This is great!  One thing: Neil Gaiman is on there twice, so if he was combined into one, would he be even bigger?  Just wondering.

Thanks for the very fun topic and chance to share.

PS:  Not up for the carving job.  So sorry.

I realize this is  matter of personal opinion but I find the absence of Ernest Hemmingway and Jack Kerouac rather striking especially considering the fact that Stephanie Meyer is included.  

Definitely personal taste, Bill, but you should have called in, then “your” authors would be up there too!

d’oh!

I misspelled Neil Gaiman’s name one of the times I marked it down, which is why he’s on there twice. Yeah, it would make his name bigger. I’ll try to re-do the Name Cloud soon!

Touché Michael.

Thanks Ann and Michael for all you do for books and authors and for this question. Frankly I was surprised and happy to see Khalil Gibran on the Mt R cloud, and know it is from one of Pamela’s facebook friends, but I am interested in anyone who is interested in Gibran. He along with Herman Hesse were/ are favorites of mine and two author who made me want to read more and to write. So if anyone out there in BoNS airwaves wants to check in w/ me about Gibran (or Hesse) I’d love to exchange notes? I am at tnevins@randomhouse.com, or tomnevs@aol.com. THANKS for the time and the space to ask my question. Tom 

I used to teach English composition at Florida State, and one of the tasks we sometimes took on was to ask our students to write a “reading history” to get a sense of their interests. The unspoken rule among the t.a.’s was, “If you ask the students to list their favorite authors, and one of them writes ‘William Shakespeare,’ they’re lying.” Very few people read him for pleasure (the ones who do become English grad students), and a “personal Mount Rushmore” ought to feel more like a sofa than an academy.
I mention this because I’ve been obsessed for a long time with the behavior of readers and the distinction between “high” and “low” culture. Ever since the Modern Library came out with their Greatest Novels of The Twentieth Century, and put Joyce’s “Ulysses” at number one, I cried foul and got interested. The writers that MOST readers actually love are not the highbrow experimentalists like Joyce and Faulkner; they’re the authors who give us actual people and gripping stories and (if we’re lucky) gorgeous sentences: Harper Lee, A. Conan Doyle, Margaret Mitchell and the like. As a penultimate note, this was a quest for authors, not single books, and so Harper Lee should be disqualified. (“Mockingbird” is her only book, so celebrate the book on your BOOK Mt. Rushmore, but as an author, Harper Lee is kind of a frustration to readers who wanted more). I’m also skeptical of anyone who mentions Louisa May Alcott or Tolkien, because both of them essentially wrote one book. It just took them several books to do it. (That is, a fan of the Lord of the Rings likes all three of the volumes as a single unit, and often takes The Hobbit as part of the family; it’s not a vote for the author so much as the world. Ditto for Alcott, whose frequent mention here is probably based only on “Little Women,” but even if you liked “Little Men,” it’s mostly because it allowed you to visit the world of “Little Women” again.)I mention all this because it looks like, if we remove Shakespeare’s name (per the rule in my earlier paragraph), eliminate the essentially one-great-book Alcott and account for the miscalculation you just mentioned in your earlier post here, the “Books on the Nightstand” four-person Mount Rushmore is actually Ann Patchett, Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Neil Gaiman. And this thrills me greatly, because it’s not only balanced by gender, but because all of these authors have not only been bestsellers, but have had scholarly articles written about them in literary journals. They’ve hit the high-and-lowbrown sweet spot, and I like to think that’s what monuments are for. 

Two other notes:

1.) Ten or fifteen years ago, surely Stephen King would have been mentioned enough to merit a larger name. He is, after all, the first author to outsell Dickens. (I think Rowling has since beaten him, but I might be wrong; she’s only written seven or eight books, and King has a bazillion.) I’ve been a little surprised to see how quickly Stephen King’s cultural prominence has fallen off after 25 years on top. I think he needs to write a zombie novel!

