous novel, /A
Death in the Family/, and the bible of creative nonfiction, /Let Us Now
Praise Famous Men/. Had an important side career as a screenwriter; but
in the main he wrote many of /Life /magazine's most enduring pieces with
Whittaker Chambers. One of those sad, great-looking literary demigods
who died in a taxi cab before his 50th birthday.
*71.Stanley Elkin*
The greatest American comic novelist, Elkin was one of the smartest
people ever to live. His stories are a blossoming achievement, a
dramatic victory of non-realism in the dreary bog of American fiction.
He is incredibly underappreciated and all of his novels deserve
revisiting. It was in the stories that he really shined, always avoiding
the easy resolution, always being more moral with other people than he
would be with himself. He was a master critic, a polished prose stylist.
Recommended reading: /Mrs. Ted Bliss, Searches and Seizures, The
Franchiser, A Bad Man./
*70. Walter Benjamin*
A German Jew who redefined how the essay should operate. Was killed by
Germans in a hotel room running from the Nazis, or he could have just
committed suicide. Translated Proust and Baudelaire. His ideas about art
pretty much all came true, eventually. Skilled consumer of hashish, of
bearing down on some truth you did not know was there but would have
come to the surface eventually, probably, without him.
* *
*69. Harold Pinter*
The greatest English dramatist of his time, we have taken so much from
his clipped ways of saying, his extraordinary grasp of how the theater
operates and how it ought to operate. His ideas have been stolen by
Larry David and Quentin Tarantino and Wes Anderson, a testament to their
timeliness. Married to Antonia Fraser, his political views weren't
always to my taste, but he was a fierce proponent of freedom at home and
abroad, and helped many writers on that account. Recommended reading:
/The Dumb Waiter, The Homecoming, The Birthday Party, /his novel /The
Dwarfs./
//
*68. John Berryman*
/The Dream Songs/ is one of the top 5 poetry manuscripts ever written,
bringing character and voice to new hights in American verse. He was
born in 1914, he committed suicide in 1972. The between years were drunk
and hard, but the poetry came easy. His father killed himself when he
was 12, from that he basically never recovered. Recommended reading:
/Dream Song 34./
*67. James Baldwin*
Born in Harlem, he was gay, black and brilliant. His novel /Go Tell It
On The Mountain/ is a work of incredible depth and sensitivity, probably
the second-best novel of the 1950s and one of the ten greatest novels of
all time. His short story "Sonny's Blues" might be best remembered. It
holds up better than any short story you'll find in a rag like /The New
Yorker/. He needs a renaissance more badly than most.
*66. Tu Fu*
The greatest of the Chinese poets, he is a master in any time. Chinese
schoolchildren still recite his verses, as do their businessmen. Claimed
to have lived in a "straw hut," but really it was just another one of
those upper-middle class two story affairs on a whispering brook like
they had in those days. Kenneth Rexroth's /100 Poems From the Chinese/
is pitch-perfect, and includes all of the memorable Tu Fu.
*65. Jorge Luis Borges*
A blind, deep thinker. His stories are endlessly rewarding and
entertaining. The genre of science fiction virtually does not exist
without him. Astounding how often a gunshot or a stab wound ends these
tales, but still, Comp Lit programs across the Northeast would be a lot
poorer, and certainly a lot less sexy, were it not for this man.
*64. Malcolm Lowry*
He was a crazy and he was a drunk, but he managed to outwrite most of
the non-crazies and non-drunks despite spending his days chronicly
impoverished. /Under the Volcano /is up there with /Ulysses/, with
/Molloy/, with /Light in August/. Its narration is unchallenged for

veracity of human feeling and expression. He was never much good at
living, but through his work he'll live on for centuries.
*63. Willa Cather*
An American lesbian. She was Episcopal, an American original. The
glories can be found in /The Song of the Lark/, /O Pioneers!, The
Professor's House. /Her ways were sometimes new, sometimes old. She
wrote about the people that existed, that she knew, that had never
before made it to these pages. Recommended reading: /Death Comes For the
Archbishop, My Antonia./
*62. **Edgar Allan Poe*
Horror we needed, craved. The short story was brought to entertain in
his mode, the beating heart someplace you weren't sure was there, his
inventiveness and sense of menace. An American simultaneously at its
most base and most necessary. The poetry is repetitive but sublime,
largely centered upon his 13 year old cousin, whom he married. Our
kingdom by the sea, indeed./ /
**
*61. Henrik Ibsen*
Torvald! He was a master of character, of menace. His drama was
challenging, exciting, and his outlook was more shits and giggles than
devotion and God. Extremely prolific, he managed so many excellent
dramas, slamming Victorian morality, forging his own. Recommended
reading: /Hedda Gabler/, /Ghosts, The Master Builder./
**
*60. W.H. Auden*
He was the most acclaimed poet in the world while he lived. He seems
sort of old-fashioned now, but that doesn't dim his impossibly wide view
of human existence, his innate knowledge of history, his incredible
sense of the possibilities of the lyric. It is now assumed that he was
gay, but how, really, could a poet of his time not be. Students of verse
should be forced to transcribe, memorize, and possible have tatooed on
their rib cage Mr. Auden's /September 1, 1939/. Just a tremendous poem,
a model of unacknowledged legislation.
*59. Thomas Pynchon*
An enterprising American fabulist whose self-imposed retreat from the
public sphere probably venerates him more than it should. /Mason & Dixon
/could be praised or reviled; it was a massively courageous undertaking,
a screaming across the sky. Worked at Boeing for a time. After
publishing /V. /the greatest first novel ever by a human, he wrote to
his agent. "If they come out on paper anything like they are inside my
head then it will be the literary event of the millennium."
****
*58. Emily Bront**/Charlotte Bront*
The first wrote /Wuthering Heights/, which has survived more splendidly
than any story we can think of. She barely lived long enough to write
anything else, but what else exactly did she need to write? She'd
written /Wuthering Heights: /that was enough. The second discovered her
sister's talents, and became the more prolific of the two.
*57. Flannery O'Connor*
She was a faithful practitioner of an emerging style, a slyness, an
understanding, that exposed the depth of human character in her moral
gaze. Redefined the American short story, repudiated the saccharrine
elements that had defined it and gave fiction a seriousness of purpose
that resonates decades after her passing. Recommended reading:
"Everything That Rises Must Converge", /Wise Blood/, "A Good Man Is Hard
To Find"
* *
*56. Leo Tolstoy*
Born to the aristocracy of Russia. His cousin was Alexander Pushkin.
Managed to pen /Anna Karenina/, the greatest novel ever written in

