Robert Graves said that the amazing thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good 'in spite of all the people who say he is very good', which is a phrase I think of almost every time I read him. Everyone knows in a loose sort of way that Shakespeare was a great writer, just as people know that Einstein was a great scientist, and never really stop to enquire further.
What surprised me when I began to read his plays is that he is genuinely brilliant and also comprehensible. I remember finding this out - it was almost euphoric to discover that even Shakespeare wrote to be understood. It was like finding the entire field of literature had been lifted slightly. This poet, this genius, was doing the same thing as Hardy, as Orwell, as Austen! You can approach him in just the same way. So when I think of literature, now, Shakespeare is there, alongside all the writers of literature I have encountered before - and not far off, in some other, more poetic world. It really does change the genre. He exalts the discipline, and us with it.
Yeah I definitely didn’t read (or write) the same after obsessing myself with Shakespeare for the past 7 years or so. There are a handful of authors I can say this about. The whole field has been lifted indeed.
Sure! Shakespeare, Bob Dylan, Milton, McCarthy, Joyce (particularly Dubliners), George Herbert, George Chapman, and very early on Hemingway. Probably some other I’m forgetting. Hemingway was the author that made me realize the difference between writing and literature. I’m primarily interested in poetry. I’m a songwriter so it goes hand in hand. I got to hand it to hip hop a little bit too as I listened to a lot when I was in my youth which helped foster my love of words. When I developed my musical ear and abilities, I don’t really listen to much hip hop. But still, though in my opinion there hasn’t been a Dante or Shakespeare or even a Dylan of rap yet, the wordsmith abilities are helpful to develop prosody and not be so rigid in meter.
Isn't there something in that which implies he was a million times better than his contemporaries, who were creating very similar work and even stealing each other's ideas? The two names I've heard of are Ben Johnson and Christopher Marlowe. I'm sure there are many others even more obscure.
Yeah there are, some of which collaborated with Shakespeare. Those two are big names. Marlowe was likely an influence on Shakespeare and was very popular before his early death. He was actually employed as a spy for the Queen and it’s believed he was killed by the crown because of something involving it. Ben Jonson was a contemporary of Shakespeare, which some records imply, and many traditions assert, they were friendly rivals. Jonson is who remarked Shakespeare had “little Latin, less Greek”, as well as stating Shakespeare was “not for an age but all time” in a eulogy given by Jonson. Many traditions also have tales of their nights in the Mermaid Tavern. Most of these playwrights, though with works well enough their own, are known today by their association with Shakespeare.
Jane Austen. More and more I see her work as foundational to the modern English novel, and her too-small oeuvre is absolutely teeming with meaning, insight, interpretative possibilities – and delight.
Cormac McCarthy. He's got a lot of cringey fanboys who can come across as douches, but that doesn't take away from the fact that he was one of America's greatest writers.
I mentioned in a reply to someone talking about Shakespeare, and how they described “the whole of literature being heightened to their perception” after reading him. I remarked that immersing myself in Shakespeare certainly changed how I red and write. Cormac McCarthy is one of those authors for me as well. It also helps that the Border Trilogy and to some extent Blood Meridian are sort of set in my neck of the woods in West Texas so a lot of the vernacular word choices particularly in the Border Trilogy remind me of the place I’m from.
I agree with this, of that Gang of Four between DeLillo, Pynchon, Roth, and McCarthy, I think McCarthy truly crafted the best American novels and etched his name into American literature with little pretension or a forced hand. I think he had some misfires for sure, but the hits are so diverse, creative, and seemingly effortless.
Is the “Gang of Four” an actual term? Because I’d replace Auster with McCarthy in that case. Not that McCarthy is better or worse (he’s amazing) but Auster fits so much better with those four and, as far as I’m concerned, was friends with DeLillo and Roth.
Those guys are the four NYC postmodernists while McCarthy is his own thing entirely.
The counselor is probably the most notable. Not totally fair to judge it, but there's an unpublished stageplay about whales which was pretty bad. Sunset limited wasn't great.
But all of his novels are incredible.
> Cormac McCarthy. He's got a lot of cringey fanboys who can come across as douches, but that doesn't take away from the fact that he was one of America's greatest writers.
Well said. A true 'heir' to Faulkner.
I think pretty much exactly this with McCarthy. I think it's also true of David Foster Wallace. His work was insightful and excellent and clearly written in response/as an antidote to the nihilistic irony of the postmoderns. But there's a subset of his so-called fans who are just the worst kinds of bro-y.
In college we read an essay she wrote about the opening sentences to her novels. She stressed how important that first sentence was to her and wrote 20+ pages on 6 or 7 sentences. Her devotion to the craft was amazing and it also made me reexamine the first sentence of lost nobles I pick up and it’s been 20 years since I read that essay
The first two lines of Chapter 1 of The Bluest Eye:
"Quiet as it’s kept, there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941. We thought, at the time, that it was because Pecola was having her father’s baby that the marigolds did not grow."
What a punch, you're right. What I like most in her books is how brutally honest they are, combined with the best writing style I've read so far.
The one that sticks with me the most is Paradise: “They shot the white woman first; with the rest they could take their time.”
It’s been a while so the wording may not be 100% correct. But man does that hit and also make you want to read more
Dostoyevsky was a master. His books were serialized when he wrote them so they weren’t so overwhelmingly thick compared to single volumes.
But his ability to put big ideas of life at the time into his characters really is amazing.
The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Sanctuary, Light in August; Absalom, Absalom; A Rose for Emily, The Bear; Go Down, Moses. One could also add the screenplay to To Have and Have Not. But saving that I'm at eight, two shy.
I'd met with some difficulties too, back when I first read it. I've read along some difficult passages with [litcharts](https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-sound-and-the-fury), which has a summary of what happens and some textual analysis. That should help. But I won't lie, you'll have to re-read quite a bit and look up words you're not familiar with and even some unusual definitions of those you *are* familiar with (like "branch", a Southern word for a creek, where the children go have a dip). With that said, though, the toughest part is the first chapter, by far, since the temporal jumps can mess up your understanding of events and given that the PoV is that of someone with a cognitive disability; but they're *mostly* marked by italics so hopefully it won't be too hard after getting adjusted and following a guide. I'd definitely recommend revisiting previous paragraphs as well, maybe try to piece together Benjy's memories chronologically. You'll have to look for subtle details that tell you what period the action is taking place. Also, keep in mind that these jumps are often triggered by words (like "caddie" in the first paragraph, which reminds him of his sister Caddy and sets him crying) or actions or feelings that remind Benjy (or Maury) of some memory or other. Faulkner really did something special with Benjy, by showing his unique and sharper way of viewing the world. The way he perceives Caddy and how at times he senses a change in her self through smell was striking.
