father goose, another classic cary grant movie. though by the time he got around to this one his movies were more cary grant being, well cary grant, than plot lines.

and while we on the topic of grant...operation petticoat with tony curtis is another of my favs.

hands down, The Philadelphia Story. Cary Grant, Kate Hepburn and Jimmy Stewart, all just coming into their own.

I've been a big fan of McCarthy for a long time. Unfortunately i can't share your enthusiasm for The Road. Unlike his earlier works this one is long on mood, but never really manages to get beyond the thin veneer of fatalism.

I whole heartedly agree with your assessment of Blood Meridian, one of the most bone chilling descents into the violent heart of modern man ever written.

I'd have to select Fitzgerald's Gatsby as the best American novel, but would also rate Steinbecks Grapes of Wrath, Melville's Moby Dick, Hemingways The Sun also Rises, Pnychon's Gravity's Rainbow, Frank Norris' The Octopus, Capote's In Cold Blood, John Cheever's Falconer, and Dom deLillo's Underworld as worthy competition.

DeLillo is certainly, in my opinion, the finest still breathing american novelist.


With regard to poets, none surpass Whitman. Though i would highly recommend people revisit Ezra Pound. Putting his politics aside, few if any American writers have had as profound an influence on their contemporaries. Yeats, Eliot, Williams, Frost, Dolittle, Lawrence,(and the list goes on and on) all at one point in their lives openly admitted a debt to Pound and his unfailing ear.