2.) Michael, I’m the guy who called in and urged you to read “Pride and Prejudice.” I asked you to read JUST TEN PAGES and see if you liked it. It couldn’t take you more than ten minutes. So how’s that going? Have you at least tried?

Wow! Fascinating analysis, thank you.
I do think it’s important to reiterate that we did not put any parameters on an individual’s decision about what constituted their own personal Mt. Rushmore. For instance, I decided for myself that authors on my Mt. Rushmore should all be deceased (because I think it would be weird to see your own face on such a monument…). That was a whim that greatly determined the makeup of my own literary Mt. Rushmore.

Ann
Books on the Nightstand: illuminating conversation about books and reading http://www.booksonthenightstand.com

Wordboydave
 I would humbly like to cry foul on someone who cries foul for picking Shakespeare as a favorite author! I have been hooked since Mrs. Olsen’s 9th grade class. Later, as a parent we regular took our children to Shakespeare festivals, from elaborately done Ashland, OR to the free summer performances on San Juan Island. I am pleased to say that 2/3 of my offspring absolutely loved the experience and have been Shakespeare readers and viewers since. My oldest would – I am quite sure – put him on his own Mount Rushmore. Shakespeare IS full of real people and gripping stories. Reading and watching the plays has brought me endless hours of enjoyment. I think there are a lot of us out there, judging from the many festivals around the country (planet).Jana replying to wordboydave – but for technical reasons, I couldn’t get it in the reply spot
I would humbly like to cry foul on someone who cries foul for picking Shakespeare as a favorite author! I have been hooked since Mrs. Olsen’s 9th grade class. Later, as a parent we regular took our children to Shakespeare festivals, from elaborately done Ashland, OR to the free summer performances on San Juan Island. I am pleased to say that 2/3 of my offspring absolutely loved the experience and have been Shakespeare readers and viewers since. My oldest would – I am quite sure – put him on his own Mount Rushmore. Shakespeare IS full of real people and gripping stories. Reading and watching the plays has brought me endless hours of enjoyment. I think there are a lot of us out there, judging from the many festivals around the country (planet).
Jana replying to wordboydave – but for technical reasons, I couldn’t get it in the reply spot

Sorry for the double message I just posted.  I think my computer is ill.  It can’t be operator error!  
If Ann or Michael have the power to delete the double, please feel free to clean it up.

done!

I don’t see Robert a. Heinlein in the cloud, even though at least two people mentioned him. I was one of them.

He’s there Jdrew. Yellow, right in the middle. I know from experience how hard it is to find a name in that cloud!

Dave-

Hanging my head in shame, I have not tried P&P yet, but the book is still in my TBR pile, very near the top. I have not forgotten your challenge!

Each author on my Mt. Rushmore is there on the basis of a single book that I re-read regularly:
Jane Austen, for Pride and Prejudice
St. John, for the Gospel of John
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, for Aurora Leigh
 
and, finally, in recognition of the fact that the real Mt. Rushmore includes Theodore Roosevelt, who doesn’t really belong with the others but is there because he was popular at the time, my fourth choice:
Erin Morgenstern, for Night Circus
 
What fun!
 
 
 
 

Catching up on old podcasts and loving this — thanks!  You are my most consistent adult ‘conversation’ as I begin my new stay-at-home-mom challenge.  My literary Mount Rushmore: Jane Austen, Emily Bronte (even though she only wrote one novel, she is of mythic status in my book), Charles Dickens, and JK Rowling — strange, yes, that she is the only living author, and I thought about going the JRR Tolkien route, but he just doesn’t touch me in the same way. And his stories are, for me, one of those rare cases in which I like the movies better  – I think because the movies made room for women and girls to identify and, to me, his writing seemed to keep them at arm’s length.  Also, all English, I realize, but…  Wharton or Steinbeck or Harper Lee might be a fifth if there’s still room on the mountain.

Aw, thanks, Paula! We do aim for adult conversation, though sometimes I worry we fall a bit short