I really tire of this “greatest novelist” or greatest anything talk: it is neither accurate – in that no such standard could ever really be created, because creating a standard for greatness would have to be created by someone greater (most likely) – and because it has all the worst effects:
it appears to make us feel that we need all aspire to such things, exactly the realization of the failed dream of productive, constructive competition that capitalism’s logic continues to furnish.
Moreover, it fails to acknowledge that any kind of greatness is the outcome of no eternal, objective judgment but largely suffused with irrefutable political alliances. That is, what becomes known and great is that which is acceptable within prevailing standards and political persuasions of the day: the result of that which is considered worth recognition based on the existent distribution of the sensible (what is shown and what is kept invisible).
It is again the logic of capitalism rearing its deceitfully distant head, convincing us of the need to become something we may not be, possibly losing ourselves and our aspirations in the process of being teased by the temptations of ‘Greatness.’
Bearer of Pity 