And Joyce, oddly enough, did not win a Nobel...though perhaps the Nobel Committee thought they were giving him one when they awarded Beckett...Originally Posted by dfloyd
And Joyce, oddly enough, did not win a Nobel...though perhaps the Nobel Committee thought they were giving him one when they awarded Beckett...
Honestly, how could anybody consider Proust as someone who "should have" won the nobel... When exactly? His one major work wasn't even complete at his death, and the great bulk of it published posthumously. When exactly should he have won, and for what?
The only possible years, that is, years he could have won where he was well enough known, were 21 and 22, and quite frankly, by what had been published of his work at that time, I have no problem seeing how Anatole France, the most famous French novelist of his time, and Knut Hamsen won. Quite frankly, I think Proust himself would have thought France a far better candidate for Laureateship - he was after all one of Proust's idols.
If you are going to play the "who didn't win it who should have" game, at least choose unhonored writers who possibly could have logically won - Borges perhaps, and I could think of a dozen Chinese writers off the top of my head, but, quite simply, their work hadn't been translated until recently, and the world was essentially divided, the committee favoring mostly Scandinavians, and Europeans and Americans in general - I should say Western and Northern Europeans too, not quite Eastern Europe either - and even then a limited selection. Quite simply, the world until the last 20 years was a pretty closed place, in terms of the exchange of texts - now the job of the Nobel Committee is pretty much impossible - lets be honest, who can they possibly award without causing a backlash from somewhere?
Last edited by JBI; 11-11-2009 at 12:12 AM.
And faced with the sheer volume of literature that comes out every year, how can anyone be considered an expert on the whole world? Perhaps we have some unreasonable expectations, and perhaps the Nobel Committee is overreaching itself with it's stated goals.
"So-Crates: The only true wisdom consists in knowing that you know nothing." "That's us, dude!"- Bill and Ted
"This ain't over."- Charles Bronson
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First off, I was quoting the article. I don't necessarily think Proust should have won, but I do think there are some poor choices on the list.
I've never heard Joyce's merits contested by any serious, respected critic. Surely, I have heard his choice of format debated, but 'The Dead" is WIDELY considered one of the greatest short stories of all time. 'Dubliners' may be as well the greatest collection--though Ficciones and The Piazza Tales are my favorites--. Seriously? Contested? If he didn't invent stream-of-consciousness he perfected it. Whether you like his writing or not he HAS to be in the top 5 most influential authors of the last 100 years. He's the very symbol of modernism.
I don't really know why mentioning others who 'deserved' to win is defending the committee. I think if anything it drives home my point. I was saying that they have made some poor choices and some clumbsy oversights. It seems you agree?
Also StLukes, did you really mean that Nabokov is no greater a genius than "any number" or did you mean the select few you mentioned? I think it is safe to say that Nabokov is a greater genius--or at least his works evince a greater genius--than most of the Laureates. And certainly his work has left a more lasting impression than most.
I think part of the issue is that it is very easy for someone--like myself--on a forum to criticize a group doing their best at a very difficult endeavor. Perhaps my original post didn't reflect this, but I am troubled by this type of arm-chair criticism in politics, literature and life in general.
That said, the original poster noted a very real phenomenon in noting the neglect of some of these authors. I was trying to show ways and examples in which the award does not always corrolate to the most lasting work. I was not criticizing a group for not always succeeding at a difficult job, but rather suggesting why the lauded books are neglected. Namely, award committees very often fail to see that which will be most far-reaching. But I think this is very understandable. That which will have the most affect in the future, often doesn't seem quite so pertinent in its day.
Top five most influential writers in what language? The dominance of vernacular Chinese, for instance, can be attributed, at least to an extent, to the influence of Lu Xun, who was responsible for, really, the emergence of vernacular modernist writing in China (or better put, was the largest figure). In terms of influence too, Chairman Mao has had profound effect on Chinese letters; perhaps we should give him a Nobel prize, no? He certainly had a greater influence on letters than Churchill come to think of it.
What is top five then, and where do we draw the line? Soseki, for instance, the central figure of the Japanese Modern literary canon could have won it a potential 12 times - he was the dominant writer during the Meiji period, and is still immensely popular - not to mention he too was important in the emergence of a vernacular form of written language. Where is his Nobel? what is world literature?
