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Most influential writer of the last century?

MenInGreen said:
Look Bhaiyo - URDU and Eastern poets ko Koyee ghans naheen dalta - simple as that ! Thats why the likes of Keats sheats and even Hitler are more popular than Mirza Ghalib !
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that's one reason y they r not influential.
being g8 and being influential could be 2 different things.
 
and miq, it's nice to see the word "ghans". i think i have seen "ahal-ezubaan" ppl using it and reminds me of old style of urdu. these days everyone writes it as ghas.
 
z10 said:
but miggy, robo has read both urdu literature and english literature, surely his judgement counts?
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Naheen Bhaiya - I am not in anyway questioning Robo's word - he knows a lot more than I can ever hope to ( kinda reminds me of my grand father who used to run the AnjumaneTariqyay Urdu in Karachi after Baba-e-Urdu passed away !!)
 
MenInGreen said:
Naheen Bhaiya - I am not in anyway questioning Robo's word - he knows a lot more than I can ever hope to ( kinda reminds me of my grand father who used to run the AnjumaneTariqyay Urdu in Karachi after Baba-e-Urdu passed away !!)
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mig, can u disclose the name of ur grandfather?
 
z10 said:
but miggy, robo has read both urdu literature and english literature, surely his judgement counts?
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i dont claim to have a very authentic view on this topic as there r so many prejudices invloved. it's like deciding abt who is the best batsman or the best bowler.
to be accpeted or to have influence, one has to be acknowledged world-wide and i have seen that ppl from very poor countries have been awarded like in africa.
i remember once a friend of mine wanted to interview abdullah ussain who is the top most urdu novelist and he refused to give interview in urdu by saying that my words will not be read by majority if it is not in english. he translated his own books into english and oxford university press published them. this is the situation of our language now.
 
This thread turned into something more interesting than I imagined thanks to the rich input of Comma and Robosapien.
 
im curious that if we remove the constraints of time, who would make it.

lets take france:

Voltaire
Rousseau
M de Sade
Diderot
a philosopher by the name that starts with M.

Moliere
Flaubert
Zola
 
lets go to italy now:

petrarch(he gave us the sonnet form for all intents and purposes)
virgil
ovid
galileo
coperkus
dante

(add to them as i am forgetting some names)

add to thse names, robo,ab and we'll do different countries perhaps.
Mig would be happy, its all a ploy to get his 'iqbal/sir syed' in ;)
 
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comma said:
im curious that if we remove the constraints of time, who would make it.

lets take france:

Voltaire
Rousseau
M de Sade
Diderot
a philosopher by the name that starts with M.

Moliere
Flaubert
Zola
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Mattrie?

read on voltaire sometime ago. pretty interesting. he seemed to be everywhere in europe at that time.

M de Sade is the same man who was imprisoned for his erotic writings?
 
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comma said:
lets go to italy now:

petrarch(he gave us the sonnet form for all intents and purposes)
virgil
ovid
galileo
coperkus
dante

(add to them as i am forgetting some names)

add to thse names, robo,ab and we'll do different countries perhaps.
Mig would be happy, its all a ploy to get his 'iqbal/sir syed' in ;)
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well, once again bear my ignorance of me as i'll add some but havent read all of them.
some names from south america (1900s):

gorge borges (he has done everything in literature and kinda literary god of south american literature)
gabriel garcia marquez (novelist, story wirter)
pablo neruda (poet from chile)
octavio paz (mexican poet)
i believe all of them r nobel laureates as well.

irrespective of time, i would include following names (i think so far missing in the list):
homer
sophocles
shakepeare
khayyam
poe
backett
dostoefisky(i think i mispelled!)
whoever wrote arabian nights (i believe it's not one wirter, rather folk tales)

in urdu, MY shortlist of top authors would be:
poets: mir, ghalib, momin, souda, zouq, firaq, josh,iqbal, nm rashid, majeed amjad, faiz, nasir, munir niazi, faraz, joun, akhter hussain jaafrey,afzaal ahemd syed, irfan siddiqi..

short story writers: manto, ghulam abbas, intizar hussain, mansha yaad, nadeem, mufti, nayyer masood, hasan manzar, asad muhammad khan

novel: quratul-ain haider, abdullah hussain, tarar

humor, yousufi, ibne-insha, shafiq-ur-rehman and khalid akhter
 
few yrs back, there was an interesting survey done by Norwegian Nobel Institute. topic was to find out what work of literature is considered as the most important and ppl who voted were only established and famous wirters. i think comma and me have discussed this article when it was (web)published. here's a link to the article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/1972609.stm
 
yar haven't read these south american ones i must say, so cannot comment.

gorge borges (he has done everything in literature and kinda literary god of south american literature)
gabriel garcia marquez (novelist, story wirter)
pablo neruda (poet from chile)
octavio paz (mexican poet)
i believe all of them r nobel laureates as well.


