I just can't help it. I prefer Coltrane to Parker. I know Parker is the original. But no matter how much I listen to Parker I still find him appealing more to my brain-alone than to my body as a whole. That is all that is to it.
As for you Carrol I also can't help it: I prefer the Odyssey to the Iliad. The Odyssey is much more fun and is very sly. I like the idea that Odysseus is a great and amusing unreliable narrator. I feel the sense of humor in the Odyssey and the Iliad takes itself as seriously as Achilles takes himself. In fact Achilles takes himself as seriously as some of the intellectuals on this list. I can read the Iliad and feel its power, but my temperment tends toward the Odyssey. So sue me.
And as non-sequitor, I also prefer Shelley to Wordsworth. And as Shelley might say, (I am channelling Shelley at just this moment), "There is no dictatorship of poetry, only one long written poem that branches in many dirrections, in variations great and small, all written in the one great human language since humans began to speak and create."
Ravi, you might like to know that Shelley also told me that he prefers Thelonius Monk over both Coltrane and Bird. Well, who am I to argue with taste?
Jerry
-- Jerry Monaco's Philosophy, Politics, Culture Weblog is Shandean Postscripts to Politics, Philosophy, and Culture http://monacojerry.livejournal.com/
His fiction, poetry, weblog is Hopeful Monsters: Fiction, Poetry, Memories http://www.livejournal.com/users/jerrymonaco/
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