What the committee essentially decides is who gets a giant cheque (1.5mil cash and a couple million more in royalties from boosted sales). All they can do is guess who they think deserves it, and feel the backlash. Nobody really serious is going to pay much attention to them anyway.
I was just looking at Botchan and it's pretty good. While we're making a list of good writers who didn't get the prize: Tolstoy, Ibsen.
"So-Crates: The only true wisdom consists in knowing that you know nothing." "That's us, dude!"- Bill and Ted
"This ain't over."- Charles Bronson
Feed the Hungry!
JBI, I'm having trouble discerning the purpose of your direct responses to my posts. I quoted an article with an informed opinion suggesting the Nobel Prize may not have as much merit as is supposed. So... your last post about money and the awards not being serious doesn't really seem in opposition to my own post.
As far as Joyce being a top 5 most influential author, your rebuttal seems like many I've gotten from you. You ask a whole bunch of questions and try to blur distinctions. Essentially, rather than suggest an alternative answer you seem to constantly be falling back on the idea that everything is subjective and thus no answer can possibly exist. Again, does this idea of a semi-nihilistic approach to literature seem so attractive to you or do you just disagree with me not care to dispute my suggestions with actual alternatives. I'm not trying to be rude, but it seems a little strange that you are so content to just ask questions like "what is top 5?" and "where do we draw the line?". I appreciate your suggestions of Mao and Soseki but get the feeling you aren't using them as true alternatives to my suggestions but just as a sort of fulcrum to heave around the weight of your nihilistic argument.
How about this: you name 5 authors who you think are more influential in the last hundred years than Joyce. Keep in mind that behind Mandarin Chinese (it being the first by over twice as much as the next), English is the second most common language in the world. And Joyce is generally considered--I say generally because this is the ONLY serious suggestion I've heard--the most influential author of the language in the last century.
Japanease is the ninth most common language and from my experience in three different colleges in the US--obviously a limited test group--doesn't seem to be taught here in translation as much as French, German, Russian, Spanish or Italian.
All that being said, I'm prepared to be enlightened and have no qualms in admitting my limited exposure. German and a little Spanish are my only other languages.
Oh, and just so you understand, I don't want to make this a debate about the nature of influence--Hitler SURELY influenced much literature by his actions but that is not really the point--. I'm talking about a literary influence that is as close to measurable as anything in the humanities can be. Many, many authors and critics credit Joyce with ushering in and defining modernism. This is the type of influence that I believe the committee commits to honoring.
I do think there are some poor choices on the list.
Undoubtedly. But then who would agree with every selection made by any awards committee? As JBI suggests there are some truly great writers who have been selected who I might not have other wise heard of. The award also made such writers of great merit available in translation. Harold Pinter, V. S. Naipaul, Günter Grass, José Saramago, Wislawa Szymborska, Seamus Heaney, Kenzaburo, Toni Morrison, Octavio Paz, Naguib Mahfouz, Joseph Brodsky, Jaroslav Seifert, William Golding, Gabriel García Márquez, Elias Canetti, Czeslaw Milosz, Odysseus Elytis, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Vicente Aleixandre, Saul Bellow, Eugenio Montale, Heinrich Böll, Pablo Neruda, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, Samuel Beckett, Shmuel Agnon, Jean-Paul Sartre, Giorgos Seferis, John Steinbeck, Ivo Andric, Saint-John Perse, Salvatore Quasimodo, Boris Pasternak, Albert Camus, Juan Ramón Jiménez,
Ernest Hemingway, Pär Lagerkvist, William Faulkner, T.S. Eliot, André Gide, Hermann Hesse, Eugene O'Neill, Luigi Pirandello, Ivan Bunin, Sinclair Lewis,
Thomas Mann, George Bernard Shaw, William Butler Yeats, Anatole France,
Rabindranath Tagore, Rudyard Kipling, Henryk Sienkiewicz... This seems to be a pretty good collection of writers although I certainly could come up with another list of writers who are just as strong from the same period. Still, the choices seem quite strong enough to undermine any notion that the Nobel Prize is the "kiss of death".
I've never heard Joyce's merits contested by any serious, respected critic. Surely, I have heard his choice of format debated, but 'The Dead" is WIDELY considered one of the greatest short stories of all time. 'Dubliners' may be as well the greatest collection--though Ficciones and The Piazza Tales are my favorites--. Seriously? Contested? If he didn't invent stream-of-consciousness he perfected it. Whether you like his writing or not he HAS to be in the top 5 most influential authors of the last 100 years. He's the very symbol of modernism.
