THE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL WRITER

Open a book—any book. In it you’ll find words, of course, but look closely and you’ll also find art, crafted, in detail, by a writer proud enough to sign his or her name to the work. In a book, or in any piece of writing, words are joined together at the whim of the author. Sentences are created, paragraphs and stanzas formatted, chapters built, and stories told. In a book or a poem, a play or a short story, everything is there, on the page, for a reason: To show, to tell, to convey a message. Most works of writing, quite simply, are meant for reading. The great ones, however, by the most talented and ingenious authors, are for study. In such works—The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway, Moby Dick, by Herman Melville, Hamlet, by William Shakespeare—it’s the art one finds within that sets them apart from the rest.