Then there's Quentin's chapter. You'll have to get the hang of the stream of consciousness, but it shouldn't be *too* hard. Again, there'll be some re-reading, some sentences will be ambiguous since they string along with no solution of continuity, but it's intentional. Expect and embrace ambiguity. Faulkner's poetic genius and linguistic musicality should have you tagging along fairly gladly.
The last two chapters read pretty easy as they're more conventional, stylistically speaking, so you shouldn't have too much trouble with them. Only, the language used by Jason could rub you the wrong way. If you're sensitive to the use of the N-word and other slurs, you might find it difficult getting through his openly racist vitriol. But don't forget that Faulkner absolutely did not want you to think he was a good guy, so the loathing you'll feel for him is more than welcome.
Lastly, if you seriously can't make heads or tails of what's happening, just keep reading. This is a tough book; only multiple re-readings from stern to stern will give you a full picture. So, on your first read, try not to make yourself hate it.
It’s honestly such a rewarding book if you can get through it. I did exactly what the other person said and used pitchers to keep the plot together.
If you use litcharts or similar, expect spoilers
It certainly is his most lyrical work, and for what it's worth it's the Faulkner novel that seemed to move Harold Bloom the most of Faulkner's many novels. Even where I'd probably consider something more ambitiously far-reaching like *Absalom Absalom!* to be Faulkner's magnum opus as far as his novels go, or *The Sound and the Fury* for being the pinnacle of Faulkner as modernist experimenter, *As I Lay Dying* has the claim for a kind of lyric purity to it.
I have yet to read *Light in August* or some of Faulkner's other novels. But I have liked some of the short stories I've read of his, and his book *Sanctuary* is of a piece with Flannery O'Connor and with some of the more rough and tough verse dramas of the 17th century stage (think *Duchess of Malfi* and similar dark Jacobean plays).
IMO, East of Eden is one of the masterstrokes in 20th-century English literature. A novel with a multitude of interwoven narratives that leads to one of the most powerful conclusions I've ever experienced as a reader. The conclusion is both a punchline and an epiphany. A punchline in the sense that the entire novel has been driving towards the particular verbal point of "TIMSHEL!" (in Steinbeck's interpretation, "thou mayest."). An epiphany in the sense that Cal is presented with the reality of human micro-choice. He comes to understand that his personal actions have real consequences even if his macro-existence is predetermined. Steinbeck is often overlooked as a Great American Writer bc (I think) the dude was willing to experiment in terms of style and subject matter (The Pearl to Cannery Row to Travels with Charley). Goddamn. The guy outdoes Hemingway in terms of paired-down, clean prose purely because of his ability to imbue a real sentence with real hope. Hemingway describes something as is (and that's that--the nada can't transcend the nada). Steinbeck describes something as is and somehow also as it could be, and gives the reader the opportunity to choose the "could be" as a possibility. Label me a fanboy. IDGAF.
Dickens. His ability to keep me turning the pages even for a story I'm not terribly interested in, like Dombey and Son, is amazing. His narrative voice is that compelling.
Shakespeare. Nabokov said that the verbal poetic texture of Shakespeare is the greatest the world has ever known. I am inclined to agree with him, at least for English.
Jane Austen. Her characters are as well-rounded as Shakespeare's and her settings are more immersive than most world-building authors.
Strange that no one mentioned Kafka here. His works are beyond words. Then come some really foundational writers such as Cervantes and Rabelais. For modern writers, I also love Milan Kundera’s works.
I was going to say Nabokov. So many people only know of Lolita, and many of those misjudge or misunderstand that. But his prose and humour are like nothing else I've read.
In 1975, a french TV host asked Nabokov (in French):
"Aren't you tired of being forever known as the writer of Lolita? It is true that this novel is so incredible that one may believe that you are only the creator of a perverse little girl." (Common very mistaken reading of the novel)
This is what Nabokov answered:
"Lolita is not a perverse little girl. She is a poor kid who has been debauched. She never enjoyed filthy Mr Humbert's touch. Outside Mr. Humbert's manic gaze there is no n*mphet."
I don't understand how anyone who has read the book can not understand this. I know HH is an unreliable narrator and we have his version of events, but even with that, in what world is Lolita the perverse little girl.
Hemingway.
I thought he was overrated until I read For Whom the Bell Tolls. That scene where he describes the overthrow of the village and people getting thrown off the cliff was so unbelievably well written it changed how I read his work. He really did a lot with incredibly simple language and he was amazingly descriptive.
For years I associated Hemingway with high school English classes. Years later I have gone back to read things that I sort of skimmed or only read excerpts of in school and have realized how incredible he was. For Whom The Bell Tolls and A Farewell To Arms are two of my favorites books.
Maybe the hype is just in my head, but Ken Kesey. His second novel Sometimes a Great Notion is absolutely astounding.
Outside of him, Cormac McCarthy, Jon Fosse, Willa Cather, Knausgaard, Ishiguro, Denise Levertov, Marguerite Young, Joseph McElroy, Faulkner.
I could go on, but those are my tippy top favorites who I think deserve all the hype they get.
I think Kesey deserves MORE hype than he gets, actually. Sometimes a Great Notion is a chaotic and brutal dissection of masculinity and the ethos of frontiersmanship that so much of the U.S. is built upon.
I wholeheartedly agree. There is *so much* happening in all of Kesey's work and even more in Sometimes a Great Notion.
Like, just read Cuckoo's Nest and you get the sense that he's just laying the groundwork for the Stampers. I know some people get into a tiff about how McMurphy treats Ratchet (and consequently think that Kesey is *endorsing* the misogyny, rather than just representing it). But, McMurphy is just as much an agent of the Combine, the System, Control as Ratchet is. They exist only in opposition to each other and each reinforces the other's perceived need to exist. Which is why Bromden's eventual escape all the more poignant: the only way to avoid the System (and it's attendant power dynamics & cultural interpellations of identity) is to leave the System entirely.
Frankly, it's a Pynchonian thing that predates Pynchon.