Yes... Joyce along with Eliot are the central figures of Modernism... and that is what is open to criticism. There are more than a few who question the merits of Modernism and whether it went to far in its mannerisms. There are any number of readers here who are more than well-read who question the obscurantist nature of Joyce and question whether his innovations were truly expressive... or merely innovation for the sake of innovation. They are not alone. Nabokov had mixed feelings on his work, often championing some of his fiction while condemning other works... In Nabokov's opinion, Ulysses was brilliant, Finnegans Wake horrible—an attitude Jorge Luis Borges shared. Again, they were not alone in their opinions. Harold Bloom went so far as to suggest remorsefully that Finnegan's Wake may rapidly become the greatest unread book.
I personally quite liked Ulysses and found Finnegan's Wake fascinating... although I far prefer Proust... and I have no doubt that he is among the most influential writers of Modernism... but that still does not assure him unequivocal praise. Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol are equally two of the most influential artists of Modernism... and yet the jury is still out as to whether their achievements and influence are actually worthy of praise.
Also StLukes, did you really mean that Nabokov is no greater a genius than "any number" or did you mean the select few you mentioned? I think it is safe to say that Nabokov is a greater genius--or at least his works evince a greater genius--than most of the Laureates. And certainly his work has left a more lasting impression than most.
Certainly he was a greater genius than a number of Nobel Laureates... but there are more than a few who easily equal or surpass him: Faulkner, Hemingway, Günter Grass, José Saramago, Octavio Paz, Gabriel García Márquez, Czeslaw Milosz, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Saul Bellow, Eugenio Montale, Heinrich Böll, Pablo Neruda, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, Samuel Beckett, Shmuel Agnon, Jean-Paul Sartre, John Steinbeck, Boris Pasternak, Albert Camus, T.S. Eliot, André Gide, Hermann Hesse, Eugene O'Neill, Luigi Pirandello, Sinclair Lewis, Thomas Mann, George Bernard Shaw, William Butler Yeats, Rabindranath Tagore, Rudyard Kipling... Measuring influence of Nabokov vs a Spanish or Italian or Polish or Russian poet or novelist may be difficult if one does not have a firm grasp of the literary achievements of those traditions... while the issue of lasting influence is really open to debate when discussing the literature of the last 50 or 75 years.
That said, the original poster noted a very real phenomenon in noting the neglect of some of these authors.
Again, I agree that some of these authors are rather neglected today... perhaps deservedly so in some instances. On the other hand... out out the sizable number of Laureates I can say I have read a great works by more than I haven't. I will also say that the original poster's complaints that the Nobel Laureates are scarcely read in comparison to Dan Brown except by the academic "literati" strikes me rather ingenuous and less than well informed when it comes to literature.
Last edited by stlukesguild; 11-11-2009 at 11:49 PM.
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OK, would you prefer them all English authors? And would you prefer them people who hadn't won the prize? Even amongst prize winners,
Eliot,
Faulkner
Yeats
Shaw
O'Neal
Those all seem just as, if not more important and influential than Joyce - I wouldn't doubt that Joyce pops up in some of their work, notably Eliot, as an influence, and that there is an influence overlap, but just from the beginning of the list, you can piece those.
As for non-winners, I'll try to stick to English, but it is a bit trickier.
Robert Frost
Virginia Woolf
Northrop Frye
Wallace Stevens
D. H. Lawrence.
Of course, you are welcome to debate any of these selections, and I could probably construct a list involving tons of others from other languages, but that isn't my point. My point really, as you said, is a sort of nihilism, where I acknowledge the awards mean virtually nothing.
As Mortal said it, neither Tolstoy nor Ibsen won (I can't see when exactly they could have properly one - Ibsen being somewhat marred by the reputation of Ghosts, and Tolstoy kind of seen as an eccentric, especially in his old age - but even still they didn't win) and a whole bunch of others didn't win either. There are still works whose influence is perhaps comparable to Joyce in many languages that haven't been translated, much less recognized - even popular literature seems to go the most from English to other languages (usually American, but sometimes English English) and not so much the other way around - the most popular Chinese novelist, for instance, Jin Yong, has only recently begun to be translated, and those works which have are rather limited in publication and somewhat difficult to come by, despite the fact that within China his sales are comparable to J. K. Rowling, except he seems to have achieved some critical acclaim - not saying that I think him a good author, as I haven't read one of his books cover to cover, but it just seems to put things in perspective.