However, the following:


homer - Agree
sophocles - Hell yes
shakepeare - Chicken thief
khayyam - wouldn't call him influential.
poe -certainly
beckett - perhaps
dostoefisky - not influential per se

id also add

maupassant - france. arguably the gretest short story writer, influential.
chekhov - russian playwright.
Aristophanes - humorous playwright
 
khayam got popular in the west when his work was translated and ppl were amazed to see his ideas abt time that were newly introduced to them in 1900s or so. i think he was a man ahead of his time.
becketts plays on the theme of "theatre of the absurd" got wide recognition. however i cant say if he was the first one to wirte like that.
abt dosoefisky, i'm not sure abt his influence but his name is considered in top 2-3 russian novelists.
abt south americans, i consider borges a multi-talented man and i think his influence will be there for sometime. marquez is very artisitic and made "magic realism" popular all around the world, although he wasnt the first to write in that style.
 
i have read short stories of maupassant and chekov(butperhaps his plays r more recognized).
 
robosapien said:
khayam got popular in the west when his work was translated and ppl were amazed to see his ideas abt time that were newly introduced to them in 1900s or so. i think he was a man ahead of his time.
becketts plays on the theme of "theatre of the absurd" got wide recognition. however i cant say if he was the first one to wirte like that.
abt dosoefisky, i'm not sure abt his influence but his name is considered in top 2-3 russian novelists.
abt south americans, i consider borges a multi-talented man and i think his influence will be there for sometime. marquez is very artisitic and made "magic realism" popular all around the world, although he wasnt the first to write in that style.
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khayyam indeed was a man ahead of his time. ofcourse sharing my first name helped.
rumi is another actually. one of the most read poets of the last century.

dostoevsky indeed is alongwith tolstoy(a little behind him) is Russia's greatest novelist. Ofcourse Pushkin deserves a mention and more a mention than he has gotten here.
 
robosapien said:
i have read short stories of maupassant and chekov(butperhaps his plays r more recognized).
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maupassant is it for short stories. he was brilliant. chekov's shorts were good but nothing compares to mau
 
comma said:
khayyam indeed was a man ahead of his time. ofcourse sharing my first name helped.
rumi is another actually. one of the most read poets of the last century.

dostoevsky indeed is alongwith tolstoy(a little behind him) is Russia's greatest novelist. Ofcourse Pushkin deserves a mention and more a mention than he has gotten here.
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certainly pushkin. i remember my seniors often discussed pushkin as the "bava adam" of russian literature.
 
maupassant had psychological problems and i think he actually lost it at the end. so there's a transition in his work whcih reflects his stages of mental status (i think that makes his work more interesting).

no one mentioned camus? i think he and sartre were good friends. read 3 novels of him. i think plague has a very wide canvass. other 2 were more in the stream of existenialism.
 
robosapien said:
maupassant had psychological problems and i think he actually lost it at the end. so there's a transition in his work whcih reflects his stages of mental status (i think that makes his work more interesting).

no one mentioned camus? i think he and sartre were good friends. read 3 novels of him. i think plague has a very wide canvass. other 2 were more in the stream of existenialism.
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if my memory serves me right, muapassant had syphillis, which was the reason for his whoosh...

Ab mentioned camus. i don't know, i never liked him much, same as Joyce.

yes dosto wrote Idiot.

pushkin, some say was greater than Shakespeare, Shaw one of them
 
Howd it take you 1.5 months to read War and Peace octo?
I tried reading it over a summer holiday and got halfway though it.

Since Mushroomed mentioned Friedman, I'll probably go and mention Keynes (Friedman was from Chicago, so that may influence his views, while Im more Keynesian.)

I'll say Keynesian policies were followed succesfully longer than Monetarist so surely Keynes ideas were more practical ;-)

Oh well, these days flaws have been found with both, although neither of them are followed properly. Keynesians vs Monetarists must be among the dumber arguments in academia. Been going on for about 40 years and theres no true definate conclusion. Something comes along and messes either theory up
 
Daoud said:
Howd it take you 1.5 months to read War and Peace octo?
I tried reading it over a summer holiday and got halfway though it.

Since Mushroomed mentioned Friedman, I'll probably go and mention Keynes (Friedman was from Chicago, so that may influence his views, while Im more Keynesian.)

I'll say Keynesian policies were followed succesfully longer than Monetarist so surely Keynes ideas were more practical ;-)

Oh well, these days flaws have been found with both, although neither of them are followed properly. Keynesians vs Monetarists must be among the dumber arguments in academia. Been going on for about 40 years and theres no true definate conclusion. Something comes along and messes either theory up
Click to expand...

took me roughly 2 weeks, you gys can't finish in a full summer? :((

lets discuss economics a bit, im curious
 
comma said:
took me roughly 2 weeks, you gys can't finish in a full summer? :((

lets discuss economics a bit, im curious
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Well it wasnt quite a whole summer. I went to the US for 3 weeks and hardly read it there but yeah, i would have spent a while trying and failed miserably

About econ, the two mainstream theories are Keynesian and Monetarists - the two gurus are Keynes and Friedman, as I mentioned before.

