That list is actually way better than the title would lead one to expect (despite the obvious ridiculousness of the exercise and yes I will be the grump/scold/whatever marvelling at how many of them happened to write in English).
Also I was sure that the most important Chicago Jew would be Saul Bellow.
Euripides: Before him, Greek drama was Happy Days and Good Times. Yeah, like the episode where at the end Fonzie rushes out screaming, ἄναξ Ἄπολλον, αἵδε πληθύουσι δή, κἀξ ὀμμάτων στάζουσιν αἷμα δυσφιλές.
Not all of us know ancient Greek, you know.
The list in the OP is obviously correct in its entirety.
3, 4: Something about Lord Apollo, eyes, blood, and bad friends?
3.Bet Fonzie didn't.
Something like, "Lord Apollo! Look, there are droves of them, and they drip horrible blood from their eyes!" (Originally Orestes, in Aeschylus' Libation Bearers, referring to the Furies, pursuing him for murdering his mother, one of those plot devices so common in American sitcoms.)
Or multiplying, I don't know Greek either.
3: Was that the one in which he jumped the shark?
Does anybody else remember the Happy Days episode in which Fonzie played Hamlet?
Well, Fonzie always did like the birds.
Wait, it is now "assumed" that Auden was gay? As in, researchers have found textual clues in his work or something? I thought he was straightforwardly out.
James Garner's death made me wonder again about Juanita Bartlett, who wrote most of the best Rockford episodes.
What about Matthew Weiner? The first few seasons of Mad Men, while Draper had a secret, were really pretty good.
Oh, if Sebald (which I agree with) then also Bolano. Can't stand DH Lawrence.
Well, yeah, I was pretty sure. I mean, "Auden assumed gay" is right up there with "Generalissimo Franco still dead."
12/14: but we have no way of knowing whether that was just an act. Maybe he was a closeted straight man.
16: Because straight male poets were so oppressed in the 20th century.
Interesting that two authors who in 1930 were considered half of the of top four have fallen off the list of 100.
Huh, I was thinking the placement of Gertrude Stein was the most ridiculous placement, and then I got to the end. Clearly William Faulkner is the greatest author, in any language, of all time.
DH Lawrence in, I think, the 30s was also pretty egregious. As was wherever Phillip K. Dick was placed.
Possibly relevant to the Auden sub-thread.
WHERE ARE JAMES GOULD COZZENS AND WARWICK DEEPING
I will be the grump/scold/whatever marvelling at how many of them happened to write in English
I sometimes marvel in the opposite direction at the Nobel Prize in Literature. The committee members can't read the majority of the nominated authors in their original languages, which I guess leads to handing out the award largely on the basis of "what the author has to say".
They can't even get their own story straight. They say that Saul Bellow is the greatest Jewish novelist of the 20th century. But Stanley Elkin, Gertrude Stein, and Franz Kafka (there are probably more) are all rated higher.
25: Maybe they're making some fine distinction between novelist who is Jewish and Jewish Novelist.
I didn't even realize that this was supposed to be a ranking, rather than just a numbered list.
26: That explanation was considered and rejected.
Maybe Stein was disqualified on account of collaboration.
I too thought 2. (Sorry, Uncle Marvin.)
2, 30: Maybe they consider Bellow a Canadian Jew.
No Japanese. I would certainly put Watanabe on there, maybe Mishima, know nothing of Oe.
The two who have apparently dropped off are Mann and Gide. That's interesting. Not a big fan of Gide in general, but Counterfeiters is a modernist monster of a novel, as important and qualified as anything. And Gide was important for belle lettres, very important earliest anti-colonialism.
And Thomas Mann? Jeez.
Both were gay, Gide militantly, Mann hyper-closeted.
Maybe both are too cold and intellectual, too moralistic in a grand narrative sense for the age of My Struggle.
To make Auden maybe gay and Willa Cather totes a lesbian seems a bit odd given the references they left behind. Not that I disagree that either was, mind you.
19 I don't see that as particularly egregious, or at least no more so than putting anyone else in the number one spot which is itself egregious. However, lists are fun. You can argue over them, congratulate or chastise yourself over how many you've read, mock the whole exercise, feel guilty over paying attention to it. Like I said, fun.
As an undergraduate, I lived in Cather Hall. It was attached to Pound Hall, was named for her friend Louise Pound. Cather was all men and Pound all women.
Mari Sandoz, of Old Jules fame, also has a dorm named after her.
35: The fact that Cather Hall was all men seems to me to be pretty convincing evidence that she could not have been a lesbian.
35: I spent my Junior and Senior years living in a dorm named Rand Hall, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't named for Ayn Rand. Who, by the way, would certainly have shown up as number one on that list if the ranking had been determined by online voting, because libertarians.
