The Greatest Living Writer

No, not me. But thank you so much! I was actually referring to an article I read today about Philip Roth. I haven't read enough Roth to decide whether he is the greatest living writer, but imagine what it must be like to read that phrase in a sentence about yourself. How frightening. It sounds ominous to me. 'He's the greatest living writer I know. Therefore, we must find him and execute him immediately. I'm sorry, but for the good of his reputation, he must join the great static ranks of the dead wordsmiths who have come before him.'

Why must the living contend with the dead? Then again, why must the dead contend with the living? It's hardly a fair fight and quite frankly, it's undignified.

Besides, I think we all can agree that the greatest writer living or dead is L. Ron Hubbard. (Thought I was going to say Shakespeare, didn't you?) Okay, he wasn't the best on plot, dialogue, or even sentence structure, but Hubbard transcended the whole idea of authorship. He wrote himself into the stories and merged with his books in a way Hunter Thompson and Charlie Kaufman could never dream of even in their wildest flights of neuroses. He didn't turn himself into a character in one of his science fiction stories - he turned his whole life into a science fiction story and then the story came alive and consumed other people, whole buildings, even an entire industry. What other writers can say they so completely erased the borders between fantasy and reality?

Okay, sure, those people who wrote the Bible and the Koran. Credit where credit is due.