Russian. Flaubert said, "What an artist and what a psychologist!" His
endings were legend, his characterizations revolutionary. He was an
accomplished political writer, and espoused nonviolent resistance. His
autobiographers are very dated, but his correspondence has held up far
better. Maxim Gorky's "Reminiscences of Tolstoy" is the only way to know
this talented, magical novelist, this anchor for Russian literature as
the world knows it.
* *
*55. Tennessee Williams*
The nature of his art was evident from the very first. You could walk
into a performance of one of his plays and you would know instantly that
it belonged to him. His characters were darts of light, flickering
across the stage, surprising even themselves. His sister was a
schizophrenic, his lover was a Sicilian navy man. He brought his
tendrils of genius to wherever and whenever he was. He choked on cap
from a bottle and perished in 1983, the year we were born. His short
stories are surprisingly revealing, like a Rosetta Stone for the sheer
madness of his plays. Love the one-acts.
**
*54. Nathaniel Hawthorne*
Why did America become the finest country the world had seen to that
point? Its artists played a crucial role. In his incredibly perceptive
stories and novels, Hawthorne achieved heights that were reserved for
the European masters before he brought his insight to bear on them.
We'll never forgive him for how he treated Melville late in their lives,
but the penning of phantasmagorias like "Young Goodman Brown" are enough
to forgive most of his other personal failings. We've always though that
the crimson A in /The Scarlet Letter /stood not for Adultery but for
American, and it makes sensewe would be living in a different country
were it not for this book.
*53. T.S. Eliot*
Terrible playwright. Also, it's probably about time for everybody to
admit that /The Waste Land /is totally boring. /Four Quartets/, on the
other hand, is enduring poetry. As are a handful of his other shorter
lyrics, and probably the one about J. A. Prufrock. The twentieth century
would have been more beautiful had he not lived, but still, the
twentieth century happened the way it did, largely because of him. Oh
wait, that was Hitler. Same difference.
**
*52. Sophocles*
Born a few years before the battle of Marathon, he would be the second
of three playwrights to rock the ancient world to its core. Banged many
young boys in his times, the greatest writer-pedophile who ever lived.
The magic of the Theban plays; the lyricism of Oedipus, psychology's
first tragic hero. In even dealing with myth strived towards naturalism,
beginning the slow march towards the reality of things. Recommended
reading: /Antigone, Oedipus at Colonus./
*51. **Johann Wolfgang von Goethe*
His drama /Faust/ begins in Heaven, has a poodle turning into the devil.
He was born in Frankfurt in 1749, and he'd live long, to the age of 82.
He became an international celebrity at the age of 24 with the
publication of/The Sorrows of Young Werther/, a fact he would live the
rest of his life regretting.
*50. Toni Morrison*
Let's not let a couple clunkers haunt how clutch Morrison was in gems
like /Song of Solomon, Beloved, /and /The Bluest Eye. /Her explanation
of the American midwest; her command of place rivals Faulkner in its
better moments. Does she sometimes adhere too closely too symbols? Is
she sometimes more complex than she ought to be? That is no blemish on
the career of an immortal voice.

