TS - Either/Or - Elliott Smith's vs. Soren Kierkegaard's?

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All right: Both mopey young guys, lotsa personal struggles & problems etc., both create quasi-existentialist/miserablist classics titled "Either/Or." The question, though - which reigns supreme?

I dunno, guys. I'll probably go with Smith, because afterwords he got worse, while Kierkegaard improved after his E/O. Smith's also a better guitar player, though I understand Kierkegaard did a pretty mean "Classical Gas" in his day.

Also philosophy is for losers.

― Zack Richardson (teenagequiet), Friday, 11 March 2005 06:21 (twenty years ago)

ugh...stayed up all night finishing mid-term philosophy paper... i'm going to go with Smith, too, but my decision might only be based on format. If Smith's Either/Or was stretched into a six hundred page, er, "fragment of life" it would be unbearably tedious. However, if we condensed Kierkegaard's into a twelve song album, it would undeniably be the greatest proto-existential album ever released.

― poortheatre (poortheatre), Friday, 11 March 2005 06:40 (twenty years ago)

Heh, the first time I heard Elliott Smith is when my college roommate Kerry bought Either/Or, and he'd done so strictly because it was a Kierkegaard allusion. Lots of nights spent pondering the existential implications of "Ballad of Big Nothing."

― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 11 March 2005 07:05 (twenty years ago)

Great idea. I'm going to go with Elliott Smith.
Up next: TS - Also Sprach Zarathustra - Strauss's or Nietzche's?

― jedidiah (jedidiah), Friday, 11 March 2005 15:54 (twenty years ago)

Nietzche pwns.

― Zack Richardson (teenagequiet), Friday, 11 March 2005 16:27 (twenty years ago)

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