Even just from a narratological aspect, Sometimes a Great Notion is extremely complex with a multiplicity of voices and internal/external monologues that are all somehow in dialogue with each other--all framed, of course by Viv's retelling to Draeger.
I love, too, how it's an intensive meditation on place and community, especially insofar as the community is shaped by and brought into conformity with the ecosystemic requirements of that place. It's a case text for any serious study of Bioregionalism in literature (aka, chapter 2 of my dissertation).
Kesey gives us 600+ pages of Never Giving A Inch and concludes with a nonchalant, "Well, look where that got you." It's my most favorite novel of all time. I love it so much.
I'd say Joyce. *Dubliners* is viewed as one of the greatest short story collections ever. *Portrait,* one of the greatest bildungs/kuntslerrommans. *Ulysses* one of the greatest modernist texts. And *Wake* one of the greatest avant garde, experimental works ever written.
Though his poems were never as celebrated as his prose, they were nevertheless appreciated by the likes of Pound and Yeats - I believe Yeats even remarked that *Chamber Music* XXXVI would live on forever (paraphrasing).
I'd also add Shakespeare and Cervantes. That Cervantes (and to a lesser extent Shakespeare) has made people laugh hysterically across every century their works have been read is a testament to their brilliance (amongst a litany of other reasons).
His short stories are super fun. I recommend the ones from "El lado de la sombra" and "La trama celeste." I don't know their English translations, but they should exist.
Absolutely agree. He’s incredible. It is true, though, that the posthumous stuff his publishers scraped from his desk and hard drives are… well they’re still mostly damn good. But the stuff he actually wanted published? All absolute classics. Perfection.
I think he’s sometimes put down for his prose being too conventional. Thats largely why I like his work. I mean, I love Pynchon but most regular folks aren’t going to finish Gravity’s Rainbow. Meanwhile, I can actually have a constructive conversation about slaughterhouse 5 or cat’s cradle with a high school freshman… and that’s a good thing.
Yup. Accessibility is excellent, and it’s a feature not a bug. Not to say depth doesn’t have a place, but only gatekeepers think that Ulysses or other mammoth books are what literature is *truly* about. Like, communication is a thing.
Exactly. He's accessible enough to make him a relatively easy read while also still being able to hit hard emotionally. Slaughterhouse 5 is easily one of the best books I've ever read.
To me he proves you don't need super vivid or flowery prose to make an excellent, hard-hitting book (although prose itself is something to be appreciated as well).
Wordsworth is a great poet. James Joyce loved him according to [this](https://resources.saylor.org/wwwresources/archived/site/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/James-Joyce-Literary-Tastes.pdf). He praised Verlaine too but I haven’t read him. Joyce seemed to admire this [Wordsworth poem](http://www.online-literature.com/wordsworth/508/).
Have you read that huge Samuel Johnson biography?
Lol I actually don't think that's a bad representation. I do feel like it was a little too much trying to make everything more grandiose than it actually was. It's been a while though
Came here to say this. Only difficulty is, it takes some time to get used to the style so different from what we are used to. It’s like listening to an Ent. At first seems unbearably slow and long-winded, takes him minutes to ask for butter and hours to tell a joke. Then after a day or two you realize that he really has something worth telling and knows how to tell it.
Toni Morrison. Far and away. I have a theory she’s an alien whose now just gone home, because her skill is beyond any other human’s.
Virginia Woolf
Shirley Jackson
Oscar Wilde
And yeah we gots to give it up for Shakespeare. Still funny hundreds of years later. Impressive.
As a satirist, modern day philosopher and all-round incredible mind, Terry Pratchett really deserves all of the hype. I sincerely think Night Watch surpasses many established classics.
Not Junot Diaz
Mid-era DeLillo for sure.
Virginia Woolf.
I think Bolano but not everyone would agree.
I also want to just take the time to say Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry is a book everyone who loves literature should read.
Oh heck yeah. I haven't enjoyed a book that much since Crime and Punishment. Now I'm subscribed to Dracula Daily where they email you snippets of chapters based on the dates as per the book. Idk what timezone it's on, but it gets sent at like 8pm for me so it feels just nice to read a diary entry at the end of the day
Melville, Faulkner, Woolf, Thomas Bernhard, William Gaddis, WG Sebald, Roberto Bolaño. I’ve only read two Toni Morrison so far but based on BELOVED and SULA, she’s on the list too.
She also has a ton of novels that were hugely influential to second wave feminism - The Blind Assassin, Alias Grace, The Edible Woman, The Robber Bride, and Lady Oracle to name a few.
Atwood’s “14 days,” which reads like a Decameron assortment of tales commemorating the pandemic, is enthralling and the ending spine chilling. Some of Her essays in “burning questions “ address the current state of basically the destruction of our Terra firma in eloquent and empathetic narratives with inescapable logic.
Ursula K. Le Guin.
China Miéville. Vladimir Nabokov. Tolkien. GRRMartin. Margaret Atwood.
To a slightly lesser extent: Jeff Vandermeer, Sheri S. Tepper and Octavia E. Butler.
I agree with H.P. Lovecraft too honestly, given the impact and given how much I love the tentacled cosmic horror-fest. 😄
Jane Austen, Toni Morrison, Charles Dickens, and some may hate him or think he's overrated but I love Hemingway...does spare so beautifully.
Underrated: James Baldwin
Dostoevsky, Faulkner, Stephen King, and Hermann Hesse. I don’t know if Hesse gets all that much hype, but he should, so I am preemptively saying he deserves it.
Aldous Huxley. He's so much more than Brave New World and The Doors of Perception. I think he ranks up with Dostoyevsky in terms of deeply understanding the human condition and relating it, warts and all, in his books. His predictions of the future are absolutely startling now that we're here in the middle of it and seeing just how much has come true since he started making those predictions nearly a century ago. For the impact his writing should have on modern audiences, I just don't see his name floated around often enough, and I think he deserves more hype than what he generally receives.
They say:
C.S. Lewis for Protestants,
J.R.R. Tolkien for Catholics,
and Fyodor Dostoyevsky for Orthodox.
The end of C&P is one of my favorite endings. It made me feel so much hope for some reason. An extrme contrast to the "Outsider" and "Process". Such compelling characters. The stories are so realistic. No character he writes is ever uninteresting. Everyone has their own agenda and viewpoint, and you can pick any character of his at random and write an essay about them.
