Thursday, August 31, 2017

The Greatest Author Ever Challenge: Henry David Thoreau








Henry David Thoreau is the current reigning champion in our weekly elimination tournament to determine the greatest writer ever. For those of you new to this elimination tournament what we have done is we compiled a database of all notable authors in history, and each week we pit the current champ against a random challenger until there are no challengers left. At that point one lone author will stand above the rest, the greatest writer in all history! Will Thoreau stand the long test, or will he be supplanted by Tolstoy, Austen, Shakespeare, Bronte, or any of the many other authors whose names have not yet been drawn?

To get you up to date, Thoreau took his crown three weeks ago against four week champ Colette. Holding off challenges from Mario Puzo and Audrey Niffenegger over the past two weeks, Thoreau is raring to go again. Let's see who, randomly drawn, is here to challenge him today.

And the author is:

Oh. This is awkward. 

It's me. 

Well, it was bound to happen sometime. So let us carry on with the impartiality and fair and deep scrutiny that we here at clerkmanifesto have come to be known for, somewhere, hopefully.

Mr. Thoreau, as champion, will go first. And our randomly chosen writing selection comes from Walden:

These statistics, however accidental and therefore uninstructive they may appear, as they have a certain completeness, have a certain value also. Nothing was given me of which I have not rendered some account. It appears from the above estimate, that my food alone cost me in money about twenty-seven cents a week.

Oh, and that is nice indeed. Very nice indeed! It is no mystery how Mr. Thoreau has held the hot seat for three weeks. Our challenger has quite the task before him. And Mr. Calypso's prose is randomly drawn from his still current blog The Clerkmanifesto:
 



To get you up to date, Thoreau took his crown three weeks ago against four week champ Collette. Holding off challenges from Mario Puzo and Audrey Niffenegger over the past two weeks, Thoreau is raring to go again. Let's see who, randomly drawn, is here to challenge him today.

And the author is:

Oh. This is awkward. 

It's me. 


That is indeed a fresh piece of writing! I can still smell the ink and it's pretty sweet. But is it enough to challenge Henry David Thoreau? This could go down to the wire. We've got an exciting one today, ladies and gentlemen. And what's this? The judges think it's a close one too. Things are getting pretty animated over in the judging box. Wait here, I'll be right back.




We've got some problems. We haven't planned for this. We don't know what to do. Hang on one more moment.


Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a tie! It's a tie! Chaos has broken out here at clerkmanifesto. Not only is the decision contentious, but we have no provision for ties. Some Thoreau supporters are staging a sit-in and a cabal of miffed Colette supporters are descending on the judges. It's total madness here. I'm now being torn from my keyb







2 comments:

  1. Gracious! Are you back yet? Are you okay? I've been in the Thoreau camp and they're all covered in gore. This is horrible!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well, I'm okay. My lawyer says not to say too much yet. Still a lot being sorted out. I will say this about the Thoreau camp: If they just defended themselves a little they probably wouldn't have been hurt so bad. It's like their passivity enraged the guards!

    ReplyDelete

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