*49. Charles Olson*
America's Bard, the voice of New England. Incredibly tall, incredibly
wacked. He is the father of much of the American verse that directly
followed, but he would never know just how lasting his work would be. He
is our poet of the future, a deep thinker who lacked empathy for
everyone but himself. Self-involvement can became a kind of genius at
this depth, or so we hope. Recommended reading: "The Post Office", /The
Maximus Poems/, "The K".
*48. John Steinbeck*
Steinbeck never graduated from Stanford. For a time, he worked as a
handyman. His shorter works are incredible forays in concentration on
theme; his longer works are a pleasure to drift into like little worlds.
As a journalist of war he has no peer except for Orwell, and he could be
funny, and also so devastating with the world he left you in after you'd
turned the last page. Recommended reading: /Travels with Charley/, /East
of Eden, Of Mice And Men, Tortilla Flat./
O'Neill with his second of three wives, Agnes, and their later
disinherited son Shane on a beach on Cape Cod. *47. Eugene O'Neill*
He wrote one comedy that made the stage it happens to be one of the
greatest stage comedies ever written, but he stopped there. His mind was
occupied by the tragedy that could befall mankind, griefs personal and
national. He believed the stage could depict this faithfully, and still
more after that.
*46. Gustave Flaubert*
/Madame Bovary /was the real first novel, the first impulse in the form
with intellectual heft, a plot with bite, a voice of reason. He wrote it
from 1850-1855, and it appeared in serialized form, as the greatest
novel that had ever been written at that point in time. Contracted
syphilis in Lebanon. Never much of a playwright. He spawned the greatest
European writer, Franz Kafka, and his evenhanded conception of the
modern novel has lasted longer then his flavorful, romantic work. But
without him, how were we to begin? Recommended reading: /Bovary, Memoirs
of a Madman/, his letters
*45. Ivan Turgenev*
Tolstoy wrote of Turgenev: "His stories of peasant life will forever
remain a valuable contribution to Russian literature. I have always
valued them highly. And in this respect none of us can stand comparison
with him. Take, for example, /Living Relic/, /Loner/, and so on. All
these are unique stories. And as for his nature descriptions, these are
true pearls, beyond the reach of any other writer!" Tolstoy could be
such an understated dick at times. Recommended reading: /Fathers and
Sons, The Diary of a Superfluous Man/
*44. Charles Baudelaire*
He was the quintessential mama's boy. He went looking for his mother in
almost every prostitute in Paris, contracting all manner of sexually
transmitted diseases. Fortunately the only effect these STDs had on his
literary talent was, if anything, to enhance it. Among his Parisians his
reputation became pretty solid. Proust loved the guy. You can be a dandy
and a genius, and one hell of a poet. He was. Recommended reading: /The
Flowers of Evil/, /Paris Spleen,/ /Artificial Paradises/
*43. Robert Lowell*
Of the New England poets, his achievements were the serious kind. He
mentored many other greats, but his fidelity to his own vision, his
moral look at the world he lived in, whatever it looked like to others,
was firm. His sonnets are the greatest besides Shakespeare's.
Recommended reading: /For the Union Dead/ and /Life Studies./
**
*42. Mark Twain*
Aphorisms and all, Twain was an American as great as Lincoln or
Leadbelly. That is, deeply rooted in the land of his birth, yet
unblemished by either bias or zealotry. /Tom Sawyer/ is for kids, but
/Huck Finn /stands up to any other novel in this bastard language of
ours. He is evidence that this country should be. / /
*41. Robert Creeley*
The German psychoanalyst/aphorist Bert Hellinger said that "rejection
leads to resemblance," and it is this fact that best characterizes
Creeley's career. He turned away from and overcame the sentimentalists,
redefined what the country called sentiment, and broke free again, a man
who could not die without knowing every version of love. The first three
books are indispensable/The Charm/, /For Love/, and /Words/though
there are later gems like /Mirrors/ and /Life & Death. /The man is also
our most imitable poet, which if the converse of Hellinger's words is
also true, make Creeley a signal father of this country's next
generation of original writers.
*40. Iris Murdoch*
What an inspired philosophical novelist! She wrote things down that
should have been already written down, with an inspired moral sense. She
was born in Dublin and her husband and life partner John Bayley at
Oxford. They made an irreplicable team. She would elevate discourse to a
heavenly routine. Recommended reading: /A Year of Birds, The Black
Prince, The Sandcastle, The Sea, The Sea./
*39. **Arthur Rimbaud*
The boy poet is a familiar role, but Rimbaud was the greatest of all boy
poets. Died shortly after his 37th birthday. Wrote to and fucked Paul
Verlaine. He was tall, thin and bony. Breton called him "a god of
adolescence." He wrote poetry briefly when he was in his teens. One
man's passing fancy is acknowledged as an titanic masterpiece by another
man. It is best to read John Tranter's appreciation of him
<http://johntranter.com/reviewer/nicholl.shtml> and see just what we mean.
*38. Mary Shelley*
Created the most important novel of its century, the Pygmalion-inspired
/Frankenstein/. It is still fabulous reading today, and inspired more
than almost any other work of fiction. It is about man becoming the
machine, and it identified the chief feature of life thereafter
technological innovation and how it would change humanity into something
different than it was before. For this Shelley made the perfect story,
one that is more than a metaphor, it is a koan to what has yet to occur.
*37. Virgil*
Born in France when it was Gaul, Virgil was the son of a farmer.
Eventually he followed Octavian and became a part of the political
scene. In the last ten years of his life, he composed /The Aeneid./ Its
address to Homer is evident. He saw his father go blind, his two
brothers die, one at childbirth, and one in a messy accident. He was the
greatest writer of his time, and were he here today we could reasonably
account for him as the inventor of what would become Western literature.
*
36. Emily Dickinson*
Quietly, unobtrusively, she is the American poet, giving more to those
that followed her than anyone else. She is in every poet we read, every
word that is written. Even when she is not, she is there, in her lacks.
She eschewed the long vision of some of the finest poets in English, but
no one did more with less, and this was her genius, along with something
of a bitter wit. A person can be alone in the universe, and yet as long
as they have literature, they need never worry.
*35. Walt Whitman*
America's most delightful poet, Whitman has had a renaissance that many
already saw coming. His verve and vision are so far ahead of any of his
peers, it's a wonder he wasn't hailed earlier. He never drank. In his
great letter to Emerson he imagined an America greater and more
important than we could even conceive of today. He was born on Long

