While American's consider themselves on top of the heap on every social level, some of us recognize that we ain't all that, much less a bag of chips on the side. Every great author in the HISTORY category'll admit to a foreign inspiration or two. Even in the industry you ain't a poet until you've made it through Rimbaud, or a playwright until after being exposed to Sartre-- a bohemian poet/playwright that is. Avoiding these masters'll put you deeper in the American mire than the New York Times has already sunk you.

"Guillaume Guillaume how I envy your fame your accomplish-/ ment for American letters / your Zone with its long crazy line of bullshit about death / come out of the grave and talk thru the door of my mind"

Allen Ginsberg, At Appollinaire's Grave