Write-Fidelity All-Stars

"This rule is pretty much meant to disqualify Noam Chomskey & Jacques Derrida, though I doubt the average reader of this blog are big fans of either of them."

Not that I'm a big fan of Chomsky, but it was pretty funny when I cited him in a Global Trends paper, which came back with a comment from Dr. Mask expressing surprise at a Covenant student citing Chomsky.

In no particular order:

David Brooks (no one said we can't overlap)
Nick Hornby (British novelist)
Neal Stephenson (he can't finish a novel to save his life, but he's good anyway)
Andrew Sullivan (blogger and journalist)

Honorable mentions disqualified due to death:
Neil Postman (died last week, sadly enough)
Frank Herbert

jon krakauer, nick hornby, dave barry, mark kurlansky, and terry pratchett, in no meaningful order.

Thomas Sowell. P.J. O'Rourke. William Carlos Williams. Joe Queenan. Booker T. Washington.

I'd add Twain, but he has a documentary bout him. Washington probably does, too.

Oh yeah, Chomsky is a pig.

What a lovely idea. Here we go, my desert island top five writers currently dwelling among us:

5. Calvin Trillian. He doesn't write much anymore, but his New Journalism pieces were some of the first bits of writing to show me that factual doesn't mean dull, that everyday human life is worthy of chronicling.
4. Garrison Keillor. Mostly known for his radio show, but his novels are somehow both funny and calming, and he wrote the best advice column of all time at Salon, called "Mr. Blue." A true Lutheran: practical, stoic, waxes poetic about the small means of grace.
3. David Brooks. Manages the impressive feat of contextualizing political rhetoric within a larger societal context. Blends journalism and sociology, also no mean achievement. And his "Organization Kid" article in the Atlantic Monthly a few years back pinpoints exactly how my generation thinks about success and happiness. (We think about it very badly.)
2. Anthony Lane. The New Yorker's young film critic is scathingly funny, obnoxiously well-read, and knows his way around a dictionary. But all these fineries make his sincere love for certain movies all the more clear. His writing is a perfect combination of lightly mocking the wretched, and completely embracing that which he finds beautiful. Certain Moscow, Idaho residents should be forced to read every single page of his essay collection, "Nobody's Perfect." This light-footed writer could teach them gravitas.
1. Michael Chabon. If there is a Renaissance Man writer in this generation, it's Chabon, who has written three novels for adults, one for kids, dozens of short stories, the screenplay for the Spider-Man sequel, a few simple, heartbreaking essays -- and just finished editing a collection of 1950's-style adventure and horror stories. His short story, "The God of Dark Laughter," is the most dread-inspiring thing I've ever read, and his novel, "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay," the most purely entertaining. And he can make me cry with a single sentence, as with this closing line from an essay about his former father-in-law:

"And I try to forget that for a little while I formed a layer, however thin, in the deep stratigraphy of his family; so that some later explorer, rummaging through the drawers of his big old desk, might brush aside a score card from the 1967 PGA Northwest Open signed by Arnold Palmer, or an old pencil-style typewriter eraser, with a stiff brush on one end, stamped QUEEN CITY RIBBON CO., and turn up a faded photograph of me, in my sober blue suit, flower in my lapel, looking as if I knew what I was doing."

I'm appalled that no one has mentioned JD Salinger yet. Of course, no one can be totally sure that he hasn't died yet.

Peter Leithart is most certainly a candidate due to all he's written on literature (viz, entire books on ancient lit, Dante, Shakespeare). His title at NSA is Senior Fellow of Theology and Literature, after all. Plus, if you combine some of his shorter writings (in eg, American Vision, Contra Mundum, Biblical Horizons, Pro Ecclesia, First Things, Touchstone Magazine, etc) with the fact that his Cambridge doctoral thesis director was Milbank (author of Theology and Social Theory), and it's quite clear that he's written on social theory. Now of course, I can't pick him because I know him, but that doesn't disqualify him for everyone else. It's okay if you wanna damn the Man, but don't keep a Brotha down.

Well then, I'll just have to take my books and go home. But rule 1 pretty much disqualified him anyway, as it does any author I would have picked. There's just a certain satisfying finality about dead authors. I can cross them off my list without worrying that they'll write something else. Still, I would not have picked a theologian. If I could ignore the rule, the list would consist of: Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Kipling, Dickens, Melville, Hawthorne, and Harper Lee.

Jon, you're right about Peter Leithart. It was meant to be more of a joke to Uncle Josh 'bout a discussion he and I had 'bout Leithart once, not a perfect example of the rule, which obviously doesn't disqualify him now.

Garrison Keillor of A Prarie Home Companion, The Writer's Almanac, Many Articles. Search Amazon all products for Garrison Keillor and buy something, you won't be disappointed. If you are you're a communist.

Kurt Vonnegut, nuff said. Actually check this site out also it seems to have more info than the offical KV site.

Ray Bradbury and here

Hunter S. Thompson and here

If Albert Camus were alive, he'd be on here also. Also here.

Also Allen Ginsberg and here

And also anyone who writes books with Fabio on the cover. Please also check this one out. I implore you. You won't be disappointed!