The Greatest Writers...

It's presumptive of me to call them the greatest writers, but to me they are and very likely to many others too. Quite frankly they are my favourite writer but the greatest... oh well everybody has their list.

But mine has not changed for the last 40 years.

P G Wodehouse is classically the best of the humourous writers ever. His Jeeves is a synonym for butlers, Intelligent butlers. And there is Wooster and Lord Emsworth. Oh, the characters are finely etched and each one leaves behind an impression. Be it Psmith or  Cutbert in his short stories. I guffaw loudly every time I remember his characters and scenes. Sometimes it is just a smile - as I write this, I am smiling. He is the ultimate in humourous English writing. And he put it himself very devilishly in one of his short stories where a visiting Russian writer names another Russian author and P G Wodehouse as the best. 

Then there is Joseph Heller.

Catch 22 made little sense but then I had to read it many more times before I could get there. And I was hooked. He was quite a writer and while they were not Wodehousian, they were sprightly and full of vigour. 

Speaking of them, I cannot but mention that my writing has been influenced by many of the old writers. You cannot miss out Shakespeare and you cannot blank out the Bible. 

Among the classics I still love Agatha Christie as I do Sir Arthur Canon Doyle. In fact I remember that it was Sherlock Holmes and his "Valley of Fear" that set me love reading ass much as I did.

But there was Enid Blyton and her Famous Five that made me a  reader of all things. "Five Go To Demon's Rock," was a attractive name for a kid of 10 and I discovered the pleasure of reading through other books by her.

Of course I read the Hitchcockian Three Investigators with as much pleasure as I got out of Wilkie Collins "The Moonstone" or something like that.

My reading the Classics did not mean I missed out writers like Harold Robbins, Sydney Sheldon, Alistair Maclean, Desmond Bagley or Jefferey Archer... I read much more than can be recommended for adolescent boys. Robbins was hot but his "A Stone for Danny Fisher" was quite a read. Sidney Sheldon was also quite a story teller but his erotica was quite a pull too.

Of course, more recently I was enamored by writers like David Baldacci and the Dan Brown of "The Da Vinci Code" 

I am impressed with Indian Writers and there are writers like Shobha De and Chetan Bhagat whom I have read and liked. There was Ashok Banker too but I read his interview somewhere...

But the top two are still at the top....