35: We get it, Moby: you are ALL MAN.
39: No, she couldn't have beat out Tolkein. Rowling and Mitchell might also beat her.
I lived on Blake Avenue for a few years, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't named after William.
It's an interesting list -- more interesting than most.
Though -- Heinlein? Seriously? I mean, I like him too. But is he a great writer?
Also: 16 women out of a 100 writers. It beats the 7% rule, but not by much.
I skimmed for my name, then clicked away. No time for haters.
Per the OP, we are sort of off. We're at swim lessons, and then we're leaving directly from here. So we're all packed and out of the house.
44 The only thing of yours I've read is Radetzky March, anything else you'd recommend?
Not sure if this goes in the Road Trip thread, the update thread, or the musical thread, but I've now listened to Annie for the first time in 30 years, and I guess it held up? We made it to our first destination.
Get some rest. The sun will come up tomorrow.
Just pull down you visor and grin and say...
"Why is there a dollar in my bottom?"
It's one of the new coins. President Aft.
There's a reason it's called a coin slot.
"Why is there a dollar in my bottom?"
Because you've turned into a dragon. http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_11606.html#1357006
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I am temporarily in charge of my section while the boss is away. In that role, I am supervising cases that are most easily referred to as "the stripper case" and "the hooker case". Representing state agencies isn't usually this film noir.
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I once wrote a "Motion in Limine (No. --) to Exclude Evidence and Argument Related to Strip Club Visit." I was proud of that title.
We've got a motion to strike scandalous material in the pleadings going, including an averment that the prostitute was fondling some other guy, not the affiant, and he just poured them a drink, as you do when you find a prostitute (which, he didn't even know she was a prostitute) and some guy in your office.
Would it be possible to exclude the evidence but keep the argument or is that just one of those lawyer phrases like "cease and desist"?
Also, I don't usually talk about specific work, but I recently had to look at an issue that tangentially involved the 1978 film "The C/at From Outer Space." Did you know that it featured BOTH of the Colonels from MASH and also S/Andy Duncan?
There was an episode of MASH that featured both colonels from MASH. Harry Morgan appeared as a general before Stevenson quit.
I think I had a novelization of that movie as a child. Why, I have no idea. The c/at in question was an orange tabby, IIRC?
Harry Morgan appeared as an insane, racist general, to be precise.
And the not-racist protagonists called the only black person "Spearchucker." Because the 70s were fucked up.
Yes to orange tabby, can neither confirm not deny racist Harry Morgan character.
66: That was actually the character's nickname in the original 1950s novel -- I believe he was a track and field scholarship athlete in college, with a javelin specialty. Racist still, but artisanally preserved racism from prior decades.
It's like the debate over the dialog in Huck Finn, but not really.
"Why is there a dollar in my bottom?"
Keep digging and you'll find the other four.
61. Unavailable on Amazon prime, unavailable on netflix streaming. Looks appealing though.
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I'm starting to sense a pattern of high-level people apparently coping with all their external constraints by hyping blue-sky reform ideas that sound good in the abstract, but when thought out in any detail become obviously infeasible. They then ignore both the conceptual problems and any higher-level rebuffs. (Not my employers, thankfully.) Rather like Republican health reform proposals in some ways. Wonder if there's an idiom for this.
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I really liked the C/at From Outer Space. When I was in afterschool care they would show us shitty live action disney movies on 16mm. Condorman was my favorite, as you might imagine, but Unidentified Flying Oddball and The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes also made strong impressions.
I don't remember those. Escape from Witch Mountain is my main memory of a shitty live-action Disney movie. I think there was a flying RV.
"Mangement"
Great, now I have to wonder if the misspelling was deliberate or not. Since I doubt I'll get a completely straight answer from Moby.
There was one that was sort of Treasure of Sierra Madre-ish which featured a guy getting turned to gold and I can't for the life of me remember what it was called.
We also watched all seventy five hundred Herbie movies, and amazingly they were totally high quality.
my main memory of a shitty live-action Disney movie
Black Hole
Something Wicked This Way Comes
79: The Black Hole could have been a pretty good movie had it been made by anybody other than Disney. A script rewrite or two, get Ridley Scott to direct, and go for the "R" instead of the "PG" rating, and now we're talking. Instead, you get this jarring mish-mash of a really bleak premise that they attempted to counterbalance with goofy shit like a robot voiced by Slim Pickens ("You know, for kids!"), plus special effects that range from breathtaking to laughably amateurish. Ugh.
66
The Oliver Wendell "Spearchucker" Jones character comes from the two original MASH books (before they got made into a movie or TV show and before the book franchise).
No Japanese. I would certainly put Watanabe on there, maybe Mishima, know nothing of Oe.
Fuck those guys. Murasaki Shikibu and Sei Shonagon.