Island. He hated slavery. He worked at nursing, journalism,
homosexuality, teaching. Recommended reading: "O Captain! O Captain!",
/Leaves of Grass/, his notebooks
<http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/whitman/index.html>.
*34. D.H. Lawrence*
He died in France in 1930, but his final resting place is in Taos, New
Mexico. It is a strange and wonderful journey for the English
transplant. He called his life a savage pilgrimage, he was never given
the right sort of attention in his lifetime. As he walked through the
streets, they should have bowed. His criticism is above reproach, it is
more a blog than any blog that has yet been created. His novels and
stories are fresher today than the day they were written. He can be put
down easily, but he is easy to love, too. Recommended reading: /Lady
Chatterly's Lover, Women in Love, /essays.
*33. William Carlos Williams*
Why is the New Jersey native so important to the project of American
poetry? Why is he more than just "The Red Wheelbarrow"? Why is his
/Spring and All/ one of the ten greatest poetry manuscripts of all time?
Like Pound who he hated, Williams' aims were new and real. They were the
everyday, they were the eternal. His ear is flawless, his grasp of both
prose and poetry on the level of Shakespeare. He is the greatest poet
this country produced from its small towns, where he served as a doctor.
Recommended reading: /Spring and All/, "Danse Russe", "This Is Just To
Say", /Paterson/
*32. Samuel Coleridge*
Addicted to opium, he was one of the great critics, and you then you get
to his creative work. For their magical form and incantatory meter,
/Rime of the Ancient Mariner /and /Kubla Khan /have no peer. Didn't have
the best relationship with his mom. Was an innovator with blank verse,
set the template for confessional poetry and much that came after. He
wrote /Rime, /he could napped for the next hundred years and he'd still
be at the top of his class.
**
*31. Henry James*
Other than Charles Dickens, did the novel ever have a more devoted and
able practitioner? Born in New York City, his highfaluting education
took him across Europe. Gay as the day was long, he hit on Hans
Christian Andersen when he was 56 and Andersen just 27. Whether it was
dark comedy or darkest tragedy, he was at his efficient best. With "The
Art of Fiction" he planted his flag in the territory of made-up people
and places. They would never be the same after. Recommended reading:
/The Portrait of a Lady/, /Wings of the Dove/, /The Bostonians/.
*30. John Keats*
Before everything, he was the greatest letter writer ever, his collected
correspondence only potentially exceeded by that of Franz Kafka. His dad
died after falling from a horse. He moved to Italy because of his fear
of succumbing to tuberculosis. He succumbed in 1821. His poem "Endymion"
began "A thing of beauty is a joy forever," and went on from there. The
advances he made, the heights he reached
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bright_star,_would_I_were_stedfast_as_thou_art>!
Recommended reading: his Odes, "Sonnet to Solitude", /Calidore: A Fragment/
*
29. William Wordsworth*
There was the motivation to write in the voice of the people. Coleridge
tried to say that drugs were the better path. Bill refused, citing
Caedmon, the stable-boy that initiated our poetry. He was the best when
he walked the country-side with Dorothy. Emotion recalled in a moment of
tranquility was a cute idea, but it really only worked in the case of
the daffodils. No one tried harder, and no one failed as beautifully, as
this master.
Eugene Delacroix's 'Ovid Among the Scythians'*28. Ovid*
It is difficult to mark these Ancients. There is considerable import in
coming 'first', but that is not what this list is measuring, we are
saying who is best. Invented eroticism. He revealed himself in his many
poems, creating an idea of art that would outlive him and every other
member of his civilization. Born to an equestrian family, he married
three times. Invented eroticism.
**
*27. William Blake*
He was considered insane by his peers. /Songs of Innocence and
Experience/ showed off his maturity and a poet, and that he was an
inspired illustrator. He did not hold with the doctrine of God as Lord.
He taught his wife to read, write and to use a printing press. We are
still waiting for the poet who can draw like this to come back to us again.
**
*26. Dr. Johnson*
His life basically invented the concept of autobiography, he had mild
Tourette's, after college he went home and lived with his parents, his
father ran out of money. He wrote the dictionary, he wrote columns. The
breadth of his knowledge was spectacular to behold. Finally the 24-year
old King George III granted him a pension of 300 pounds a year for
basically civilizing some small part of humanity. Recommended reading:
/An Account of the Life of Richard Savage/.
* *
*25. Lord Byron*
Described by Caroline Lamb as "mad, bad, and dangerous to know." Did
everything: ran a newspaper with Shelley, courted all the pertinent ass
of the period, a hero to Greece, to the English speaking world. /Don
Juan /was his fun epic: it lives and breathes today and should be more
widely read than it is. Had a massive temper, suffered from depression,
a hearty bisexual. Such ingenuity in the old forms was rare and special
for a creature of his time. Recommended reading: /The Island, Heaven and
Earth, Manfred, Darkness./
**
*24. George Orwell*
He created the modern essay, he politicized it and de-politicized it;
lambasted communism for the evil that it was, became property of the
American right and American left in equal measure. He left behind novels
that are widely read today for both their literary merit and virtues as
stories. He was the bearer of bad news, the hearty messenger, for all
that our current slate of modernity portends. He was in favor of what
was right. Recommended reading: /Animal Farm, /his essays, /1984./
*23. Stendhal*
His heights were higher than almost any other. A vastly underappreciated
genius. His memoirs, starting with /The Life of Henry Brulard/. It is
the finest autobiography the West has generated, and if released today
there would be no competition for the book of the year. Born
Marie-Henrie Boyle, he was a womanizer and a pretty man, but when he set
down to write, he was without peer. Recommended reading: /The Red and
the Black,/
*22. Euripides*
Before him, Greek drama was /Happy Days/ and /Good Times/. He brought
everything else to the table: the undermining of the protagonist, the
gross inequities of fate, the importance of satire to civilized beings.
All theatre was archetype before this giant, and the original onslaught
of realism that he brought to the floor was a revolution. His plays, and
his alone, were about regular people going about in the guise of gods.
His was a deeper grasp of human nature, one imperceptible to most. When
he saw a slave, he saw more than a slave. When he saw a god, he saw us
all. Recommended reading: /The Trojan Women, Iphigenia in Aulis, Helen./

*21. Miguel Cervantes*
One work summed up the entirety of Spanish literature, but oh what a
work he left us with! He had to practically redo an entire language to
keep up with his inventiveness. He survived three gunshots in a massive
sea battle to survive to write it at all. He never regained the use of
his left hand. He died on the same day as Shakespeare.
*20. Laurence Sterne*
The finest experimentalist ever. Smash novels, insights of incomparable
erudition, hilarious, so ahead of their time that they seem more modern
than most things published today. /Tristram Shandy/ has lasted longer
than its detractors. Many of its jokes have still yet to be parsed from
a text thick with meaning, with comedy and profound statements of
humanity in a time where it was not so easy to recognize what exactly
that meant. Recommended reading: /A Sentimental Journey, Tristram Shandy./
//* *
*19. Herman Melville*
Mythmaker, dreamer, anthropologist. Once born he took up the title of
greatest writer in America and never relinquinshed it until he died in
1891. His posthumous novel, /Billy Budd/, was a prism of his genius. It
wasn't long until the New York-born Melville was at sea. This would
inspire the most exciting nautical novel in history, /Moby Dick/. He is
admired by all those capable of admiration. Recommended reading:
/Typee/, /Billy Budd/, /The Confidence Man/
*18. William Butler Yeats*
Everything was magical to this Irishman, who sympathized with the
aristocracy and was never sure it was all going to work. Nominated to
the Irish senate. Seminal to the creation of Irish theater in so many
ways; his haunting, haunted plays that drew equally from Irish folklore
and Japanese Noh plays. Every formalist poet of the 20th century owes a
great debt to this manonly Hopkins can match his ear for the lyric. His
obsessive drive (and eventual failure) to father an heir, combined with
a keen interest in occult trance ceremonies, led Yeats to copulate with
more girls less than half his age than perhaps any sextagenarian in
history. His Nobel Prize in 1923 brought worldwide fame to his body of
work and, perhaps more importantly, worldwide attention to the
literature of the nascent Irish Free State.
*17. Homer*
There was a generous discussion about whether or not we should have
included Cynewulf on this list, to reference whatever human mind had the
most integral role in creating/Beowulf./ But an entire oral tradition
made /Beowulf/, a truism that could just as easily be spoken about
Homer. He lived before Christ, a time that is unimaginable to most of
us. He winked into existence at about the time of the Trojan War, that
much we do know. There was someone: he may not have been blind, but he
saw more than anyone had up until that point, and arranged the tenuous
first gasps of civilization upon /homo sapiens/. /The rosy-fingered
dawn/ will stick with us for eternity.
*16. Charles Dickens*
He did things with story in his serials that still have not been
attempted as well, took formulas and reconstructed them to his purpose,
he was the mad scientist of place and person, the address to the
Industrial Revolution. There he was for the greatest change in human
history and thank heavens we had him to stand there, backing into
darkness, so we could see the light. Recommended reading: /Great
Expectations, Hard Times, Nicholas Nickleby/
*15. John Ashbery*
Our modern magician, Ashbery has simply never written a bad poem, and
his adventures with the epic in /A Wave/ and /Flow Chart/ elevated him
above his peers. His command of the language is second to none, so much
so that it appeared he was writing in a new language. Gay, lives in NY.

