>>>>>> There is little disagreement that he was the greatest writer in history, as you say.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>Disagree. He is the "greatest" only to those who believe he is the greatest. Who has sampled all the writers that ever were? And how will they be compared across styles and times and other metrics? "The greatest" - a pointless attribution other than as a purely personal, culturally and traditionally subjective opinion.
>>>
>>>I agree with the disagreement. For certain definitions of "greatest" this may be true - for instance, as in "greatest among the authors known to those who were educated in an english-speaking country".
>>
>>You would actually need to extend this list of qualification much further because can we compare poets with play-writes with story-tellers? Can we compare a writer from 1000 years ago to today? Can we compare an American writer with an English one? You end up with such a long list of qualifiers that the title becomes worthless.
>
>No, we sure can't.
>
>So I will revise my statement -- Graham Greene was the greatest writer writing in English in the 20th century.
>
>Just so I don't sound hopelessly parochial, Roberto Bolano may be regarded 100 years from now as the writer of his time. My suspicion is he will. I had the same feeling about the rock band X -- they were radically different.


If I say that Ted Williams was the last man to hit 400, I don't have to say "in the major leagues" since any listener to whom that statement is meaningful would assume that. High school ballplayers hit 400 all the time.
If the listeners don't know that my statement applied only to batters facing major league pitching and defense, then my statement is meaningless to them in any case, so what they get from it is irrelevant.

So if I say that Shakespeare was the greatest writer in our history and the listener knows that I'm from New Jersey and I'm speaking English in 2013, it's reasonable for me to assume the listener will conclude what I mean by "our history" and it's also reasonable for me to assume that if the listener doesn't understand that, then my statement is meaningless anyway so again it's irrelevant.











And, by the way, he was.