Keynesian policies were very popular following the Depression, until about 1973 when the first oil shock came in. It must be remembered that Keynes died in 1945, and a lot of the policies were based on the John Hicks IS/LM model and Bill Phillip's 'Phillips Curve'. Monetarism came into fashion then cause Friedman had been predicting that something like this would happen, and the traditional idea of a tradeoff between unemployment and inflation would break down. He felt that excess government spending would lead to this, and increase inflationary pressures. SO he and his followers (Lucas, Sargent and others) suggested the Central Bank targetting inflation through interest rates.

This did have a pretty negative effect in the UK and Australia in the 80s and early 90s as there still was an inverse relationship, and the Australian policies in particular were an example of what excessively high interest rates will do to a country.

In reality, a country does need to balance the use of the two schools. Look at Japan for example. When inflation hits zero and the country is in recession, what are you going to do? If you follow the Monetarist belief, you'd drop interest rates. But what if the rates are already virtually at 0. YOu cant have negative rates can you?

Sorry about the rambling. I dont know how much of this you already know and how much you understand
 
comma how many posts have u posted in this thread?

every second post is yours i suppose
 
comma said:
thank you for that observation. your point is?
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nothing rude, just goes to show how much interest you take in this topic
 
does victor hugo feature in the influentials?

btw, i had a question earlier, is m de sade the same person who was imprisoned for his erotic writings?
 
to be honest, i am not sure about his influence yar. one writer of that list that i haven't read.

sade was actually imprisoned for his erotic/sadistic/perverted acts (political issue behind it as well) but yes he wrote novels as well and eventually the term sadism was coined.

masoch is another and so masochism
 
i see. was gonna get les mirables(?) once but stopped, as they say, size is daunting.

history is full of perverts. :))
 
nafajafam said:
i see. was gonna get les mirables(?) once but stopped, as they say, size is daunting.

history is full of perverts. :))
Click to expand...


precisely what prevented me. though i have read a sort of a minibio on him.

history is about perverts

and got that M guy: Montesqieu!!
 
dante i remember from a class i took, what's so good about him? wasn't interested in humanities back then so didn't understand a word.
 
Daoud said:
Howd it take you 1.5 months to read War and Peace octo?
I tried reading it over a summer holiday and got halfway though it.

Since Mushroomed mentioned Friedman, I'll probably go and mention Keynes (Friedman was from Chicago, so that may influence his views, while Im more Keynesian.)

I'll say Keynesian policies were followed succesfully longer than Monetarist so surely Keynes ideas were more practical ;-)

Oh well, these days flaws have been found with both, although neither of them are followed properly. Keynesians vs Monetarists must be among the dumber arguments in academia. Been going on for about 40 years and theres no true definate conclusion. Something comes along and messes either theory up
Click to expand...

yaar i was jobless and also didnt go to univ that summer so there you go :D
 
Daoud said:
Well it wasnt quite a whole summer. I went to the US for 3 weeks and hardly read it there but yeah, i would have spent a while trying and failed miserably

About econ, the two mainstream theories are Keynesian and Monetarists - the two gurus are Keynes and Friedman, as I mentioned before.

Keynesian policies were very popular following the Depression, until about 1973 when the first oil shock came in. It must be remembered that Keynes died in 1945, and a lot of the policies were based on the John Hicks IS/LM model and Bill Phillip's 'Phillips Curve'. Monetarism came into fashion then cause Friedman had been predicting that something like this would happen, and the traditional idea of a tradeoff between unemployment and inflation would break down. He felt that excess government spending would lead to this, and increase inflationary pressures. SO he and his followers (Lucas, Sargent and others) suggested the Central Bank targetting inflation through interest rates.

This did have a pretty negative effect in the UK and Australia in the 80s and early 90s as there still was an inverse relationship, and the Australian policies in particular were an example of what excessively high interest rates will do to a country.

In reality, a country does need to balance the use of the two schools. Look at Japan for example. When inflation hits zero and the country is in recession, what are you going to do? If you follow the Monetarist belief, you'd drop interest rates. But what if the rates are already virtually at 0. YOu cant have negative rates can you?

Sorry about the rambling. I dont know how much of this you already know and how much you understand
Click to expand...

an interesting post indeed.
im naive re econ and have been explaiend before but why are high rates bad?
 
Dante's Inferno took some cheap shots at the Prophet Muhammad (SAW).