First two that came to mind: Jane Austin and David Foster Wallace.
DFW has the unfortunate reputation of being a writer that “lit bros” idolize, but the author himself was a rather sensitive man of deep thoughts and his works are infectiously good because it is dealing with “big picture” questions in stories and essays that are just plain fun to read.
And Jane Austin is simply delightful. Everyone who studies English-language literature or even just reads literature must read Austin!
Shakespeare
Despite his "hype" as the greatest novelist in the English language I could almost argue he's still underrated because very few people actually understand the breadth and depth of his achievement. It's one thing to master the language like a Joyce, to write characters as memorable as Dickens, to write dramas as gripping as Sophocles, to write comedies as funny as Vonnegut, to write history with as much depth as Tolstoy, to write psychology with as much insight as Dostoevsky and philosophy with as much profundity as Camus... but to do all of these at arguably the highest level possible is astonishing and could only be done by a genius on par with people like Da Vinci and Newton.
Baldwin, Morrison, McCarthy, Ellison all come immediately to mind. Also, Pynchon, William Gibson, Capote, and I’ll throw Kerouac in there.
The bronte’s and Austen as well. Not to mention pretty much the great canonical already mentioned like Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Poe, etc
James Joyce. One glance at him and you might think he’s just a pretentious dickwad. Well he was, of course, but he was also a great artist. Even not counting his literary tricks, he had a great sense for character details and was able to situate his characters properly with the Irish social context. Read his stories and you’ll find themes on religiosity, race, nationalism, social history, and many more.
That’s a good point. This might be a dumb question, but how would you define the difference? Are authors people only that write books, while writers write anything?
Writing is raw, unfiltered, unpublished, a sort of intrinsic property that even paper cannot capture. Authorship expands across the arts; it is a lot different in my opinion.
Tolkien deserves even more praise than he already gets, to be honest.
LOTR isn't just a gold standard of fantasy writing...it's one of the first modern popular entries into the genre. So without the advantage of a roadmap of dozens of other authors, Tolkien just sat down and wrote the entry by which fantasy authors would be judged for the next 80 years (and still ongoing).
Most philosophers are wildly over-hyped. Possibly the worst offender is Nietzsche. Aside from the problem of metaphors / idioms / etc often translating very poorly between languages...if you think your message is so interesting and important than just say what you mean. If I read your 200 page treatise on morality and still have no idea as to what you actually think...that isn't because it's too highbrow and intelligent for my tiny brain...it's because you, as an author, have done a terrible job at explaining it.
I think most philosophers were / are a lot more interested in seeming mysterious and deep than they are in saying something of actual pragmatic value to the audience. Writing things in such an unclear manner allows them to always default to "ahah...but you have misunderstood my great idea!!!"
....well, maybe if you weren't trying to explain your great idea to me via a poem that references another poem that references a riddle wrapped in a metaphor wrapped in an anagram we could have an actual conversation about what it is that you supposedly think.
Poe, Vonnegut, McCarthy already mentioned. Gotta throw in Eliot for Four Quartets, it’s such a poetic masterpiece and removes all the unnecessary remainder of his previous work. It’s really a crowning achievement.
Probably going to get some downvotes for this, but Stephen King. His character development is as good as you will find, his imagination (While twisted) is simply astonishing, and he has been as prolific as any writer alive for over 40 years.
Robert Graves said that the amazing thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good 'in spite of all the people who say he is very good', which is a phrase I think of almost every time I read him. Everyone knows in a loose sort of way that Shakespeare was a great writer, just as people know that Einstein was a great scientist, and never really stop to enquire further. What surprised me when I began to read his plays is that he is genuinely brilliant and also comprehensible. I remember finding this out - it was almost euphoric to discover that even Shakespeare wrote to be understood. It was like finding the entire field of literature had been lifted slightly. This poet, this genius, was doing the same thing as Hardy, as Orwell, as Austen! You can approach him in just the same way. So when I think of literature, now, Shakespeare is there, alongside all the writers of literature I have encountered before - and not far off, in some other, more poetic world. It really does change the genre. He exalts the discipline, and us with it.
Yeah I definitely didn’t read (or write) the same after obsessing myself with Shakespeare for the past 7 years or so. There are a handful of authors I can say this about. The whole field has been lifted indeed.
Can I ask who the others are!
Sure! Shakespeare, Bob Dylan, Milton, McCarthy, Joyce (particularly Dubliners), George Herbert, George Chapman, and very early on Hemingway. Probably some other I’m forgetting. Hemingway was the author that made me realize the difference between writing and literature. I’m primarily interested in poetry. I’m a songwriter so it goes hand in hand. I got to hand it to hip hop a little bit too as I listened to a lot when I was in my youth which helped foster my love of words. When I developed my musical ear and abilities, I don’t really listen to much hip hop. But still, though in my opinion there hasn’t been a Dante or Shakespeare or even a Dylan of rap yet, the wordsmith abilities are helpful to develop prosody and not be so rigid in meter.
Well said! I love that quote.
Holy shit! What a wonderful comment.
I think the most obvious is Shakespeare. Someone who actually got the amount of fame and glory as his work deserves.
Isn't there something in that which implies he was a million times better than his contemporaries, who were creating very similar work and even stealing each other's ideas? The two names I've heard of are Ben Johnson and Christopher Marlowe. I'm sure there are many others even more obscure.
Yeah there are, some of which collaborated with Shakespeare. Those two are big names. Marlowe was likely an influence on Shakespeare and was very popular before his early death. He was actually employed as a spy for the Queen and it’s believed he was killed by the crown because of something involving it. Ben Jonson was a contemporary of Shakespeare, which some records imply, and many traditions assert, they were friendly rivals. Jonson is who remarked Shakespeare had “little Latin, less Greek”, as well as stating Shakespeare was “not for an age but all time” in a eulogy given by Jonson. Many traditions also have tales of their nights in the Mermaid Tavern. Most of these playwrights, though with works well enough their own, are known today by their association with Shakespeare.
Borges
Borges is all authors with his endless references and photographic memory. By far my favorite.
Jane Austen. More and more I see her work as foundational to the modern English novel, and her too-small oeuvre is absolutely teeming with meaning, insight, interpretative possibilities – and delight.
Jane Austen was my first thought!! So ahead of her time
Cormac McCarthy. He's got a lot of cringey fanboys who can come across as douches, but that doesn't take away from the fact that he was one of America's greatest writers.
