...In my defense, I tried using plenty of American authors...

But everyone associates me with Shakespeare, it got mentioned, a couple others mentioned, I responded, and here we are...again... :)

My guess is that Obi's incessant need exhaustively counter even the least incendiary points would explain every thread's eventual arrival at Shakespeare. When you talk in circles for so long, it's bound to come up.

This reeks of pseudo-intellectual self-coitus. How many times can the same point be made before the gods of the internet smite this accursed thread?

Don't know--

How many times can you post on a thread with a conversation going on just to piss on someone?

I mean, if this, if I am so far below your level...why stoop down, so low?

I'm not pissing on anyone. If you revisit the early hours of this thread, I was genuinely interested in dialoguing. But there is a difference between a conversation and a platform. I'd very much like to hear what your current argument is, not rebuffs to the numerous tangential diatribes which are admittedly being lobbed your way. So how about it? In all earnestness, I have truly lost sense of what exactly is at the heart of this thread, so I'm just looking for a succinct summation of your argument.

To be honest...

I need to get up for classes in 4 hours, and this whole thread has moved away from what I intended it to be to...yeah...

Pretty much retreaded arguments and the same points being brought up again and again about an author I think has been a hack since the 1980s and an author who has been dead for centuries...

I'm not sure what else I'm supposed to say at this point.

Feel free to respond at your leisure.

More precisely, having established that population growth, industry growth and technology has borne a far larger body of working writers and, thus, poor writers / that populist tastes have always, by and large, been directed at non-canonical works and writers / and that exceptions to the overarching pattern of renowned writers finding their greatest glory posthumously, I'm interested if/why you maintain that either the state of literature or the state of society's literary tastes are somehow an embarrassment or a regression from previous time periods?

Considering that Genocide was one of its first accomplishments I wouldnt really say the US has "fallen'

Remember, an author caving to fan pressure to bring back a character that he killed off...that's a good thing and to be applauded, because clearly he was wrong when he felt that he had no more stories to tell with him and was by no means cashing in. A filmmaker bringing a character back that had "literally ridden off into the sunset" in order to make another feature is to be derided because clearly he's just interested in dollar signs.

Coming back from a series ending death: that just shows what an awesome writer you are.
Coming back from a series ending walking away: HACK! HACK! GET AWAY AND STOP POLLUTING MY CULTURE YOU HACK!

@obi

I don't know what you would expect.

I don't think I've ever *ever* seen a post by you that didn't reference Shakespeare at least once, no matter how irrelevant. Why wouldn't we demand you defend his flaws when you start bashing popular authors of today?

The Gandalf actor shakes his spear uttering rehearsed lines.
Dan Brown movie. *cough* _ I JUST opened his popular book, a good read actually. And I have tried to get to page two of quite a few novels in the last years, but none seemed to catch any inkling of worthy attention... So I am surprised that this pulp, ...poor tree, "god bless it"... Is actually dignified of my interest, however ephemeral. ... It's an industry like any other. ... May I state that I'm more of a (PK) Dick fan !?! ;)P

Just the same old tired ahistorical history from Obi.

In case anyone missed my post that Obi ignored. A little after shakespears time (and probably at that time as well though i don't have the proof.) Bawdy books AKA literary porn AKA a slightly more adult version of Stephanie Meyer were some of the most popular books in book sharing circles in England and its coloniesin the late Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century .

Meanwhile, Bantam Books honored the "ignored" Maya Angelou for being the author longest on the New York Times Best Seller list in their publishing empire.

I don't want to play Captain Obvious here but it's clear that caving in to demands of a queen to get money is wholly different matter than caving in to demands of modern equivalent of a peasant rabble to get money. IT'S A FUCKING QUEEN, GODDAMNIT!

@Santa

Yes, I noticed that and wished that obi had commented on it.

@uly - Dr. Frankenstein didn't cave to the demands of the peasant rabble and look how that turned out. :-)

Yes, I know Frankenstein is fiction, but the point still remains. The peasant rabble can be just as deadly in many ways as a monarch or dictator.

Don't make an U-turn with my argument! A queen is a refined and delicate being, in no ways comparable to some lynching mob and their primitive tastes. If she likes fat and arrogant cowards, it's surely only high-brow fat and arrogant cowards, not someone as desolate as e.g. Eric Cartman.

@Santa

Absolutely. That's my point. There has always been low-rent populism in the literary world that gets forgotten decades after the craze ends, but so far all Obi will do is say that Shakespeare and Chaucer were popular with the masses, as if this explains away all evidence that runs contradictory to his argument.

Question from the video that opens this thread: I found off-hand in my brain FIVE countries that start with an U ... are there more ???

Yup, there are. I came up with 7, not saying it's the final number.

Depends on if it is United Kingdom or Great Britain...

United States
United Kingdom
Ukraine
Uruguay
Uzbekistan
Uganda
United Arab Emirates (UAE)

Those are the only ones I can think of.

Don't forget Uzupis, the micronation located within the capital of Lithuania!

"A dog has a right to be a dog"

Uzupis!? My god.... (but it's not a Soveriegn Nation...)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states

United Republic of Tanzania