Literary March Madness - Round 2, Part 2

Sorry about the delay between posts - my evenings have been occupied lately by watching the White Sox continue to lose game after game. So on to a more happy sport! The next set of matches contains a couple of fierce underdogs: #9 Harper Lee and #15 Flannery O'Connor (A Good Man Is Hard To Find). Southern authors have been doing very well so far in this tournament. O'Connor, in my opinion, scored a huge upset against Balzac in the first round. But maybe I should stop being surprised. On the other side of the bracket, fellow Southerner William Faulkner seems to be coasting to a win over Hermann Hesse. O'Connor once said that "anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic." Maybe my northern sensibilities just aren't tuned in to the proper Southern palate - but who knows, the Kentucky Derby is coming up.

A slew of new Round One winners to announce: Virginia Woolf barely squeaks by #15 E.M. Forster 4-3, while Charles Dickens more easily handled Stella Gibbons. And please stop letting matches end in ties! Evelyn Waugh (Brideshead Revisited) tied L. Frank Baum, and J.K. Rowling tied Philip Pullman. D'oh! I'll be making an executive decision later today (call it a "Biden") - but if you feel strongly one way or another, now is your chance to let me know! Also, #15 Sherman Alexie is on the verge of upsetting #2 Henry James with one more day left of voting. As Jesse pointed out, this may be because Alexie was and always has been a loyal Seattle SuperSonics fan. Who did James root for? The Boston Americans?

Update: I have been in heaven this afternoon. After a trip downtown for breakfast and returning library books, I have been able to watch both the White Sox (finally! a win!) and the Trail Blazers (down 69-71) at the same time! In other news, four more polls have closed, with all four matches being won by the higher seeded writer. #1 Melville defeated Raymond Carver, #8 Zora Neale Hurston edged #9 Kurt Vonnegut 3-2, Goethe defeated Lampedusa 3-1, and will advance to face Kafka in the next round, who beat Tony Kushner 4-2.

Keep voting!

Tolstoy v. Lee

Flaubert v. Mann

O'Connor v. Nabokov

Dostoyevsky v. Borges