His work is destined to tell the tale of this time better than any other
writer alive today, and it is the words he made that tell it.
*14. Virginia Woolf*
Born in London in 1882, it was a very good year for a extraordinarily
perceptive and sensitive woman. She saw the Godrevy lighthouse in
Cornwall during her summers, and she did it: she wrote /To the
Lighthouse/, one of the five greatest narratives ever constructed in
English. Being depressed and unhappy is mere sport for the greats, Woolf
had a chronic disposition: "One of my vile vices is jealousy, of other
writers' fame," she said, and yet what could Virginia Woolf envy in
another writer! Each of her novels begins as a small masterpiece, and
then suddenly her stunning talent for voice creeps in and no matter the
station or mask of the character, we feel ourselves shaken by her
knowing. Recommended reading: /The Waves, Jacob's Room, Mrs. Dalloway/
*13. Geoffrey Chaucer*
Penned the relentlessly inventive and frequently hilarious /Canterbury
Tales, /a foundation of English literature that badly deserves another
'translation' by a major voice. We'd elect Paul Muldoon, but he's too
busy resuscitating the just plain awful /New Yorker/ poetry section.
*12. Dante*
Born in 1265, he was the smartest man who had ever lived up until then.
Called the father of the Italian language. Master of theology, the
/Inferno /is brilliant in both concept and execution. /The Divine Comedy
/is the masterpiece of masterpieces.
*11. Fyodor Doestoyevsky*
In /The Double /and /Notes from the Underground /he penned the canonical
texts for the modern novel, for modern experience in general. He dug the
ditch for literature to explore themes and motifs, aspects of the human
existence, that had never before been attempted. As Virginia Woolf
wrote, "The novels of Dostoevsky are seething whirlpools, gyrating
sandstorms, waterspouts which hiss and boil and suck us in. They are
composed purely and wholly of the stuff of the soul. Against our wills
we are drawn in, whirled round, blinded, suffocated, and at the same
time filled with a giddy rapture. Out of Shakespeare there is no more
exciting reading." For that reason, Bill Shakespeare ranked higher on
this list.
*10. Marcel Proust*
Was he the most exciting writer you've ever read? No, but at his best,
Proust achieved the kind of highs that fiction had never before
approached. Really, it wasn't fiction; it was the kind of autobiography,
the sort of scale that was new and fresh. /Remembrance of Things Past/
is so difficult to translate that it probably has not even been
expressed sufficiently in English. Despite this, he took the step
forward that the novel needed, and he did it for his own sake.
*9. Anton Chekhov*
He practically invented the modern novel, the modern short story, and
the modern play. A doctor like William Carlos Williams, his vision of
the sentence was serene and beautiful, and his novella /My Life/ remains
the greatest achievement in that genre. His stories mattered quite a
bit; they are acclaimed by many as the best ever done in that form, and
his plays are beautiful and dramatic, and so, so sad. Recommended
reading:/My Life//, The Cherry Orchard, Three Sisters, "/The Bishop/"/
*8. Vladimir Nabokov*
The West's mad and zany master. /Lolita /is probably more important than
/The Odyssey. /It is better written, at least. His stories are sublime
pictures of the sane insane man behind the moving inventiveness of /Pale
Fire. /Talked a good game: try his lectures. Recommended Reading:/Ada,
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight./
*7. Samuel Beckett*
Maybe the greatest prose stylist we ever had, and also the best
playwright besides Bill? God never came, but he did, to read things
over, survey the situation, and judge human behavior. Master of how we
speak to one another, why we say the things we do. Recommended reading:
/Endgame/, /Krapp's Last Tape, Molloy, Malone Dies, /the short prose works.*
*
*6. John Milton*
The king of all the poets, Milton attempted the essential story of man,
beginning with his rise and chronicling his fall. He alone is the master
of meter, of the telling phrase. He practically invented the use of the
adjective. Before dying in 1674, he was born to a Puritan family and
lived his life out as a Protestant. He planned to enter the ministry but
was expelled. Penned some of the most cogent political writing of the
time only helps his cause. He wrote /Paradise Lost /while blind, and
sold its copyright for 10. The greatest poet of this time or any other.
*5. Gertrude Stein*
To know that you have picked up something she has written, perhaps
casually, or it was given to you, and to open her little world of
language, where nothing was explained, and the reader had to come the
rest of the way herself. She mastered being famous or notorious.
Delivered those magnificent deadpan lectures. Said more in three words
than most did in whole books. Recommended reading: /Tender Buttons,
Everybody's Autobiography, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas./
*4. James Joyce*
We leave /Finnegans Wake /to the aliens to hope they can understand what
we can't. But he wrote the beginnings of the short story we recognize
today, the tragic and insane last moments of "The Dead." Ditto the
ultimate line of "Evangeline" in /Dubliners/: "Her eyes gave him no sign
of love or farewell or recognition." The most profound symbolist we
have: the joy and fun of /Ulysses/, he gave more to the prose than you
could, he forced you to be more, to cross to where he was standing,
seeing as only he could. Recommended reading: /Exiles, Portrait of the
Artist As A Young Man./
*3. William Shakespeare*
There's a lot to say about Bill. His mercy, his ways of thinking! He
admired everything he gave voice to, we can also hope he admired
himself. He took the old stories, and he wrote them new. /Romeo and
Juliet/ is just tremendous. /Hamlet /was better. Who could do comedy and
tragedy with equal aplomb? He was master of satire, of broad and
physical comedy. He was easy with stage directions, easy with criminals,
harder on saints. Recommended reading: /The Sonnets/, /King Lear,
Othello, The Tempest, Twelfth Night, The Merchant of Venice./
*2. Franz Kafka*
He was a genius, our brightest genius, our maker of myth and hater of
self. Proof it can come from any place, even hate or fear. /The Trial
/is forever his masterpiece. It can be read in any place, in any time,
and it becomes about that place and time. It is man losing the
primitive, acquiring a greater sense, changing into a monster, and
growing no smarter about who he is or why he is there. All his novels
are classics, even minor ones. His letter-writing! He is a code-maker,
an analyst, a man of endless feeling, reserve, and talent. He wrote to
God, addressed God, was God. As Whittaker Chambers put it about /The
Trial/: "Beside that scene, against the cumulative background of that
terrible story, most that has been written in our time about man's lot
seems rather childlike. And beside Kafka's insatiable posing of the
infinite question, most of his contemporaries' answers seem rather
childish." Recommended reading: /In The Penal Colony, The Castle, The
Metamorphisis. /
*1. William Faulkner*
Racism is not the greatest crime an author can commit, telling the truth
is. Somehow Faulkner avoided both, achieving that glistening thing

