American Profile, a supplement to our local newspaper, published a story that saluted 20 of America’s iconic authors and poets. I’m relieved to know that I’ve read half of these heroes of American literature.
I admit it. I never finished Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. (Plus I skipped parts.) And I signed up for a class on William Faulkner in college and promptly dropped it. I had trouble with the chapter-long sentences. I exaggerate, but not much. I should revisit Faulkner.
I’ve been a longtime fan of John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and, of course, Mark Twain. I’ve also read Harper Lee, Jack London, Robert Frost, J.D. Salinger and Edgar Allan Poe.
Here’s American Profile’s full list (in alphabetical order):
1. Willa Cather
2. James Fenimore Cooper
3. Emily Dickinson
4. Ralph Waldo Emerson
5. William Faulkner
6. F. Scott Fitzgerald
7. Robert Frost
8. Nathaniel Hawthorne
9. Ernest Hemingway
10. Washington Irving
11. Harper Lee
12. Jack London
13. Herman Melville
14. Margaret Mitchell
15. Edgar Allan Poe
16. J.D. Salinger
17. John Steinbeck
18. Henry David Thoreau
19. Mark Twain
20. Walt Whitman
Anyone not on the list that should be? Do these writers and their dusty old literature still matter to the modern scribbler?
Neil Sagebiel 