Now back to another topic, the question of literary influence - Mao is very much a literary figure with immense influence - the little red book is perhaps the most printed book of the century (I don't have the numbers, so perhaps the Bible was printed more times), and his other works, essays and poetry, have been absorbed into curriculums and text books since the time they were written. I mentioned Soseki earlier, his influence was immense, and he was a literary writer, rather than a half-writer, half-philosopher, half-dictator. The only reason I put him down is to stand in contrast to Winston Churchill's Laureateship, but even so it makes no difference.
There is no way to prove influence, and everything is so intertextual anyway that there is no way to say what is from where, and who borrowed what from whom - we can draw a link from Joyce to Faulkner, for instance, but the web also pulls from all sorts of other places, some of them hardly "literary" in the sense we see them - after all, arguably the greatest influence on modernism was the bottle.
As you put it, Hitler's influence was immense (I think Knut Hamsen in particular took a liking to his thought) but do we call that a major writer? What is a major writer, and how do we define it? Do we base it purely on innovation in form? If so, it wasn't Joyce who invented that, and the credit goes mostly to The Golden Bough for the myth-method construction of Ulysses.
No, we don't seem to judge literature, much less anything else on those grounds, and don't get me wrong, I believe in good literature, and in aesthetic "merit" in a sense, but I wouldn't be as silly as to say that anybody can concretely answer any question that asks "who is the top 5" or "who is the best writer" with any certainty. As an above poster put it, being an expert in world literature is an impossible task - even time period experts, such as those specializing in a decade, or part of a century tend to be narrowed further in their field - A Spenser expert, for instance, perhaps wouldn't know exactly everything about Philip Sidney, or Thomas More (and, having read through bits of More's 1000odd page debate with Thomas Tyndale, I can see why - there is just so much text out there, that nobody can absorb it). Where does that leave one?
Firstly, the biggest limitation is probably language - for Nobel scholars, we can assume that the farther the country is from Scandinavia, generally the less likely the judges are able to read the text in the original. The second thing is institutional bias - the way people get nominated now to the Nobels, is that academics each nominate a few names, and a short list is assembled from them - this has lead in the past to some funny results, for instance, the Canadian poet Irving Layton was once long-listed because Italian academics were rather fond of his work. So even then, the amount of institutions working within the language, and sending names would drastically shake things - the largest Italian department outside of Italy, for instance, is in the University of Toronto, and that is by no means a very big department - the English department is like 6 times the size - how does that effect the amount of people nominating Italian, over English language authors.
Another bias we have is genre based - with the exception of a handful of people here, everybody is essentially a novel reader, in that they do not read much in terms of Poetry, Drama, or other genres, such as personal essay or literary criticism. In the institutions (especially in American ones, I personally think) it would seem that education, at least on the undergraduate level is potentially limitable to novels, the bulk being American - here in many institutions the same trend occurs, in others, a certain range of subjects are required. What that means, essentially, is that one can decide being well read means knowing American fiction, and that is it - as long as someone has read, for instance, Toni Morrison (and don't get me wrong, I think she is a great novelist), it can be argued, one somehow knows something about literature, and can define what good literature is.
The point being, that you, for instance, place Joyce on a pedestal as the be all and end all despite the fact that he was limited to two genres really (unless you want to count his mediocre verses and his crappy play), being Short story and Novel, and arguably, especially around 1922 limited in geographic scope to the British Isles mostly, given the ban on his work in the US, and the difficulty of translation. Where then does one go from there in approaching these sorts of things. How can one judge that.
I am personally a fan of Joyce's work, others, whose opinions differ from mine, who I nevertheless respect would disagree over his merit - I don't like playing the value game, so I won't. But without acknowledging one's limitations, one should not make sweeping remarks.
The author of that article - perhaps a little bit intelligent, though by no means a sort of lit-crit genius, would have us believe, for instance, that somehow the Nobels should have acknowledged Proust, despite the impossibility of such a choice, as I have stated above. The Nobel's only mean anything if you think they do. Personally, I don't particularly think they do, but perhaps that is just me.
