>I think that Emerson and Whitman (another writer I
>can't stand) are almost pathologically obsessed with
>themselves.
Emerson, weird as he was, had a pretty compelling prose style. And Whitman, imperial egomaniac that he was, wrote some beautiful poetry.
>Off the top of my head the only American writers I ca
>think of as having much to say in the "profundity"
>department are Edgar Allan Poe, Faulkner, Ezra Pound
>and Flannery O'Conner, and one of those was a wanna-be Frenchman.
Don't forget Melville!
Doug