Friday, June 15, 2007

This Week in Reading June 17 - 23

The youngest author born this week surely sold more copies than any other writer born this week and the next youngest after that one put out works that sold in the millions, too. But several of the other authors who share the week had a much larger impact upon the world beyond reading, from theatre, film, and popular music to philosophy, religion and sociological research that affected many millions. Some the events affected many millions, too.

This Week's Question: One of this week's authors would have been a voluminous blogger of his day if the Internet had existed. He opined among his countless quotes "One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." Who is it and what "message" is he associated with?


Answer to Last Week's Question: Sorry, this trick question tricked even me. None of last week's authors said it. I thought it was argued that Ben Jonson actually wrote it but it was penned by the little known Robert Greene, who wrote in 1592 "For there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with a tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as is the best of you; and being an absolute Johannes fac totum is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country." Jonson, on the other hand, eulogized Shakepeare with "He was not of an age but for all time." I used Bartlett's Familiar Quotations to find these out.

No comments:

Search the Book Talk archives!