andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> wrote:
"Great art is historical and local but rare.
"Dante and Shakespeare divide the world between them - there is no third." -- TS Eliot
You might add a few names to the list (we'd both put Homer on, and the Greek tragedians) and we might dispute some (I don't get your thing for Pound, and Ovid's a first class second rater) but I can't see that great works are multiplying at such a madcap rate such that reading them is a bore. Nor has the vast increase in writing, to my mind, increased the quality of what is written.
Wouldst that Milton were living at this hour! Is he? In whom? I like Thomas Pynchon, but really!"
Andie: what do Shakespeare, Dante, Milton, Ben Jonson, George Eliot, JS Mill, TS Eliot and James Joyce all have in common? They all read at least two classical languages and two or three continental ones (not sure about Shakespeare). What's common to most American writers today? They dont read any other language. Could be something in that!
BobW