response 1 of 22:

Oct 4 22:18 UTC 1992

I'm a big fan of Michael Delizia.  I know he's an electronic more
than a hardcopy writer, but I view that as equally legit.  Whether
it's a poem, a musical critique, a travel note, or a slice of West
Bloomfield life, md's writing is almost always urbane, imaginative,
witty, and/or well-informed, as appropriate.  T'would be no loss
to the New Yorker to replace one of their regular stable of
contributors (Calvin Trillin, for instance) by Mr. D.

response 3 of 22:

Oct 5 15:11 UTC 1992

[md bows deeply in remmers's direction]

response 5 of 22:

Oct 27 23:05 UTC 1992

Okay, you asked for it.


FICTION: 

The young Washington Irving - Knickerbocker's History of New York 
in particular.  You can see in it the roots of American humor: the 
relentless teasing, the demented consistency, the solemn lunacy, 
the nothing-is-sacred outrageousness.  Everyone from Mark Twain to 
Doug Kenney and Henry Beard learned from him.  

Nathaniel Hawthorne - Especially his short fiction.  I seem to have 
been reading him all my life.  

Mark Twain - I count most of his nonfiction as fiction.  

Edith Wharton - She did everything well.  She could be evocative, 
sly, ironic, heartbreaking, creepy, hilarious, you name it.  Read 
her stories Xingu, Summer, and Roman Fever, and her novel The Age 
of Innocence.

Jorge Luis Borges - Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius.  Pierre Menard, 
Author of the Quixote.  Funes the Memorious.  The Lottery in 
Babylon.  The Secret Miracle.  Borges is like Hawthorne to me.  I 
can't stop rereading him.  He seems less nourishing than Hawthorne, 
more like mind-candy.  If you haven't sampled him yet and want to, 
pick up the New Directions anthology called Labyrinths.  

Vladimir Nabokov - I can't think of another writer who worked 
harder and took more pains to give his readers pleasure.  Three of 
his "American" novels, Lolita, Pnin, and Pale Fire, have been 
judged his greatest work.  His autobiography, Speak, Memory, might 
be the most beautiful book ever written.  

J. D. Salinger - There is a nasty streak of self-righteous smugness 
in him that becomes more apparent on rereading, but he's still, 
well, J. D. Salinger.

John Updike - One of the great short-story writers of all time.  
Some of his novels are first rate, some aren't.  His Henry Bech 
series is great.  

Stephen King - Hey, after all that I'm entitled.  I think he's 
gotten carried away with his own wonderfulness lately.  He rambles 
and drones on messily.  His editor is probably afraid of him.



POETRY:

Geoffrey Chaucer - The Middle English course I took in college was 
far and away my happiest educational experience.

William Shakespeare - Obviously.

Alexander Pope - Bons mots up the wazoo.  The most readable 
"serious" poet.  

William Wordsworth - Instant kindred spirit.  I went "Yes, yes, 
yes" all the way through his stuff when I first read it.  When you 
love a writer that much, you start feeling affection even for the 
crap he wrote, and Wordsworth wrote volumes of crap.  I learned 
later on that this marked me as a typical "Wordsworthian." 

George Noel Gordon, Lord Byron - At his best when he was being 
satirical.  Dazzling.  The "Byronic" stuff is not his best, imho.  

Keats 'n' Shelley - The Debussy 'n' Ravel of English Romantic 
verse, not really all that similar but lumped together by 
tradition.  Keats is the better poet (as Mt. Everest is taller than 
Mt. Makalu), more human and certainly funnier when he wants to be; 
Shelley is more serious, more demanding, more political.  

Matthew Arnold - Of all the countless poets who were influenced and 
inspired by Wordsworth, he was the best.

Walt Whitman - If he's not one of your favorites, too, then there 
must be something wrong with you.  

Robert Frost - Another one I'm always reading.  I never get tired 
of him.

Philip Larkin - Gloomy and depressing, but too good to resist.  

Richard Wilbur - My affection for him comes and goes.  He's written 
some beautiful things, but he has so many mannerisms and 
affectations you just want to throttle him sometimes.  

Robert Bly - See Richard Wilbur.



NONFICTION:

R. W. Emerson - New takes on old problems.  Wisdom, encouragement, 
subtlety.  Read his essay on compensation, for example.  

