Lotta obvious answers left off because this seems to be about poets specifically.
laughs in Melville
Who Is America's Homer?
31–40 of 261 posts
Re: Who Is America's Homer?
#32English majors seem to have banded together to crown only the most inaccessible and politically charged authors as worthy of attention. If you like anyone else, you're just too inexperienced or partisan to appreciate real literature. To hell with them. The answer is Brandon Sanderson who is freely sharing his knowledge of how to write with the world. His teachings will touch more in the coming years than any stodgy 1…
As much as I love just about everything about Sando, he doesn’t hold a candle to Mark Twain.
I think this is a recency bias in effect.
But damn, Sanderson writes some great stories.
Someone else brought up Spielberg and I think a pretty good argument could be made there. But Twain has already stood the test of time.
Re: Who Is America's Homer?
#33Lots of excellent suggestions here. F. Scott Fitzgerald's missing so far - that's not necessarily who I'd choose but he belongs in the conversation. I don't think he's an especially interesting pick - Gatsby is cited as the Great American Novel as often as Moby Dick or Huck Finn - but he's a superlative writer who (like every high schooler in the country knows) explicitly and directly engaged with the meaning of America.
Re: Who Is America's Homer?
#34Stephen King. Homer was not great literature at the time he his works were written. He was popular entertainment with a dose of folk religion. I’m not sure Homer existed. 1000 years from now people will say the same of SK.
"Homer was not great literature at the time he his works were written". They were not written at all. No written literature existed in the time of Homer.
I can write a poem in my head without ever writing it down on paper. I still wrote a poem, even if I just pass it along orally.
If I write a song for my girl, I'm not going to hand her a piece of paper with sheet music and lyrics, I'm going to perform it for her. I may write it down, or I may not.
Of course, composed is a more precise word, but everyone still knows what I mean if I replace it with write.
Re: Who Is America's Homer?
#35Stephen King. Homer was not great literature at the time he his works were written. He was popular entertainment with a dose of folk religion. I’m not sure Homer existed. 1000 years from now people will say the same of SK.
...you think 1000 years from now people will wonder whether or not Stephen King existed?
Re: Who Is America's Homer?
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suppose that begs the question, who was ancient Greece's Homer Simpson?
Socrates, I'd say.
Diogenes of Sinope is maybe closer? He was sort of a living meme and there's a significant volume of apocryphal anecdotes of hijinks and pseudepigraphical writings, going on long after his death.
Re: Who Is America's Homer?
#37Some good takes so I hate to be glib but no one because 1. the US was founded long after the invention of writing and even the printing press plus 2. bronze age morality and worldview are completely alien to us in ways that no subculture in the US is.
The article references "England has Shakespeare (1600s), Spain has Certantes (1600s) Russia has Pushkin (1800s)" whom I assume are intended as their nations' versions.
You going to stand on your statement with that as a reference? We're closer to Pushkin than Pushkin was to Homer.
Re: Who Is America's Homer?
#38Stephen King. Homer was not great literature at the time he his works were written. He was popular entertainment with a dose of folk religion. I’m not sure Homer existed. 1000 years from now people will say the same of SK.
"Homer was not great literature at the time he his works were written". They were not written at all. No written literature existed in the time of Homer.
How long after were these put down as writings ?
Re: Who Is America's Homer?
#39English majors seem to have banded together to crown only the most inaccessible and politically charged authors as worthy of attention. If you like anyone else, you're just too inexperienced or partisan to appreciate real literature. To hell with them. The answer is Brandon Sanderson who is freely sharing his knowledge of how to write with the world. His teachings will touch more in the coming years than any stodgy 1…
>>English majors seem to have banded together to crown only the most inaccessible and politically charged authors as worthy of attention
Tell me you're an Engineer/don't hang out with actual "English Majors" (I'm 41, I don't spend much time on The Quad these days) without telling me as much.
Lit nerds love nothing more than fighting over the Canon (which, is the point of the article). To hell with banishing whole groups because you're lazy and stereotyping (this sentence is ironic considering the start of the paragraph...)
Re: Who Is America's Homer?
#40[dead]