Greatest Dead Novelist

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

Like Bach, or Mozart or Schubert? Naw, I think the rules for novelists are different. Proust has one novel (in 7 books that spread over 3000 pages!!!!), and there's no doubt that he's in contention. The only analogous figures I can think of in music are Nick Drake (nominee---greatest singer/songwriter), his only hits posthumous, his master takes barely filling two cds; and Robert Johnson (in contention for all-time greatest Bluesician)---ditto. With Schubert, there's the last three piano sonatas, the last string quartets, the quintet in C, the Song Cycles, the great C major Symphony---the guy only made it as far as 31 years and there's six hours of incomparable swan-song. So, while we've got a few examples of great novelists with short resumes---"A Confederacy of Dunces", "To Kill a Mockingbird", Borges "Fictions" in a single volume, the bar is set a bit higher in music.
 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Dave Monroe <monropolitan at yahoo.com>
> It'd be perhaps a clearer cut question in music.  Can
> a one-, or even three-, hit wonder a contender for
> greatest composer, performer, whatever, of all time? 
> Perhaps even despite having delivered the, or even
> among the, greatest pieces/performaces ever?  Or, for
> thet matter, does a brilliant piece or three outshine
> one's mediocrities?  Joyce ironically perhaps played
> it sfaest of all ...
> 
> --- MalignD at aol.com wrote:
> > 
> > Whereas Spillane, Asimov, Alger ...
> 
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