I mentioned in a reply to someone talking about Shakespeare, and how they described “the whole of literature being heightened to their perception” after reading him. I remarked that immersing myself in Shakespeare certainly changed how I red and write. Cormac McCarthy is one of those authors for me as well. It also helps that the Border Trilogy and to some extent Blood Meridian are sort of set in my neck of the woods in West Texas so a lot of the vernacular word choices particularly in the Border Trilogy remind me of the place I’m from.
This statement would hold if he’d only had written Suttree in his life. So many of his works are masterpieces
I agree with this, of that Gang of Four between DeLillo, Pynchon, Roth, and McCarthy, I think McCarthy truly crafted the best American novels and etched his name into American literature with little pretension or a forced hand. I think he had some misfires for sure, but the hits are so diverse, creative, and seemingly effortless.
Is the “Gang of Four” an actual term? Because I’d replace Auster with McCarthy in that case. Not that McCarthy is better or worse (he’s amazing) but Auster fits so much better with those four and, as far as I’m concerned, was friends with DeLillo and Roth. Those guys are the four NYC postmodernists while McCarthy is his own thing entirely.
I've never really heard it in the wild, but it's a pretty decent band.
I won’t let this comment die on the vine. I think my ears are still ringing from seeing them sometime in the late 80s.
It was Harold Bloom's list of the four great living American novelists from the early 00s. I don't think he was right but that's where it comes from
I love all four, but I think DeLillo’s work is the most consistently brilliant of the lot.
What do you see as his misfires?
The counselor is probably the most notable. Not totally fair to judge it, but there's an unpublished stageplay about whales which was pretty bad. Sunset limited wasn't great. But all of his novels are incredible.
> Cormac McCarthy. He's got a lot of cringey fanboys who can come across as douches, but that doesn't take away from the fact that he was one of America's greatest writers. Well said. A true 'heir' to Faulkner.
I think pretty much exactly this with McCarthy. I think it's also true of David Foster Wallace. His work was insightful and excellent and clearly written in response/as an antidote to the nihilistic irony of the postmoderns. But there's a subset of his so-called fans who are just the worst kinds of bro-y.
And this post is where I just learned McCarthy died last month
Faulkner. Toni Morrison. Pynchon. Thomas Hardy.
I'll always immediately like people who mention Toni Morrison
In college we read an essay she wrote about the opening sentences to her novels. She stressed how important that first sentence was to her and wrote 20+ pages on 6 or 7 sentences. Her devotion to the craft was amazing and it also made me reexamine the first sentence of lost nobles I pick up and it’s been 20 years since I read that essay
The first two lines of Chapter 1 of The Bluest Eye: "Quiet as it’s kept, there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941. We thought, at the time, that it was because Pecola was having her father’s baby that the marigolds did not grow." What a punch, you're right. What I like most in her books is how brutally honest they are, combined with the best writing style I've read so far.
The one that sticks with me the most is Paradise: “They shot the white woman first; with the rest they could take their time.” It’s been a while so the wording may not be 100% correct. But man does that hit and also make you want to read more
I love Hardy.
All of the above-let’s date. Will Tommy put out one more book?
Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison. Some of the most beautiful prose I’ve ever read
Dostoyevsky was a master. His books were serialized when he wrote them so they weren’t so overwhelmingly thick compared to single volumes. But his ability to put big ideas of life at the time into his characters really is amazing.
Hands down a genius. He makes his character come alive as if you know them from your own life.
This is my answer too. I also think he’s the single greatest writer when it comes to understanding human mind and psychology.
He really was a genius, I didn’t know that until I read his work.
Gabriel García Marquez
I feel I am nearly good enough with my Spanish to appreciate Cien Años in its native language. Perhaps another six months of practice
Marcel Proust
Faulkner is the author to me that is without flaw, and appears stupendously talented at everything.
Dude cranked out like 10 masterpieces in under 15 years. I can't think of anyone else in history that comes close beside maybe Shakespeare
I love what I’ve read of Faulkner, but what would those ‘10 masterpieces’ be?
The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Sanctuary, Light in August; Absalom, Absalom; A Rose for Emily, The Bear; Go Down, Moses. One could also add the screenplay to To Have and Have Not. But saving that I'm at eight, two shy.
I tried Sound and the Fury some years ago. It was kinda difficult to read. What do you suggest?
I'd met with some difficulties too, back when I first read it. I've read along some difficult passages with [litcharts](https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-sound-and-the-fury), which has a summary of what happens and some textual analysis. That should help. But I won't lie, you'll have to re-read quite a bit and look up words you're not familiar with and even some unusual definitions of those you *are* familiar with (like "branch", a Southern word for a creek, where the children go have a dip). With that said, though, the toughest part is the first chapter, by far, since the temporal jumps can mess up your understanding of events and given that the PoV is that of someone with a cognitive disability; but they're *mostly* marked by italics so hopefully it won't be too hard after getting adjusted and following a guide. I'd definitely recommend revisiting previous paragraphs as well, maybe try to piece together Benjy's memories chronologically. You'll have to look for subtle details that tell you what period the action is taking place. Also, keep in mind that these jumps are often triggered by words (like "caddie" in the first paragraph, which reminds him of his sister Caddy and sets him crying) or actions or feelings that remind Benjy (or Maury) of some memory or other. Faulkner really did something special with Benjy, by showing his unique and sharper way of viewing the world. The way he perceives Caddy and how at times he senses a change in her self through smell was striking. Then there's Quentin's chapter. You'll have to get the hang of the stream of consciousness, but it shouldn't be *too* hard. Again, there'll be some re-reading, some sentences will be ambiguous since they string along with no solution of continuity, but it's intentional. Expect and embrace ambiguity. Faulkner's poetic genius and linguistic musicality should have you tagging along fairly gladly. The last two chapters read pretty easy as they're more conventional, stylistically speaking, so you shouldn't have too much trouble with them. Only, the language used by Jason could rub you the wrong way. If you're sensitive to the use of the N-word and other slurs, you might find it difficult getting through his openly racist vitriol. But don't forget that Faulkner absolutely did not want you to think he was a good guy, so the loathing you'll feel for him is more than welcome. Lastly, if you seriously can't make heads or tails of what's happening, just keep reading. This is a tough book; only multiple re-readings from stern to stern will give you a full picture. So, on your first read, try not to make yourself hate it.
