Sentence:  I would not want to <WSD>be</WSD> one of those writers who begin each morning by exclaiming , `` O Gogol , O Chekhov , O Thackeray and Dickens , what would you have made of a bomb shelter ornamented with four plaster-of-Paris ducks , a birdbath , and three composition gnomes with long beards and red mobcaps '' ? 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  have the quality of being; (copula, used with an adjective or a predicate noun)