@SD - Shakespeare won't win. Don't worry.

@Draug - Care to hazard a guess as to who the victor will be?

This is an obiwan thread. Nobody wins.

President Eden will win

@SD - Not sure but I expect some political hack. I'd love to see Poe or Dickens or even Conan-Doyle, but I think it will be someone from the 20th century.

@Draug - I wouldn't mind poe, or other of your nominations actually. If the result is too poor I will lose faith in the rest of the community

Of those 4 for 64th spot, I say Virgil. Better than Old Wigglestick any day.

#WriteInPE

Laozi invented wisdom. Vote for laozi

Ovid: 3
Vergil: 1
Joyce: 2
Neal Stephenson: 0
President Eden: 696969

Joyce.

Ovid: 3
Vergil: 2
Joyce: 3
Neal Stephenson: 0
President Eden: 696969

currently PRESIDENT EDEN is set to be lynched.

Ovid: 3
Vergil: 3
Joyce: 3
Neal Stephenson: 0
President Eden: 696969

This is problematic.

Ovid: 3
Vergil: 3
Joyce: 3
Neal Stephenson: 0
President Eden: 696969696969696969696969696969696969696969696969696969696969696969696969696969696969696969696969696969

That's 69 69s.

Nice work!

Man...I have to say...

Neal Stephenson's really standing out from the pack, isn't he? :p

Stephenson's a guy I love and expect nobody else to. Vergil can actually beat Shakespeare so he needs to win this.

I'm not so sure about Virgil being able to beat Shakespeare. Much of the value of poetry comes from the way that aesthetic aspects of language are used, and for this reason poetry written in a different language tends to lose a lot of its value in translation (unless it's a really good translation, in which case the translator deserves just as much recognition as the original poet). I don't think I could fully enjoy Virgil's work without learning Latin, and I suspect that others may feel the same way.

Anyone picked will beat Shakespeare because he has the unfortunate coincidence of having me as a fan. ;)

All this talk of Stephenson makes me wonder what I was thinking of not to nominate Robert Louis.

Oh well. I think in the event of a tie, ghug should decide.

^I agree.

Damn. Yeah Robert Louis Stevenson should have been on the list.

True, I did not really enjoy Virgil until I read him in the original Latin. But the structures and rythms he is able to form throughout the entirety of his work is incredible. Some of the rhetorical figures he uses work so well, that he is painting with the language as much as telling a story. It truly depends, though if one is considering this as Virgil in Latin, or Virgil in English.

Maybe, but frankly, a lot of bigger names were left off...

Dante, for one...Milton...the Bronte Sisters (though no real shock there and, again, not a huge fan myself)...Toni Morrison, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright or any black writer (unless I'm missing someone?)...H.G. Wells, a bit shocking for our sci-fi-happy crowd...

Though honestly, the omission I'm most shocked at is Ernest Hemingway.

I'd have thought he'd be a lock to get in, not only one of the best-loved American authors, you could argue that he's one of if not the most well-known and respected American author on the world stage.

Twain and Poe are also pretty famous overseas, but Hemingway just crosses boundaries--he even cracked Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century list, something not many American writers did (and two others that did--Steinbeck and Fitzgerald--are also missing from the list.)

The same could be said for Victor Hugo. Hugo in French or Hugo in English.

And it'd be great to be able to read Virgil in the original Latin...

I think the only time I ever got a whole sentence of Latin "literature" was in "Arcadia" by Tom Stoppard (also not on the list), and that's only because he has a character start giving a speech from "Antony and Cleopatra" in Latin...

And I know A&T and know that line so I guessed at what it was and was right.

Because I am a nerd. Or another four-letter descriptor. :p

*A&C, not A&T (damn you, AT&T, lol.)

Yeah and we even had to write in Eden.