beyond truth, the local. Perhaps only Charles Olson, among the
Americans, gives us as real a sense of place as Faulkner's apocryphal
Yoknapatawpha County. The man could string together four, five
adjectives and make it sound real. His command of syntactical structures
pushed the language forward at least seventy-five years, which is to say
nothing of his mesmerizing use of dialogue. There is a mindset in
Faulkner that is at worst delusion and at best clairvoyance that sings
the intricacies of capitalistic suffering deeper than naturalism and
more fruitfully its accuracies than any mere realist. The personages in
his books live not according to how he wrote them, but with a further
life, unaccountable to genius or other machinations of ego. If we can
keep anything, we take his lexicon, the words that lie at the
interstisice of our wanting and our wanting to be. Our master, for all
time.
/Alex Carnevale is the editor of This Recording. //Will Hubbard is the
executive editor of This Recording. //Read the This Recording tumblr
here <http://thisrecording.tumblr.com>. We appreciate your comments below./
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Reader Comments (628)
Hm. I'd kinda wanna see Marianne Moore on this list. (Did I miss it?)
You don't often see a list including Stevens, Crane, Williams, and Eliot
but not Moore.
Also, Frank O'Hara but not James Schuyler? Much as I love O'Hara, his
was a less polished oeuvre than JS's, the latter having 2 stylish novels
to his credit, a book of art writings, a journal, and two volumes of
letters, all highly readable, entertaining, and instructive.
And then there's the question as to whether Jack Spicer should not have
booted a novelist off your list....
August 3, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterA </contributor/5901826>
HOORAY FAULKNER.
A+
August 3, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterMeaghan </contributor/5901856>
Kerouac??? I mean, ok, there's plenty of issues to take up with Kerouac
but not placing at all when one can consider his book to have spawned so
much?
August 3, 2009 | Unregistered Commenterme </contributor/5901868>
oh hot damn that list made me nervous - i kept thinking 'oh god,
faulkner didn't make it, i'm going to explode - i'm going to have to
burn something down' - at #10 i was reaching for my lighter, then - oh
holy moses - #1, thank you thank you - all is well.
August 3, 2009 | Unregistered Commentergr </contributor/5902155>
Not to be all like - but, really, to be all like - had this been called
"The 100 Greatest Writers Of All Time Within The Limits Of Western
Canon" instead, it'd be almost on! But, guys, seriously.
August 3, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterEm </contributor/5902597>
"Racism is not the greatest crime an author can commit, telling the
truth is. Somehow Faulkner avoided both, achieving that glistening thing
beyond truth, the local."
I'm sorry, how did Faulkner avoid racism?
August 3, 2009 | Unregistered Commenternot like a list like this could
ever wind up good </contributor/5902694>
This is an enjoyable list. I disagree with some assertions, of course,
such as Lolita being more important than the Odyssey, although you might
be right that it is better written. It is absurd, I think, to suggest
that Milton "practically invented the use of the adjective," and Dante
was not the smartest man to have lived up until that point.
The treatment of ancient writers, however, needs some editing. I don't
know any Latinists who would suggest that Vergil invented Western
Literature. We can be certain that one mind did *not* create both the
Aeneid and the Odyssey. Ovid did not invent eroticism (see Catullus).
Pederast would be a better for Sophocles than the all-too-common misuse
of the term pedophile. Euripides is your best of the entries about
ancient authors, but still shows an inadequate understanding of ancient
literature.
These are meant as constructive comments for readers of an otherwise
interesting list.
August 3, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterNicholas </contributor/5902911>
I was very nervous, as I went through the list, that Mr. Faulkner wasn't
on it. 50 rolled by (sure, he's higher than that), I got into the high
20's (hmmm, I'd put him that high... but would they?), then into the 10s
(dammitt... he didn't make the list, idiotas!). Then finally to #1. Agreed!!
No reason to apologize for his racism, or lack thereof, or whatever you
were doing. His characters were human, first, foremost and only. A lot
of poor readings have earned him attacks about racism or misogyny. Those
people are idiots.
Plus, I just read the other comments, and someone had the same Faulkner
experience I did (the dread, oh god the dread he'd be left off this
list). Neat.
why is telling the truth 'the greatest crime an author can commit.'
Is that because "the rlly true deep super profound truth" is 'too much
to behold?'
Find this perspective patronizing.
Or is it something about showing and not telling?
Is there a source on this, a quote I am unfamiliar with? Something about
art and life, fiction and 'reality'?
August 3, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterAdam </contributor/5903604>
'where the hell/fuck' is james frey
damn
hope he isn't pissed/sad
August 3, 2009 | Unregistered Commentertao </contributor/5903822>
'seriously,' though, where is harry potter
was he disqualified for being british
or does it not count since it's autobiography
August 3, 2009 | Unregistered Commentertao </contributor/5903830>

