response 63 of 224:

Nov 3 19:37 UTC 2003

[ahem] I disagree.  It is an absolutely beautiful piece of writing.

response 65 of 224:

Nov 3 21:57 UTC 2003

  Almost certainly not correct, but knowing of his efforts to promote
  the turkey as the national bird in preference to the bald eagle, I'll
  guess Benjamin Franklin..

  For what it's worth, since moving to Alaska I've had plenty of 
  opportunities to observe bald eagles and while they are beautiful and
  majestic in appearance, they really are pretty ill-tempered and petulant
  birds.  

response 67 of 224:

Nov 3 22:41 UTC 2003

I'll guess Edward Everett Hale.

response 69 of 224:

Nov 3 23:24 UTC 2003

The sentences are actually kind of short, but I'll venture Faulkner.

response 71 of 224:

Nov 3 23:56 UTC 2003

Here's the next one:

"Frank has acknowledged the safe return of the galleys I had been sent 
here and has asked me to mention in my Preface -- and this I willingly 
do -- that I alone am responsible for any mistakes in my commentary.  
Insert before a professional.  A professional proofreader has carefully 
rechecked the printed text of the poem against the phototype of the 
manuscript, and has found a few trivial misprints I had missed; that 
has been all in the way of outside assistance."

response 73 of 224:

Nov 4 00:29 UTC 2003

  re #72:  how many late 1700s manuscripts do you think talk about
           "phototypes"? 

           but even apart from "phototypes" I'm just not seeing
           whatever clues led you to that conclusion..

response 75 of 224:

Nov 4 06:01 UTC 2003

Do #72 and #74 really refer to #71?  If, instead, they refer to the previous
quote, identifed as from Hawthorne's "The Custom House", then the "late 1700s"
isn't too far off.

response 77 of 224:

Nov 4 12:25 UTC 2003

Walt Whitman?

response 79 of 224:

Nov 4 19:52 UTC 2003

True story: I thought I might give "The Custom House" another read, so 
I took down my LoA _Complete Tales and Sketches_ and looked it up in 
the ToC.  Not there.  I slapped my forehead as I realized that "The 
Custom House" was the standalone introduction to _The House of the 
Seven Gables_.  So, I replaced my LoA _Complete Tales and Sketches_, 
took down my LoA _Complete Novels_, and turned to H7G.  *Still* not 
there.  Getting seriously alarmed now.  As a last resort, I turned to 
the beginning of _The Scarlet Letter_, thinking that surely can't be 
it, and there it was.  It was like arriving at a familiar intersection 
from an unfamiliar direction.  Anyway, some Hawthorne fan.

Not Walt Whitman.  Not Stephen King.  I'd've thought "Insert before a 
professional" gave it away.  Here's another excerpt from the same work:

"Let me state that without my notes [...]'s text simply has no human 
reality at all since the human reality of such a poem as his (being too 
skittish and reticent for an autobiographical work), with the omission 
of many pithy lines carelessly rejected by him, has to depend entirely 
on the reality of its author and his surroundings, attachments and so 
forth, a reality that only my notes can provide.  To this statement my 
dear poet would probably not have ascribed, but, for better or worse, 
it is the commentator who has the last word."

response 81 of 224:

Nov 5 00:16 UTC 2003

More of same book:

"What if we awake one day, all of us, and find ourselves utterly unable 
to read?  I wish you to gasp not only at what you read but at the 
miracle of its being readable (so I used to tell my students).  
Although I am capable, through long dabbling in blue magic, of 
imitating any prose in the world (but singularly enough not verse -- I 
am a miserable rhymester), I do not consider myself a true artist, save 
in one matter: I can do what only a true artist can do -- pounce upon 
the forgotten butterfly of revelation, wean myself abruptly from the 
habit of things, see the web of the world, and the warp and the weft of 
that web.  Solemnly I weighed in my hand what I was carrying under my 
left armpit, and for a moment I found myself enriched with an 
indescribable amazement as if informed that fireflies were making 
decodable signals on behalf of stranded spirits, or that a bat was 
writing a legible tale of torture in the bruise and branded sky."

response 83 of 224:

Nov 5 01:47 UTC 2003

Pynchon

response 85 of 224:

Nov 5 03:30 UTC 2003

Well damn. YOu have stumped me. I dont even have a good guess. So I 
will take a bad guess. = Virginia Wolfe

response 87 of 224:

Nov 5 05:12 UTC 2003

H. L. Mencken