Favourite writers

One of my favourite writers is Mark Twain.  His writing is really smart!  He came from Missouri, nicknamed the Show Me state, and he exemplified its famous skepticism.  His writing dealt with slavery during the post-Civil War era when most Americans were trying to forget it.  Some people associate his writing with nostalgia for the past, but his true sensibility was very much anti-nostalgic and anti-romantic.

Another writer I like is Charles Dickens.  I've read most of his novels by now.  Victorian London was the world's first super-city, and he depicts it so vividly that it's like a character in itself, like Balzac's Paris.  I especially appreciate this now that I've lived in London and come to know and love it better.

One of my favourite poets is New England's Robert Frost.  His poems are sometimes misunderstood in terms of aphorisms: "Mending Wall" contains the line "Good fences make good neighbors," but the poem's actually a criticism of walls and fences! (Its first line is "Something there is that doesn't love a wall.") "Death of a Hired Hand" has the line "Home is where they have to take you in," but some people miss its ironic tone.

I also like poets like William Butler Yeats and Henry Longfellow and Walt Whitman.  And one of my favourite producers of witticisms is Samuel Johnson.  I think he was the one who first said, "Puns are the lowest form of humour."