The long-delayed next selections at the All-Time American Writers Tournament will be announced tomorrow. As part of our ongoing exclusive coverage of the event, we’re giving here the four names which comprise the #4 “seeds.”
–Sylvia Plath
–William Faulkner
–John Steinbeck
–Ezra Pound
We may have the order wrong, but those are the names.
Is New Pop Lit about to make some literary history?
We had assumed someone else had written about this– maybe someone has– but it seems that in the answer to our Hemingway-Fitzgerald Trivia Question lies a different take on the relationship between those two giants of American letters. It’s important because the two talents stand today as THE largest personalities dominating the field of American letters– in particular, the novel and short story. Iconic figures.
The new take is this: Ernest Hemingway took some obvious shots at F. Scott Fitzgerald over the years. But what if Fitzgerald had been creating some snarky portrayals of Hemingway, in his fiction, first? This appears to be the case.
We’re readying an explanation of all this. . . .
You’re reading it here first.
The #2 seeded writers for the Tournament are:
A.) F. Scott Fitzgerald
B.) Ayn Rand
C.) Toni Morrison
D.) Jack Kerouac
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Explanations will be forthcoming at the chief Tournament blog here.
OUR OTHER TWO writers selected as top (#1) bracket seeds for the Tournament ARE:
C.) Herman Melville
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D.) Mark Twain
We’ll explain our choices tonight at New Pop Lit‘s “Fun Stuff” Interactive blog.
Let the catcalls begin!
Two American writers were so gigantic in standing and influence, even on the world stage, that they’re automatic #1 seeds. Both of them, in ways good or bad, helped define what it is to be American.
A.) Ernest Hemingway
B.) Walt Whitman
We’ll explain our choices this afternoon at New Pop Lit’s Interactive blog.
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We’re re-discussing the other two #1 seeds. May not announce those until the weekend. . . .
JUST IN CASE readers don’t “get” it:
The All-Time American Writers Tournament and events surrounding it will be fictional– though we do hope to mix in opinion and comments from actual readers and writers, as well as the occasional fictional depiction of a living literary personage. Our plan is also to use real persons as judges for the matches themselves. (Not too early to volunteer!)
The Tournament could be called an on-line novel, which mixes in some literary criticism and satire. Where exactly it’s going; how it will end? We have no idea.
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