NP:Greatest Dead Novelist

[rich]

some may say the greatest dead writer is god him/her self

rich


On 9/14/06, jd <wescac at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I would say Dostoevsky would certainly make the list.  Anna "greatest
> book ever written" (as some people say, I've not read it) Karenina
> would probably cause Tolstoy to be on it as well.  I'd say Gaddis,
> too.  It's so much harder to quantify the dead, if only because
> there's so many more of them and as soon as you say Dostoevsky then
> there's people quoting Homer (if you could count him a "writer") and
> Aristotle and any number of others.  Hell, the greatest dead writer's
> work probably hasn't survived to this era.  But I'm a pessimist.
>
> One thing I will say about Dostoevsky that would be an argument
> against him (even though I like him quite a bit) is - well, Brothers
> Karamazov.  He wanted Alyosha to be the hero of the book and yet for
> me he's a shadow to Ivan.  Dostoevsky so skillfully skewered religion
> through Ivan, intentionally, intending to use Alyosha to rise above
> that argument, but even he himself felt (if I remember correctly) that
> he failed, hence the unfinished (unstarted?) sequel-that-never-was
> (died before he had a chance to finish / start it, I would imagine
> "start" to be more accurate as I'd guess that an unfininshed
> manuscript would still be circulating these days had it existed).  I
> love Brothers Karamazov, but not necessarily for the reason he
> intendend people to love it.  Was there any tangible argument that
> overcame Ivan's, other than his deus-ex-machina-esque descent to
> madness?
>
> On 9/14/06, Dave Monroe <monropolitan at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Not sure that I either do, can, or am qualified to,
> > but who are the other contenders?  Let me know ...
> >
> > --- kelber at mindspring.com wrote:
> >
> > > There's a fair amount of agreement on this list that
> > > Pynchon is the greatest living novelist.  But how
> > > about the greatest non-living novelist?  I vote
> > > vociferously for Dostoevsky.  Anyone disagree?
> >
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