I think three writers are in pole position: Dante Alighieri, Tolkien and Poe

How could you have forgotten Cervantes? He and Rabelais spearheaded the novel.

Manunkind wrote: How could you have forgotten Cervantes? He and Rabelais spearheaded the novel.

BTW I was sure I would have forgotten someone!!: that's the proof! (there will be many others, I presume!!): anyway you can always post the name of the forgotten writer!!!

Manunkind wrote: Well, you can't have included everyone. Some other suggestions of mine would be Borges, Beckett and Nabokov.

I could have mentioned also Giovanni Verga, Ludovico Ariosto, Joseph Conrad and Samuel Coleridge!

hehehe.. what about T.S. Eliot? Reaaaaally prog!!

Since he's not here, I'll vote for James Joyce.

This is an interesting concept, but I'm not sure of the reason behind most of these choices.

I would lump most of these: Shakespeare, Thomas Mann, Poe, Joyce, Melville, and others in with classical composers, not prog rock bands.

I would think that writers that compare to prog bands would be their contemporaries, like Calvino, Vonnegut, Moorcock, Ellison, Pynchon, Marquez, and others as well as some you've mentioned like Borges.

Phil wrote: Neat idea! I don't think of say, Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf or James Joyce as being proggish. I'd say Tolkein. I'd suggest Hermann Hesse as a possible addition to the list......

Thanks Phil!

I voted for Poe.

I recommend Brazilian writer Machado de Assis, a really proto-progger... many of his books are in English and other languages. Susan Sonntag and Kurt Vonnegut are (were) Machado's fans.

No George Orwell or Ayn Rand?

Tolkien

and where is Bukowski?

Franz Kafka is my choice (even when Poe and Dovtojevski are very close), I would add Jorge Luis Borges in the list.

About Kafka, I always believed The Trial by Kafka has been one main inspiration for The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, both Mr K and Rael are the main characters of the plot and neither of them knows how or why they became part of it, both are betrayed by their friends and/or family, both try desperately to leave and keep getting deeper into and endless labyrinth with no escape.

Iván

 I voted for F.M.  Dostoewski.Kafka is very close.Thomas Mann can be considered as well.

Borges , Hesse could be added, and even Garcia Marquez .

YOU FORGOT ISAAC ASSIMOV!!!!

from your list , I chose Proust

Poetic, epic, conceptual, with his mind in a secondary world, a master in major scale sagas as well as shorter stories, looking for inspiration in old sources, but using modern story telling techniques, popular among young as well as old...

That can only be one man... J.R.R. Tolkien.

 By the way,  William Blake is also missing.

R.Darkmoon wrote: There's no Garcia Marquez, Huxley, Asimov or even Jose Agustin (Mexican author search for his book "De Perfil") or Verne... Well.. Kafka for me. Folowed by Poe, Aligheri and Dostoievsky

Hard to find Latiin American writters on this forums as it's hard to find British or USA writters on Latin forums, but agree with you García Marquez, Julio Cortazar, Jose Agustín (Even when more historic, maybe closer to Genesis ) or the Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa (La Guerra del Fin del Mundo is an epic) are missing,

All the Real Wonderful Latin American Movement is very Proggy, because it blends  reality with fantasy as Prog blends influences.

Iván

ivan_2068 wrote: R.Darkmoon wrote: There's no Garcia Marquez, Huxley, Asimov or even Jose Agustin (Mexican author search for his book "De Perfil") or Verne... Well.. Kafka for me. Folowed by Poe, Aligheri and Dostoievsky Hard to find Latiin American writters on this forums as it's hard to find British or USA writters on Latin forums, but agree with you García Marquez, Julio Cortazar, Jose Agustín (Even when more historic, maybe closer to Genesis ) or the Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa (La Guerra del Fin del Mundo is an epic) are missing, All the Real Wonderful Latin American Movement is very Proggy, because it blends  reality with fantasy as Prog blends influences. Iván

La Guerra del Fin del Mundo (The war at the end of the world) should be a tremendous prog-epic. Can you imagine a song talking about some people in the end of the 19th century waiting the return of a king disappeared in the 16th century. And it was real, not a fiction! Poor peasants in Brazil's innerland (circa 1895) defied the Republic and declared Dom Sebastian, a Portuguese king who disappeared in a battle in 1578 as their king. They fought a war and died believing in it (and other things por supuesto)!

Atkingani wrote: La Guerra del Fin del Mundo (The war at the end of the world) should be a tremendous prog-epic. Can you imagine a song talking about some people in the end of the 19th century waiting the return of a king disappeared in the 16th century. And it was real, not a fiction! Poor peasants in Brazil's innerland (circa 1895) defied the Republic and declared Dom Sebastian, a Portuguese king who disappeared in a battle in 1578 as their king. They fought a war and died believing in it (and other things por supuesto)!

But it would take almost as many CD's as The Ring of the Nibelungen, because the book has almost 1,000 pages of incredible images and tradition, I only could read it when I had hepatitis A (Back in the early 90's), because I had to stay in bed for a month, and it took me several days, but it is so wonderful book that I didn't even saw TV just to finish it.

Iván

(Hi. First post.)

TOLKIEN!!!!!!