PERSONALITIES OF THEIR CENTURY


Woody Allen- neither Doestoevsky, Checkov , nor Bergmann yet all Woody.


Hannah Arendt- Germany's Hannah obsessed in life and death with her


Heidegger's Being of beings.


W.H. Auden- the prototype love subject and object our poet's time.


Djuna Barnes- a class act by herself for herself.


Walter Benjamin- The Benjamin in a time of Jacob's trouble.


Leonard Bernstein- A rarely composed Jeremiah with his own jeremiad.


Lenny Bruce- America's first sociologist and black comedy criminologist.


Wm. Buckley- Thought of himself as America's Burke.


Truman Capote- in cold confinement.


Al Capp- the unthinking man's antinellectual.


Castro-  America's first and last Lenin.


Paul Celan-  Memory's brother.


Arthur Chester- invented,lived, loved, and tormented camp.


Churchill- thought himself savoir of Western Civilization.


Hart Crane- America's first underground poet.


TS Eliot- The critic's poet and poet's critic.


Ronald Firbank- the first in the camp.


Freud- makes everyone annoyed.


Frost- America's archetypal poet.


Garbo- Everyone and no one's lover.


Judy Garland- foster mother of forever children.


Stefan George- A wounded aesthetic in a bloody time.


Ginsberg- A post Blakean Beat, a fakir of words.


Paul Goodman- had a literary soul wanting to make a name for himself.


Billy Graham- Protestantism's Paul.


Graham Greene-  A catholic agnostic.


Laurence Harvey-  knew it was all an act.


Heidegger- Philosophy's gravedigger.


Pee Wee Herman- a forgotten avatar of sorts.


Hellman-  All in a name.

 
Hitler- Destroyer of Western Civilization.


Heine, Germany's second son after Goethe.


Henry James- America's King English.


Kafka- a prophet of the world's psychosis.


Kierkegaard- Changed philosophy into religion.


Tony Kushner-  last party to the Cold War.


Lermontov-  The lyrical soul of Russia.


Primo Levi-  The Jewish hemlock taken but not worn out.


C.S. Lewis- A saint of a Christian imagination.


Norman Mailer-  New York's eternal hipster.


Thomas Mann- Germany's man .


The Marx Brothers- class acts.


Golda Meir- Israel's grandmother.


Henry Miller- carved his world in a brown paper bag.


Montale- A modernist after Dante.


Nabokov- America's enfant terrible.


Neruda- A song bird of the America's.


BZ Niditch-  wanted to be a Karl Krauss, without a press of his own


Nin- a novel in herself


O'Connor- Southern ,Gothic and cross.


Orwell- England's great political writer and prophet.


Pascal- Wagered on God.


Pasolini- Anarchism's poet.


Plath- frightened herself into poetry.


Poe- America's Goth poet.


Pope John XX111- A St. Franciscan of his century.


Ezra Pound- A false prophet who thought of himself as the poet.


Johnny Ray- Cry baby for us all.


Rilke- Germany's first and the world's first international poet.


Roosevelt- thought of himself as savior of America.


Bertrand Russell- Usurping judge and jury of his time.


Nelly Sachs- Memory's sister.


Sartre-  At his life's ending searched for a more personal existentialism.


Edith Sitwell-  The mother of all  future language poets.


Susan Sontag-  A metaphoric writer.


Stalin- Ivan the Terrible.


Karl Sterne-  A Jewish psyche with a Catholic mind.


Ungaretti-  Hermetic who saw where fascism lead.


John Updike-Orally sexed, runs like a rabbit about his religious characters.


Gore Vidal- thought of himself as novel,critic and atheist, humanist.


Orson Welles- showed us a Citizen Cain.


H.G. Wells- the prophet of the new age.


Nathaniel West- Thought of himself as an American Dostoyevsky.


Walt Whitman- America's great democratic poet.


George Will-  With God's help could be a Chesterton.


Tennessee Williams- America's poetic and theatrical drama in himself.


William Carlos Williams- the first small press poet.