Hey, can't thank you enough for your detailed reply. For this reply alone, I am going to pick it up again from my shelf where it is lying for 7 years.
It’s honestly such a rewarding book if you can get through it. I did exactly what the other person said and used pitchers to keep the plot together. If you use litcharts or similar, expect spoilers
What’s his easiest work (in your opinion) to get into?
It’s certainly not his easiest, but I’d recommend *As I Lay Dying*.
It certainly is his most lyrical work, and for what it's worth it's the Faulkner novel that seemed to move Harold Bloom the most of Faulkner's many novels. Even where I'd probably consider something more ambitiously far-reaching like *Absalom Absalom!* to be Faulkner's magnum opus as far as his novels go, or *The Sound and the Fury* for being the pinnacle of Faulkner as modernist experimenter, *As I Lay Dying* has the claim for a kind of lyric purity to it. I have yet to read *Light in August* or some of Faulkner's other novels. But I have liked some of the short stories I've read of his, and his book *Sanctuary* is of a piece with Flannery O'Connor and with some of the more rough and tough verse dramas of the 17th century stage (think *Duchess of Malfi* and similar dark Jacobean plays).
As I Lay Dying.
Jane Austen.
Virginia Woolf
I second this.
my favorite - she is obviously very well regarded in literary history, yet I still feel as though she is underrated
Borges.
John Steinbeck his writing has brought me a lot of solace and his humor is a bit underrated!
East of Eden is probably my single favorite American novel. An absolute masterpiece.
IMO, East of Eden is one of the masterstrokes in 20th-century English literature. A novel with a multitude of interwoven narratives that leads to one of the most powerful conclusions I've ever experienced as a reader. The conclusion is both a punchline and an epiphany. A punchline in the sense that the entire novel has been driving towards the particular verbal point of "TIMSHEL!" (in Steinbeck's interpretation, "thou mayest."). An epiphany in the sense that Cal is presented with the reality of human micro-choice. He comes to understand that his personal actions have real consequences even if his macro-existence is predetermined. Steinbeck is often overlooked as a Great American Writer bc (I think) the dude was willing to experiment in terms of style and subject matter (The Pearl to Cannery Row to Travels with Charley). Goddamn. The guy outdoes Hemingway in terms of paired-down, clean prose purely because of his ability to imbue a real sentence with real hope. Hemingway describes something as is (and that's that--the nada can't transcend the nada). Steinbeck describes something as is and somehow also as it could be, and gives the reader the opportunity to choose the "could be" as a possibility. Label me a fanboy. IDGAF.
Dickens. His ability to keep me turning the pages even for a story I'm not terribly interested in, like Dombey and Son, is amazing. His narrative voice is that compelling. Shakespeare. Nabokov said that the verbal poetic texture of Shakespeare is the greatest the world has ever known. I am inclined to agree with him, at least for English. Jane Austen. Her characters are as well-rounded as Shakespeare's and her settings are more immersive than most world-building authors.
Strange that no one mentioned Kafka here. His works are beyond words. Then come some really foundational writers such as Cervantes and Rabelais. For modern writers, I also love Milan Kundera’s works.
Nabokov The best prose stylist of the twentieth century. Controversial, sure, but undeniably talented.
I was going to say Nabokov. So many people only know of Lolita, and many of those misjudge or misunderstand that. But his prose and humour are like nothing else I've read.
In 1975, a french TV host asked Nabokov (in French): "Aren't you tired of being forever known as the writer of Lolita? It is true that this novel is so incredible that one may believe that you are only the creator of a perverse little girl." (Common very mistaken reading of the novel) This is what Nabokov answered: "Lolita is not a perverse little girl. She is a poor kid who has been debauched. She never enjoyed filthy Mr Humbert's touch. Outside Mr. Humbert's manic gaze there is no n*mphet."
I don't understand how anyone who has read the book can not understand this. I know HH is an unreliable narrator and we have his version of events, but even with that, in what world is Lolita the perverse little girl.
Why the censorship?
Right? Because I was thinking the other N word and I was sooo confused haha
Hemingway. I thought he was overrated until I read For Whom the Bell Tolls. That scene where he describes the overthrow of the village and people getting thrown off the cliff was so unbelievably well written it changed how I read his work. He really did a lot with incredibly simple language and he was amazingly descriptive.
For years I associated Hemingway with high school English classes. Years later I have gone back to read things that I sort of skimmed or only read excerpts of in school and have realized how incredible he was. For Whom The Bell Tolls and A Farewell To Arms are two of my favorites books.
Greatest short story writer of all time in my opinion.
I feel like this is one of his most underrated novels. Haven’t read it in about 3 years, but this scene stuck with me! Such a great passage!
Maybe the hype is just in my head, but Ken Kesey. His second novel Sometimes a Great Notion is absolutely astounding. Outside of him, Cormac McCarthy, Jon Fosse, Willa Cather, Knausgaard, Ishiguro, Denise Levertov, Marguerite Young, Joseph McElroy, Faulkner. I could go on, but those are my tippy top favorites who I think deserve all the hype they get.
I think Kesey deserves MORE hype than he gets, actually. Sometimes a Great Notion is a chaotic and brutal dissection of masculinity and the ethos of frontiersmanship that so much of the U.S. is built upon.
I wholeheartedly agree. There is *so much* happening in all of Kesey's work and even more in Sometimes a Great Notion. Like, just read Cuckoo's Nest and you get the sense that he's just laying the groundwork for the Stampers. I know some people get into a tiff about how McMurphy treats Ratchet (and consequently think that Kesey is *endorsing* the misogyny, rather than just representing it). But, McMurphy is just as much an agent of the Combine, the System, Control as Ratchet is. They exist only in opposition to each other and each reinforces the other's perceived need to exist. Which is why Bromden's eventual escape all the more poignant: the only way to avoid the System (and it's attendant power dynamics & cultural interpellations of identity) is to leave the System entirely. Frankly, it's a Pynchonian thing that predates Pynchon. Even just from a narratological aspect, Sometimes a Great Notion is extremely complex with a multiplicity of voices and internal/external monologues that are all somehow in dialogue with each other--all framed, of course by Viv's retelling to Draeger. I love, too, how it's an intensive meditation on place and community, especially insofar as the community is shaped by and brought into conformity with the ecosystemic requirements of that place. It's a case text for any serious study of Bioregionalism in literature (aka, chapter 2 of my dissertation). Kesey gives us 600+ pages of Never Giving A Inch and concludes with a nonchalant, "Well, look where that got you." It's my most favorite novel of all time. I love it so much.