Really, playing this value game, and discussing awards is so trivial - the whole notion of putting Joyce on a "top five" list is kind of silly in the first place, and I won't even bother defending my list against criticism because, quite simply I don't particularly care - it's a joke list more than anything else written in about 30 seconds.
Lets be honest, the whole notion of Nobel prize winners fading into oblivion is kind of silly - all authors, no matter how good, will have an up and down period - Tennyson and Longfellow, the most popular poets of their time period, Longfellow making giant amounts of cash off the writing of poetry (something like over 300,000$ a year at that time) have ebbed, and been reduced to classrooms and academic centres. The only writers who seem to never lose favor are those who most readers are forced to read, Shakespeare, perhaps a bit of Keats, or whatever, but even they are not appreciated in their fullest as perhaps they once were. The point being, that time is the killer of authors, and the Nobels have very little to do with it. Eliot winning the Nobel had a greater affect on his wallet than it did on his reputation.
"somehow the Nobels should have acknowledged Proust, despite the impossibility of such a choice, as I have stated above."
They could have, by 1918 he had published the two first parts of In Search of Lost Time and he died in 1922. He had time enough to receive the Goncourt.
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It is rare that Nobel Prizes are given close to the publication of the writer's prominent works that inspired the decision to give the prize. Also, Nobel's will specifically instructed that the award be given to "those who most benefited mankind", so there was a large bias early on for works that were seen as being socially important, rather than artistically. Which explains why authors like Pearl S. Buck have been recognized.
It is also important to realize that for the first few years the award for literature was decided exclusively by the academics at the university in Stockholm, so they may not even have been aware of Proust, or maybe he just wasn't that popular in their French department.
Last edited by OrphanPip; 11-12-2009 at 12:35 AM.
In 18 there was no award, and, you and I both know the stretch of that - the award is for lifetime achievement, and was generally given at that time to old, established authors accepted by the academy - as I mentioned, there is very little likelihood of him even being considered over the three that won it from 1919 to 1921. Perhaps if he had completed his work and lived longer, then maybe he would have won, but in all honesty, the French were quick to recognize him, but the Swedish, and over already well loved and revered authors - seems kind of difficult. In truth, him winning would have been a shock to the point where people today would have been baffled by it - like crowning Petrarch Laurel poet for his just-started poem The Africa, which, by account of scholars of Petrarch I know who have read it, is god awful.
To StLukes:
Yes... Joyce along with Eliot are the central figures of Modernism... and that is what is open to criticism.
I understand what you are saying about modernism, and wouldn't be surprised if the movement is looked at with some criticism in the future in much the same why the artificial and hyper-aesthetic Mannerism art is sometimes seen today. What I'm suggesting is that since Modernism was the dominant form for most of the 20th century, and since Joyce is seen as its prototype and archetype, Joyce is far more important to letters than many of those listed. But, as you suggested, there is A LOT of room for this type of criticism and I don't know that it is productive. I mostly wanted to clear up my own understanding of the award's aims and Joyce's achievements, to show the discrepancy that I believe is manifested there.
Honestly, suffice to say for the rest of your post that I disagree with the credit given to many you named. But, debating degrees of genius is probably not very fruitful on a forum. I will concede that there are as great geniuses as Nabokov on the list but would not include most you mentioned. If you are curious which--not that you should be--these are those I've read and disagree compare to Nabokov: Hemingway, José Saramago, Octavio Paz, Gabriel García Márquez, Saul Bellow, Pablo Neruda, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, John Steinbeck, Albert Camus, Hermann Hesse, Eugene O'Neill, Sinclair Lewis, George Bernard Shaw.
I love many of these writers and their work but--as I said--simply disagree with your assessment of their comparability to Nabokov.
To JBI...
I REALLY don't want to hijack this thread so I'm only going to address your points that address my own.
First, I never said anything about top 5 writers. I said, early that this type of rank is probably meaningless. I said most influential. This, I think, is a bit more calculable based on Literature academic communities and the responses of other authors. Most of your post seemed centered on this and the "value game" which I also do not wish to participate in. Good. One thing down.
However, I would like to address your two lists provided in the beginning of your post.
Eliot,
Faulkner
Yeats
Shaw
O'Neal
Those all seem just as, if not more important and influential than Joyce - I wouldn't doubt that Joyce pops up in some of their work, notably Eliot, as an influence, and that there is an influence overlap, but just from the beginning of the list, you can piece those.