Dude, Shakespeare #3 really?
That's like saying Jordan is the 3rd best basketball player of all time.
Then naming Patrick Ewing as the best player of all time.
August 3, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterPeter Santiago
</contributor/5903990>
LEMONY SNICKET LEMONY SNICKET LEMONY SNICKET LEMONY SNICKET LEMONY
SNICKET LEMONY SNICKET LEMONY SNICKET LEMONY SNICKET LEMONY SNICKET
August 3, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterBeatrice </contributor/5904065>
I agree with Peter even though I don't quite get the sports fan metaphor.
Also, what about J. R. R. Tolkien?
August 3, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterLindsea </contributor/5904076>
Love that Shelley is considered twenty spots greeater than Tolstoy, and
forty spots greater than Balzac. just kidding.
August 3, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterBB </contributor/5904087>
i guess murakami must have just slipped your mind.
August 3, 2009 | Unregistered Commentersabealm </contributor/5904112>
feel like i've read maybe four of these bros
they both sucked
actually wondering 'how could two people compile this list?'
how old are you bros?
have you read multiple books by each of these authors?
seems 'epic' in a way that might constitute a '100 most prolific readers
of all time' list
including WILL HUBBARD at #58 and ALEX CARNEVALE at #43
feeling something like 'inspired' to read more b/c of you bros
or like read literature articles on wikipedia 'all day' everyday for a week
August 3, 2009 | Unregistered Commenterbuttercup </contributor/5904115>
i would like to highlight the famous patrick ewing Quote ("Whenever my
body heals and the pain and all the swelling goes away is when I'll be
ready") w/r/t this list. Good job on list James Wood will be very proud!
August 3, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterBMB </contributor/5904118>
The problem with the list is that something like 90% of the writer's
wrote within the past 100 years. Fine. But pretty much none of the
Magnum Opuses cited were written in the past 30 years!
Really? Is the current age really that much of a drought? Or were the
listmakers afraid to take a few risks on new stuff, and so settle for
the time honored selection of the hoary canon.
So yeah, Murakami would have been good for starters.
August 3, 2009 | Unregistered Commenterbonaparte </contributor/5904269>
I think you did get the all right people in the top ten though.
August 3, 2009 | Unregistered Commenterbonaparte </contributor/5904279>
Thanks for this. Now I've got 100 Poems from the Chinese, and it's
unbelievable. I'm gonna get a 100 more! Is that any good?
Edit: hey, you can't put in a dutch website for an Author URL? Like www
dot something dot nl? Wow.
August 3, 2009 | Unregistered Commentermrcvndrhlst </contributor/5904297>
lol buttercup
August 3, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterAdam </contributor/5904345>
I agree with Em ... this is very Western Canon. Sure, you've got the
token guys from other cultures (can't leave off Gabriel Garcia Marquez,
right?) ... But where's Victor Hugo? Umberto Eco? Haruki Murakami?
Mahmoud Darwish? Salman Rushdie? Nahguib Mahfouz? Marina Tsvetayeva?
And really. No Jane Austen? Have you read her books? Because she's
fucking smart, and sharp, and biting. I also have an issue with the
Bronte sisters being on there as one entry. They were pretty different.
Oh, and TWO SEPARATE PEOPLE.
I admire what you're trying to do here, but it's definitely a list seen
through male, Western eyes.
August 3, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterLiz </contributor/5904347>
to maybe save some time/effort of any future post-ers, how about a quick
blanket statement: lists/blogs/compilers/assistant-compilers/superlative
adjectives/BAs/MFAs/humans/words are inherently flawed and/or bound to
be subject to/influenced by her/his/their
surroundings/education/gender/age/job/location/country of
origin/political party/sponsor organization/personal preference/hair
style, this list is wrong/sucks, my list would be better, why did they
bother, who are they, who cares.
August 3, 2009 | Unregistered Commenteruc </contributor/5904499>
Yes, it's very western. I like western. I was hoping for Raymond Carver,
Philip Larkin, David Foster Wallace. Michel Houellebecq. Gerard Reve.
The already mentioned Haruki Murakami. Ha!, Kurt Vonnegut! No, really.
James Tate. Charles Simic. Yes, I like male writing too. I do also like
Sandra Beasley a lot, can you get her to write a poem for this great
website? And but so this is an impressive and inspriring list. Will
please do a list of the writers you'd put in the 200-101 spot?
August 3, 2009 | Unregistered Commentermrcvndrhlst </contributor/5904804>
I would have loved to see Langston Hughes in the top 20. And Vonnegut in
the low 50s. Shame.
Also (if anyone cares), I would have rather seen the top 3: 1.
Shakespeare, 2. Joyce, 3. Faulkner. Because even though I think Joyce is
the greatest to ever write, even he (being one of literature's great
narcissists) would not want to see himself on top of Bill.
August 4, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterEric </contributor/5905387>
My only real complaint is the exclusion of Jack Spicer. I would go so
far to say that most of the latter half of twentieth century poetry owes
more a debt to him than any other poet. At the very least he belongs in
the top 100 (and I might put him fairly high up the list).
August 4, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterCarlinthemarlin
</contributor/5905458>
Very good list, but there are some glaring omissions such as Walter
Percy, John Updike, John Cheever, Philip Roth, Sol Yurick, John Gardner,
D.M. Thomas, Patrick White, Roberston Davies, Jack Kerouac, William S.
Burroughs, William Gaddis, Joseph McElroy, John Barth, Donald Barthelme,
Robert Coover, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Theodore Dreiser,
Thomas Wolfe, William Dean Howells, Louis Auchincloss, Richard Yates,
Graham Greene, E.M. Foster, C.P. Snow, Anthony Powell, Malcolm Bradbury,
David Lodge, Aldous Huxley, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Agatha Christie,
Dorothy Sayers, Doris Lessing, Isaac Asimov, James T. Farrell, Nelson
Algren, Muriel Spark, V.S. Naipul, Paul auster, Richard Powers, and
William T. Vollman.
August 4, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterJK </contributor/5905519>
Cormac McCarthy?
Richard Yates?
August 4, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterLandon </contributor/5905571>