H. D. Thoreau - Not as original as his most fanatical admirers will 
try and tell you he is, but *such* a good writer he makes every 
idea seem as if you're reading it for the first time.  Plus the 
first Green, plus the father of nonviolent resistence, plus if he 
hadn't lived where would the Sierra Club get quotes for their 
calendars?  

William James - A good writer, very insightful, and such a 
*likeable* guy.  Re Matthew Arnold's comment that those looking for 
"the interesting" won't find it in America, James wrote, "What 
makes Matt so many enemies is the entirely needless priggishness of 
his tone, and his deplorable lapses in judgment.  Imagine setting 
up 'interesting' as an absolute category!" 

Henry James - Yep, him.  I don't like his novels and stories much, 
but he was our best literary critic.  Read his long essay on 
Hawthorne, for example.

John Updike - Yep, him.  He's a better critic than he is a 
novelist, maybe our best living literary critic.  Read *his* long 
essay on Hawthorne, for example.  


This is a snapshot.  If I'd taken the snapshot twenty years ago, 
you might've seen J. R. R. Tolkien and Joyce Carol Oates on the 
fiction list, W. H. Auden and Wallace Stevens on the poetry list, 
and so on.  There are others who could be on the list but aren't, 
either because I don't know any of their works beyond the two or 
three I love (Max Beerbohm, Anne Beattie), or because they didn't 
produce enough to provoke more than a distinct but local affection 
in me (C. S. Calverly), or because I forgot them and won't remember 
them until after I've enter this response.  

response 7 of 22:

Oct 28 16:50 UTC 1992

Matthew Arnold:  "And so I say that, in America, he who craves for
the *interesting* in civilization, he who requires from what surrounds
him satisfaction for his sense of beaity, his sense of elevation, will
feel the sky over his head to be of brass and iron."

William James:  "The trouble about Matthew which sets so many against
him is the entirely needless priggishness of his tone.  His ultimate
heads of classification, too, are lamentable.  Think of 'interesting'
used as an absolute term!"

response 9 of 22:

Nov 1 11:11 UTC 1992

See now isn't this a much more entertaining item?
I bet Michael has one helluva bookcase!

response 11 of 22:

Nov 2 20:53 UTC 1992

Btw, I note that all of the writers on my "non-fiction" list    
are Harvard men.  There is a *great* temptation to mention
remmers here, but one restrains one's self.  

response 13 of 22:

Nov 5 14:43 UTC 1992

I once knew a person who would read the lines "Whatever it is that
doesn't love a wall / Is having fun with Harvey's Amoco" and say
something like, "You've been influenced by Robert Frost, I see."

response 15 of 22:

Nov 21 18:16 UTC 1994

ANYONE OUT THERE LOVE CHARLES BUKOWSKI AND HIS
SKEWERED ROMAINTIC VISIONS?
BY FAR THE MOST ENTERTAINING NOVEL I'VE EVER READ IS HIS "POST OFFICE".
AND HIS POEM ON THE BURNING DOWN OF THW L.A PUBLIC LIBRARY COULD HAVE
B
BEEN WRITTEN FOR ME.
BETWEEN HIM ee cummins, HEMMINGWAY,SALLINGER,MARTIN AMIS,
CAMUS AND SARTRE THERE IS NO REASON TO CONTINUE WRITING SUCH IS
THE BREADTH OF THEIR RISK-TAKING AND SUBJECT MATTER.
READ THESE TO SEE YOUR OWN LIFE EXPERIENCES REFLECTED OFF THE PAGE.

response 17 of 22:

May 27 18:50 UTC 1997

Give me Vonnegut, McCaffrey, and Tolkien, I'll be happy forever.

response 19 of 22:

Jun 13 14:49 UTC 1997

I did enjoy the Dune movie.....but no, I don't think that they have <or
can> come out with a movie that will do Dune any justice.

I think the reason I like McCaffrey is because it is pointless <don't
ask>

Douglas Adams is just helarious <sp>, I've yet to read "Long Dark Tea
Time of the Soul" but I've heard that it is very good.

What sort of stuff does Goodkind write?

response 21 of 22:

Jun 19 21:54 UTC 1997

"Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul" is a lot of fun. :)