Stevenson on Whitman, Nietzsche on Dante and The Family Circus

Flavorwire has a list of the 30 Harshest Author-on-Author Insults in History up today.

Two of the first three don’t feel like insults at all:

Wouldn’t you love to be called a “large shaggy dog just unchained scouring the beaches of the world and baying at the moon” by RLS?  I for sure would.

Nietzsche’s aphorism about Dante is hysterical even if you think he’s wrong. It’s also brilliant.  And now, aren’t you thinking about how awesome it would be to write poetry on tombs?  I for sure am.  With the transcendent, absurd, holy, trippy joy through which I assume hyenas experience the world?  Yes, please!

Speaking of Nietzsche, have you experienced Nietzsche Family Circus?  It takes a random Family Circus panel and pairs it with a random Nietzsche quote.   When you get results like the one below, you start to question if the whole thing isn’t rigged:

And then you keep clicking, only to watch Billy whispering into Jeffy’s ear that eventually the abyss will stare back into him (this while they’re watching their mother, Thel, playing with baby PJ) or telling Thel that God is dead. Dolly’s “why” for living is a pair of giant sunglasses.  Jeffy levels some pretty hard charges against the Keane regime, and then this, which cracks me up:

It turns out that Family Circus + Nietzsche = Calvin and Hobbes.