As for non-winners, I'll try to stick to English, but it is a bit trickier.
Robert Frost
Virginia Woolf
Northrop Frye
Wallace Stevens
D. H. Lawrence
I know you enjoy gliding through the ambiguous causeways in literary study--I think the freedom literature affords in interpretation and response is the main reason most of us enjoy it--but some of these examples seem to fly in the face of common--and academic--sense. (((I just realized that if you were composing a list of 'better' writers, my post will be meaningless, but I'm going off the assumption that you were responding to my challenge of finding more important writers of the time)))
Of your list Eliot, Faulkner and Woolf all practiced in the field that Joyce cultivated. You may find them better--I prefer Faulkner myself and Woolf at times--but their very careers played out in Joyce's shadow and for the most part they recognized this.
Lawrence is certainly a brilliant writer and his pushing of taboo subjects absolutely cements his place in history, but, again, I don't think you can compare his influence to Joyce's. He continued the tradition of British literature and pressed some issue buttons but didn't really affect the course of literature. The same can be said for Shaw, O'Neil and Frost. Great writers but which of them shifted the entire landscape in the way Joyce did. Honestly, I don't think Frye deserves to be mentioned with the others and as much as I love Stevens, he too is not really comparable insofar as influence goes.
I think your strongest argument could be made for Yeats but even he--with his mixture of popularity, innovation and genius--seems less relevant to the century. I see Joyce as far and away of these authors the one most important to the evolution of 20th century literature.
I'm not addressing the rest of your post, mostly, because I agree with it. The only reason I took issue and addressed what I did, is because I believe that influence is one of the things--in this strange world of the Humanities--that we can at least strive to measure. And in fact we should, because influence--even over quality and ethics--may be the most important--not best--fact with which we deal.
From my modernist experience, Joyce's influence in the west is uneclipsed. That doesn't mean he is the best, but it does mean for the last hundred years--most of the period in which the committee has operated--the second most common language was most affected by him.
Goodnight all!
Modest, I think you might be overestimating the effect that James Joyce had on T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf. Joyce was born in 1882, as was Woolf, and Eliot gets born just six years later. They are his contemporaries, not his successors. They were both professional writers with established reputations by the time Joyce became important enough to read. I doubt Ulysses(1922) had that much impact on the composition of either The Wasteland(1922) or Mrs. Dalloway(1925). As I recall, Eliot was more impressed by guys like Dante, at that time.
I'm not sure about the relationship that Faulkner had with Joyce but Hemingway is about the same age and he was just a friend. Hemingway was more influenced by Sherwood Anderson, Henry James, Maupassant, Flaubert, and Stephen Crane, to name a few. Although he smuggled copies of Joyce's Ulysses into countries where it was banned, there is some speculation that he never finished his own copy; leaving him in somewhat the same predicament as Dr. Johnson who "would rather praise" Congreve's work "than read it."
As for Joyce himself, I believe that he will be influential in his own way, in much the way that Dr. Johnson, Alexander Pope, and John Dryden were influential. They were the leading lights of English literature in their day, though at a distance their faults are magnified, their mannerisms quaint, and aesthetically ridiculous. No one doubts their intelligence, or that what they set out to do, they did as well as it could be done; but in time their reputations were all eclipsed by other figures and their works were marginalized.
"So-Crates: The only true wisdom consists in knowing that you know nothing." "That's us, dude!"- Bill and Ted
"This ain't over."- Charles Bronson
Feed the Hungry!
Wow!
You wouldn't think that a simple paragraph from an ingenuous reader would elicit such an outcry. It's a shame we don't have more of these; JBI and StLukes have pervasive arguments somehow backed up by all the impressive name dropping - in one of StLukes' lists there was actually a novelist I knew and have read: E. Philips Openheim. But if anyone can be said to win this argument (as for myself I don't even understand what they were arguing about), It must be StLukes, whose name sounds impressive - it reminds me of a hospital or a cathedral, because she has more lists with more names on them which are probably bywords in Ivy League schools and certainly not found found scrawled upon NYC subway cars and walls. These posts and riposts read like the old Thorstein Veblen and H. L. Mencken verbal dueling of times gone by. Keep up the good work! I enjoy reading your comments and lists, even though their meaning often escapes me.
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