Which Dead Writer Would You Most Like To Meet?

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Peace.

Thank you, williamhenry, for that information.

There is a quote of Lord Byron's which this war in Iraq reminds me of:

"This is the patent age of new inventions
For killing bodies, and for saving souls
All propagated with the best intentions."

Byron is still the writer I would most like to meet...

Mario Puzo.

Mario Puzo wasn't a war correspondent, you effete, shallow snot....just kidding. I wanted to see how it felt to be as deranged as williamhenry.

Excuse me?

Read the previous page of the discussion, Jespah. Then you'll get the joke.

Oh. Well, whatever.

Sheesh, I was going to take Petronius and John D. MacDonald and still will, if I may, and if they're willing to go to more than one party. But at the top of my list (of this moment) are Emerson and Calvino.

Do you really think that the fastidious Calvino or the prim Emerson would be seen dead or alive with a vulgarian who writes "Sheesh?"

Oh, I imagine they'll get over it, Lar. You won't, but they will.

Jespah - Mario Puzo is a very interesting choice. A talented teller of stories.

Me, I wonder about Moses. I know he didn't write those commandments, but I'd love to have met him on the way down from the mountain to hear what he was saying about carrying those stone tablets.

I have to admit that I would love to talk with Billy S... Avonian Willy... the Bard. I would discuss all the theories of his identity and ask about the Dark Lady.

I would also like to sit with George Eliot and two women very much influenced by her: Louisa May Alcott and Simone de Beauvoir. Once suggested the three of them be taught together as a class to a Harvard prof. Would be very interesting.

I would also like to talk to Dhoudha, a woman from 9th C France who wrote one of those Mirrors for Princes that I discussed on another thread. I would like to discuss Medieval women and marriage, intrigues in the courts of Charlemagne and his sons and so much more with her.

In those same lines, I would love to meet Marie de France to learn who she really was and what inspired her.

Following that meeting, I would like to talk to the chroniclers who put pen to parchment and left the early traces of Arthur.

I seriously doubt that either Alcott or Beauvoir was "very much influenced" by George Eliot. In Beauvoir's case I am virtually certain there was no such influence. Alcott, living in the same time period, may have read her, but I suspect she was far more influenced by her friends the Transcendentalists.

I seriously doubt that either Alcott or Beauvoir was "very much influenced" by George Eliot. In Beauvoir's case I am virtually certain there was no such influence. Alcott, living in the same time period, may have read her, but I suspect she was far more influenced by her friends the Transcendentalists.

Totally disregarding that both the Transcendentalists and de Beauvoir were highly influenced by German philosophy as was Eliot or that both Alcott and de Beauvoir had written about the place Eliot held in minds and hearts, we continue to trundle on, passing judgment on things of which we know nothing.

"German philosophy" is certainly a vague term...it can cover anything from Strauss (whom Eliot translated) to Nietzsche (who did influence the Existentalialists.) The German philosopher who most influenced Beauvior was Heidegger, whose work she passed on to Sartre, thus making Sartre's BEING AND NOTHINGNESS philosophically possible. Surely you are not claiming that the Transcendentalists and Beauvoir were influenced by the SAME German philosophers? If so, you are guilty of the ignorance you accuse me of.

I think you should seek professional help.

That's typical, Plainoldme--you can't deal with the points I've raised, so you take a cheap shot at me personally.

My favorite Beauvoir book is THE ETHICS OF AMBIGUITY a book that you, Plainoldme, could profit from, since you seem to have zero sense of ethics.

pretentious.