Guess you aren't fans of the Spanish... 3 writers in a list of 100?
Ouch. I'd like to see Allende and Fuentes up there, not to mention
Murakami (how did you miss him?). Otherwise, excellent job.
August 4, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterRobin Ryan </contributor/5905647>
I'd have been happier about the spuriousness of this pursuit if you
didn't assert that at least 40 different writers were the father of
autobiography/the novel/the modern novel/the modern short
story/essays/the modern essay. Pictures names and books would have
sufficed without the tedious vanity of mostly erroneous/absurd commentary.
Also: Calvino and Perec. De Montaigne.
August 4, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterMCL </contributor/5906398>
/The problem with the list is that something like 90% of the writer's
wrote within the past 100 years. /
Not even close to being true.
/Walter Percy, John Updike, John Cheever, Philip Roth, Sol Yurick, John
Gardner, D.M. Thomas, Patrick White, Roberston Davies, Jack Kerouac,
William S. Burroughs, William Gaddis, Joseph McElroy, John Barth, Donald
Barthelme, Robert Coover, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Theodore
Dreiser, Thomas Wolfe, William Dean Howells, Louis Auchincloss, Richard
Yates, Graham Greene, E.M. Foster, C.P. Snow, Anthony Powell, Malcolm
Bradbury, David Lodge, Aldous Huxley, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Agatha
Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Doris Lessing, Isaac Asimov, James T. Farrell,
Nelson Algren, Muriel Spark, V.S. Naipul, Paul auster, Richard Powers,
and William T. Vollman./
The only one who I would even consider borderline here would be John
Cheever.
August 4, 2009 | Registered CommenterAlex </member/alex>
/I agree with Em ... this is very Western Canon. Sure, you've got the
token guys from other cultures (can't leave off Gabriel Garcia Marquez,
right?) ... But where's Victor Hugo? Umberto Eco? Haruki Murakami?
Mahmoud Darwish? Salman Rushdie? Nahguib Mahfouz? Marina Tsvetayeva?/
half the people you just mentioned are from the Western Canon.
If you think Salman Rushdie belongs on a top 100 list, I don't know what
to say. Have you actually read his books?
August 4, 2009 | Registered CommenterAlex </member/alex>
They completly ignored genre fiction, apart from Poe. What about
Lovecraft, King, Matheson, Wyndham, Tolkien, Herbert, etc? Nope, they
didn't write plays, poety or Depression-era prose. Therefore, they are
not worthy to be included in this list.
August 4, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterBrandon </contributor/5908219>
Some other writers who belonged on this list include J.D. Salinger, John
Dos Pasos, Arthur Conan Doyle, John Le Carre, Angela Carter, Peter
Matthiesen, Thomas McGuane, Edgar Lee Masters, Sherwood Anderson, Conrad
Aiken, Wallace Stegner, Arthur Miller, Edward Albee, Ambrose Bierce,
James Branch Cabell, and Richard Ford.
For crying out loud:
William Seward Burroughs
J.G. Ballard
Paul Bowles
August 4, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterBadJet </contributor/5908667>
did a bot programmed by some academic tight ass produce this 100 list?
celine
genet
lewis carroll
graham greene
patricia highsmith
i could go on and on.
August 4, 2009 | Unregistered Commenterwillie w. </contributor/5908715>
I, for one, commend this list's omission of beat writers. Kerouac and
Burroughs, no thanks. We're talking "greatest" not influential, or
whatever you think gets them on the list.
And criticism for being Western focused? Ummmm, I'm pretty sure both
these guys are white Americans. So, I guess they could have pretended to
be otherwise for the sake of your PC inclinations. But I'm glad they
didn't. it's their list. They can have whoever they want on it.
Personally, I read it with another tab open at Amazon the track down
some authors and books I was unaware of.
Woah! Balzac was hot.
August 4, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterGraham </contributor/5910169>
Shakespeare should be first and Kerouac, Salinger, Updike, Ted Hughes
and Ursula LeGuin should all be on this list.
August 4, 2009 | Unregistered Commenterandy </contributor/5982387>
Robert Lewis Stevenson
August 4, 2009 | Unregistered Commenterdee dee </contributor/5982406>
William Burroughs as a beat writer? A misnomer, but a common one.
August 4, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterBadJet </contributor/5982675>
A fun list to read, but ... not really a ranking of anything. So much of
this whole business is taste. There are many on this list I have read,
but others I have not and am looking forward to picking up. I agree that
omitting Kurt Vonnegut was an oversight.
That being said, I can't help but sense the record store clerk vibe all
over this list. Especially noticing that you specifically avoid
recommending certain famous authors most famous works, opting for the
higher-brow "deep cuts."
What doesn't remind me of the characters from High Fidelity, definitely
reminds me of straight forward English degree required reading.
Either way, I've got a great book list for next summer.
August 5, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterCrocker </contributor/5984503>
On your comment after Saul Bellow, 'The Catcher in the Rye' IS a
childrens book. Young adult anyway. Side note: I don't believe the image
you have of Emily Dickinson is her. Isn't there only one known
photograph? This one?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Black-white_photograph_of_Emily_Dickinson2.jpg
August 5, 2009 | Unregistered Commenterandy </contributor/5984617>
Guys, please- Plath! Read the un-messed-with edition of Ariel. Huge.
August 5, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterM </contributor/5986328>
Crime/Detective fiction rules:
Chandler
Thompson
Goodis
Bruen
Taibo
Wiliford
Fleming
Cain
etc.
August 5, 2009 | Unregistered Commenterchester </contributor/5986402>
OMG that is so not Emily Dickinson!
August 5, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterPompass </contributor/6000858>
Umm... factchecking, guys. Homer didn't write the Aeneid - that was
Virgil. The work Homer wrote in addition to the Odyssey was the
/Illiad/. Oh, and Beckett's play is Waiting for God/ot/.
Other than that, great list. Nice mix of niche and classic. I damn well
filled up my Amazon basket working through this.
August 5, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterRichard </contributor/6002443>
Agatha Christie has sold more books than anyone on this list.
August 5, 2009 | Unregistered Commentersteve o. </contributor/6002619>
In addition to the writers I cited in previous posts, my main problem

with this list is the same problem I have with the Nobel Prize in
Literature. I think it's wrong to compare poets, playwrights, and
novelists because poems, plays, and novels are completely different
animals from one another.
I'd like to see the Nobel Prize for Literature replaced by a Nobel Prize
for Fiction, a Nobel Prize for Poetry, and a Nobel Prize for Drama.
Along these lines, I'd like to see 3 follow-up posts on this blog - 100
greatest novelists/short story writers, 100 greatest poets, and 100
greatest playrights.
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child, to visit Central Africa. Recommended reading: /The Secret Agent./

Half-Belgian, half-Argentinian, he was the modern master of the

/Molloy/, with /Light in August/. Its narration is unchallenged for

Managed to pen /Anna Karenina/, the greatest novel ever written in

the career of an immortal voice.

important than we could even conceive of today. He was born on Long

all. Recommended reading: /The Trojan Women, Iphigenia in Aulis, Helen./

so that it appeared he was writing in a new language. Gay, lives in NY.

is. Somehow Faulkner avoided both, achieving that glistening thing

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at clash of clans questions on May 9, 2014

August 3, 2009 | Unregistered Commentertao </contributor/5903830>

August 4, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterLandon </contributor/5905571>

In addition to the writers I cited in previous posts, my main problem

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