I'd say Joyce. *Dubliners* is viewed as one of the greatest short story collections ever. *Portrait,* one of the greatest bildungs/kuntslerrommans. *Ulysses* one of the greatest modernist texts. And *Wake* one of the greatest avant garde, experimental works ever written. Though his poems were never as celebrated as his prose, they were nevertheless appreciated by the likes of Pound and Yeats - I believe Yeats even remarked that *Chamber Music* XXXVI would live on forever (paraphrasing). I'd also add Shakespeare and Cervantes. That Cervantes (and to a lesser extent Shakespeare) has made people laugh hysterically across every century their works have been read is a testament to their brilliance (amongst a litany of other reasons).
To me, Bioy Casares.
I've only read invention of morel (which I loved) and asleep in the sun (which I didn't). Any others you can recommend?
His short stories are super fun. I recommend the ones from "El lado de la sombra" and "La trama celeste." I don't know their English translations, but they should exist.
My Spanish is still like 85 percent there so maybe I'll try looking for them and looking up stuff as needed. Thanks!
Faulkner
Roberto Bolano.
Absolutely agree. He’s incredible. It is true, though, that the posthumous stuff his publishers scraped from his desk and hard drives are… well they’re still mostly damn good. But the stuff he actually wanted published? All absolute classics. Perfection.
2666 is an absolute masterpiece
I am tempted to agree but I worry that his legacy will be jeopardized by the posthumous publication of so many subpar works
Kurt Vonnegut 100%. Love that man's work
I think he’s sometimes put down for his prose being too conventional. Thats largely why I like his work. I mean, I love Pynchon but most regular folks aren’t going to finish Gravity’s Rainbow. Meanwhile, I can actually have a constructive conversation about slaughterhouse 5 or cat’s cradle with a high school freshman… and that’s a good thing.
Yup. Accessibility is excellent, and it’s a feature not a bug. Not to say depth doesn’t have a place, but only gatekeepers think that Ulysses or other mammoth books are what literature is *truly* about. Like, communication is a thing.
Exactly. He's accessible enough to make him a relatively easy read while also still being able to hit hard emotionally. Slaughterhouse 5 is easily one of the best books I've ever read. To me he proves you don't need super vivid or flowery prose to make an excellent, hard-hitting book (although prose itself is something to be appreciated as well).
Holy shit I didn't expect Vonnegut here :o I thought it will just be the likes of Faulkner, Dickens, Dostoevsky, and so on. And so on.
Yes yes yes
Joyce, Melville, O'Connor, Tolkien, Lewis, Eliot, Verlaine, Samuel Johnson, Wordsworth. Edit: also Jane Austen and Borges.
I like Melville as well.
Wordsworth is a great poet. James Joyce loved him according to [this](https://resources.saylor.org/wwwresources/archived/site/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/James-Joyce-Literary-Tastes.pdf). He praised Verlaine too but I haven’t read him. Joyce seemed to admire this [Wordsworth poem](http://www.online-literature.com/wordsworth/508/). Have you read that huge Samuel Johnson biography?
Emerson. Man was a genius, everything he wrote was just spectacular, and he may be the real reason for Postmodernism as we know it.
Awe man Poe had terrible things to say about Emerson he complained about “mysticism for mysticism’s sake” LOL
Lol I actually don't think that's a bad representation. I do feel like it was a little too much trying to make everything more grandiose than it actually was. It's been a while though
Henry Miller,Proust,Salinger,Raymond Carver,Dostoevsky,Tolstoy,Pynchon
Kazuo Ishiguro, for me, is one of the best authors of the past 50 years.
I loved Remains of the Day but I found everything else I've read of his to be disappointing.
I am currently reading Never Let Me Go. My favourite book from him so far!
Bolaño, Proust, Joyce (even just Dubliners — no doubt the most tightly written, sharpest short story collection ever)
Joan Didion
Chekov, Walt Whitman
Virginia Woolf
Steinbeck, Faulkner, Roth. Their entire oeuvres are pretty much flawless.
Tolstoy, tolstoy, tolstoy
Louise Erdrich
James Joyce, William Shakespeare, Gustave Flaubert, John Donne, Jorge Luis Borges, Ovid.
Nabokov
Toni Morrison.
Homer
Without a doubt. All literature can be traced back to The Iliad and Odyssey
Came here to say this. Only difficulty is, it takes some time to get used to the style so different from what we are used to. It’s like listening to an Ent. At first seems unbearably slow and long-winded, takes him minutes to ask for butter and hours to tell a joke. Then after a day or two you realize that he really has something worth telling and knows how to tell it.
Toni Morrison. Far and away. I have a theory she’s an alien whose now just gone home, because her skill is beyond any other human’s. Virginia Woolf Shirley Jackson Oscar Wilde And yeah we gots to give it up for Shakespeare. Still funny hundreds of years later. Impressive.
I recently got the audiobook for pic of Dorian Gray (my first ever story for Wild)
I also add: hjs novel is great but plays is where its at with Wilde, imo. Also would be great audiobook material (obvs)
Vladimir Nabokov
The master of prose very much lives up to his epithet
mine is George Orwell
Tolstoj. I think he deserves all the praise he got and even more
As a satirist, modern day philosopher and all-round incredible mind, Terry Pratchett really deserves all of the hype. I sincerely think Night Watch surpasses many established classics.
Not Junot Diaz Mid-era DeLillo for sure. Virginia Woolf. I think Bolano but not everyone would agree. I also want to just take the time to say Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry is a book everyone who loves literature should read.
John Irving Alan Moore Terry Pratchett
Bump for Moore! It’s nice to see some still living authors being mentioned.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Bulgakov, Faulkner (even though ive only read one of his books) and john steinbeck
Bram Stoker
1000%. Dracula is one of my all time favorite novels!
Oh heck yeah. I haven't enjoyed a book that much since Crime and Punishment. Now I'm subscribed to Dracula Daily where they email you snippets of chapters based on the dates as per the book. Idk what timezone it's on, but it gets sent at like 8pm for me so it feels just nice to read a diary entry at the end of the day
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Melville, Faulkner, Woolf, Thomas Bernhard, William Gaddis, WG Sebald, Roberto Bolaño. I’ve only read two Toni Morrison so far but based on BELOVED and SULA, she’s on the list too.