J.K. Rowling captured the children as her audience, parents had to comply, with the movies, games, and all other extras that came on with Harry Potter. Though I read somewhere that she stole some other person's work who was originally writing "Henry Porter"
 
cinderella said:
Dante's Inferno took some cheap shots at the Prophet Muhammad (SAW).

J.K. Rowling captured the children as her audience, parents had to comply, with the movies, games, and all other extras that came on with Harry Potter. Though I read somewhere that she stole some other person's work who was originally writing "Henry Porter"
Click to expand...

oh yes, dante definitely took a lot of shots at our Prophet.
 
What about Thomas Carlyle? Surely he would make an all-time influential list?
 
waisay, i think that as per definition of AB, most influential writers are either economists or religious/social scientists kinda ppl. literature generally doesnt have the ability to trickle down to the masses.
 
robosapien said:
waisay, i think that as per definition of AB, most influential writers are either economists or religious/social scientists kinda ppl. literature generally doesnt have the ability to trickle down to the masses.
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you mean Moulana tariq jamil/ Dr. zakir naik. ?
 
so my point is that marx and those guys of capitalist economy mentioned somewhere in this thread can be considered as the most influential ones.
once islamic renaissance will happen, we can include all those names mentioned by AB.
 
ppl like moulana tariq jamil certainly has a lot of influence, but it's mostly due to their speech and work.
 
robosapien said:
so my point is that marx and those guys of capitalist economy mentioned somewhere in this thread can be considered as the most influential ones.
once islamic renaissance will happen, we can include all those names mentioned by AB.
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i would disagree with that yar

and AB, i tell ya, if I had started this thread, it wouldn't have gotten this far
ha
 
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comma said:
an interesting post indeed.
im naive re econ and have been explaiend before but why are high rates bad?
Click to expand...
Well two main reasons

The first applies more in the west and places where theres high levels of debt. Every other person has a house so they're making mortgage payments, so if interest rates rise, then their mortage payments become more expensive. When they have to spend more on that, but theres no extra income, then they'll have to take that money away from something else. Thats usually their consumption. So if spending in the economy decreases, the whole economy will take a hit.
The second is linked, but to simplify it, the term that describes the consumer's desire to spend an extra dollar is the marginal propensity to consume. It is inversely related to saving. The higher the interest rates, the more likely someone is to save. The more likely they are to save, the less likely they are to spend. People stop buying goods & services, and people are bound to be laid off. This cycle continues

We have gone on a bit of a tangent so if you want we could create a new topic on this
 
we should start another thread on it.


Francis bacon's name should be mentioned here. man often credited in the past of being The Bard aka chicken thief
 
comma said:
Freud is probably one of the most ever.
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did u see that link i posted from bbc (poll arranged by nobel prize org)?
don quixote is chosen as the most important work (i guess from the modern era).

from literature(and all times) i think greeks lead all the way
 
robosapien said:
did u see that link i posted from bbc (poll arranged by nobel prize org)?
don quixote is chosen as the most important work (i guess from the modern era).

from literature(and all times) i think greeks lead all the way
Click to expand...
That was a few years old wasnt it - I remember reading it. I havent read don quixote though. In fact the closest thing that I'm familiar with is this silly cartoon called Don Coyote around 1990
 
robosapien said:
did u see that link i posted from bbc (poll arranged by nobel prize org)?
don quixote is chosen as the most important work (i guess from the modern era).

from literature(and all times) i think greeks lead all the way
Click to expand...


exactly i sugessted inone of my posts ealier in this thread
 
i did try reading quixote when i was young, didn't like it and chucked it like shabbir.
that aside, im biased but the article interestngly didnt mention joyce.
 
no didnt see greeks much in that link.

dostoevsky/tolstoy led the way as they should
and Kafka!! who can deny that man's genius
 
from that link:

Books by Dostoyevsky cropped up most often on the shortlist of the top 100 works, with four entries.

Shakespeare, Kafka and Tolstoy each had three works on the list, while Faulkner, Flaubert and Garcia Marquez, Homer, Thomas Mann and Virginia Woolf had two.
 
comma said:
no didnt see greeks much in that link.

dostoevsky/tolstoy led the way as they should
and Kafka!! who can deny that man's genius
Click to expand...

i think the poll was only for modern lit. homer and others were too old for although they included homer
 
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Daoud said:
That was a few years old wasnt it - I remember reading it. I havent read don quixote though. In fact the closest thing that I'm familiar with is this silly cartoon called Don Coyote around 1990
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yes, its couple of yrs old and i havent read don either. but i was happy to see marquez there
 
comma said:
i tried 100 yrs and after 2 pages, tossed it aside.
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u mean 100 yrs of solitude?
i didnt like much (or uderstand much) after reading him for the fisr time. but 2nd and 3rd time were different!

waisay if u read a new writer, it's better to start with short stories.
 
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