Gilgamesh Quotes
V. Bérard attributed the [Greece and Israel] links mainly to the role of the Phoenicians. P. Jensen explained matters through the diffusion of the Gilgamesh Epic. ...but their one-sidedness and exaggeration brought them, and indeed the problem itself, into disrepute among critical scholars. The history of the problem has been ably documented by W. Baumgartner...
Cyrus H. Gordon
How come you write the way you do?” an apprentice writer in my Johns Hopkins workshop once disingenuously asked Donald Barthelme, who was visiting. Without missing a beat, Donald replied, "Because Samuel Beckett was already writing the way he does.”
Asked another, likewise disingenuosly, "How can we become better writers than we are?”
"For starters," DB advised, "read through the whole history of philosophy, from the pre-Socratics up through last semester. That might help.”
"But Coach Barth has already advised us to read all of literature, from Gilgamesh up through last semester....”
"That, too,” Donald affirmed, and turned on that shrewd Amish-farmer-from-West-Eleventh-Street twinkle of his. "You're probably wasting time on things like eating and sleeping. Cease that, and read all of philosophy and all of literature. Also art. Plus politics and a few other things. The history of everything.
Donald Barthelme