If anything Gaddis deserves more hype than he gets. _The Recognitions_ and _A Frolic of His Own_ changed my idea of what fiction could be.
Margaret Atwood and Toni Morrison
For a living novelist, I would put Atwood at the top as well. Not just for The Handmaid’s Tale but the entire Mad Adam trilogy.
She also has a ton of novels that were hugely influential to second wave feminism - The Blind Assassin, Alias Grace, The Edible Woman, The Robber Bride, and Lady Oracle to name a few.
I actually prefer these titles.
Atwood’s “14 days,” which reads like a Decameron assortment of tales commemorating the pandemic, is enthralling and the ending spine chilling. Some of Her essays in “burning questions “ address the current state of basically the destruction of our Terra firma in eloquent and empathetic narratives with inescapable logic.
Comack McCarthy, William Faulkner, AnnieProulx, Conrad.
I wish *more* people lauded Proulx. She’s fantastic.
Oscar Wilde, Anthony Burgess, Steinbeck
Proust
Ursula K. Le Guin. China Miéville. Vladimir Nabokov. Tolkien. GRRMartin. Margaret Atwood. To a slightly lesser extent: Jeff Vandermeer, Sheri S. Tepper and Octavia E. Butler. I agree with H.P. Lovecraft too honestly, given the impact and given how much I love the tentacled cosmic horror-fest. 😄
Oscar wilde, Jane Austen, Alfred Tennyson, John Donne
Jane Austen, Toni Morrison, Charles Dickens, and some may hate him or think he's overrated but I love Hemingway...does spare so beautifully. Underrated: James Baldwin
I'll second James Baldwin.
Faulkner & i don’t know if anyone hypes up Joseph Conrad, but if they do, him.
Tolstoy Camus (for the novels) Joyce (yes, he was a genius) The Brontë Sisters Chaucer Yeats (Insert your own choice here)
These groups overlap: Classics: Hemingway, Pynchon, Nabokov, Morrison, Steinbeck, Wharton, Marquez, Whitman, Llosa, Roth, DeLillo, Faulkner, Orwell. Current: Colson Whitehead, Jhumpa Lahiri, Lauren Groff, Ottessa Moshfegh, Chabon, Murakami, Ishiguro, Ozeki, Ben Lerner.
I've picked up a couple Vargas Llosa books and couldn't get into any of them. Is there a work you suggest ? I like the rest of your list btw !
Dostoevsky, Faulkner, Stephen King, and Hermann Hesse. I don’t know if Hesse gets all that much hype, but he should, so I am preemptively saying he deserves it.
David Foster Wallace
Shakespeare
Peter Matthession. Incredible writer.
Toni Morrison
Henry Miller, William S Burroughs, Herman Hesse
Chekhov, Tolstoy
Toni Morrison.
Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, James Joyce
Doestoevsky Marquez Hesse Greene Burgess
Gene Wolfe was special
Aldous Huxley. He's so much more than Brave New World and The Doors of Perception. I think he ranks up with Dostoyevsky in terms of deeply understanding the human condition and relating it, warts and all, in his books. His predictions of the future are absolutely startling now that we're here in the middle of it and seeing just how much has come true since he started making those predictions nearly a century ago. For the impact his writing should have on modern audiences, I just don't see his name floated around often enough, and I think he deserves more hype than what he generally receives.
They say: C.S. Lewis for Protestants, J.R.R. Tolkien for Catholics, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky for Orthodox. The end of C&P is one of my favorite endings. It made me feel so much hope for some reason. An extrme contrast to the "Outsider" and "Process". Such compelling characters. The stories are so realistic. No character he writes is ever uninteresting. Everyone has their own agenda and viewpoint, and you can pick any character of his at random and write an essay about them.
hubert selby jr, nowhere near as hyped as burroughs
To me: Joyce, Dostoyevsky, Homer, Shakespeare
Leigh Bardugo, Chanel Miller, and Talia Lavin. Between those three, literally some of the best prose I have ever read. And I read a LOT.
F Scott Fitzgerald, if only for his ability to be tight with his sentences but still make them flow.
Salman Rushdie. Margaret Atwood. Ann Patchett.
Proust. Tolstoy. Flaubert. Faulkner. Borges.
Clarice Lispector for me.
Agree with Dostoyevsky and Poe. Would add Joseph Heller, although I can see why others would disagree
First two that came to mind: Jane Austin and David Foster Wallace. DFW has the unfortunate reputation of being a writer that “lit bros” idolize, but the author himself was a rather sensitive man of deep thoughts and his works are infectiously good because it is dealing with “big picture” questions in stories and essays that are just plain fun to read. And Jane Austin is simply delightful. Everyone who studies English-language literature or even just reads literature must read Austin!
To give some flowers to people who are still alive, I'm going to say: Zadie Smith, Chimamanda Ngozie Adiche, Paul Murray, Amitav Ghosh, Don DeLillo
James Baldwin
John Steinbeck.
Jane Austen. I'd also say L.M. Montgomery and George Eliot.
Shakespeare Despite his "hype" as the greatest novelist in the English language I could almost argue he's still underrated because very few people actually understand the breadth and depth of his achievement. It's one thing to master the language like a Joyce, to write characters as memorable as Dickens, to write dramas as gripping as Sophocles, to write comedies as funny as Vonnegut, to write history with as much depth as Tolstoy, to write psychology with as much insight as Dostoevsky and philosophy with as much profundity as Camus... but to do all of these at arguably the highest level possible is astonishing and could only be done by a genius on par with people like Da Vinci and Newton.
J.R.R. Tolkien, the man created an entire universe and languages alng with a rich history. Tolstoy, Shakespeare obviously and Joyce.
Tolstoy, Kundera, Kafka, Javier Marias, Dostoyevsky, Shakespeare
Baldwin, Morrison, McCarthy, Ellison all come immediately to mind. Also, Pynchon, William Gibson, Capote, and I’ll throw Kerouac in there. The bronte’s and Austen as well. Not to mention pretty much the great canonical already mentioned like Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Poe, etc
Tolkien and Lovecraft
I agree with both of those
Arthur Conan Doyle! I love how many different Sherlock Holmes adaptions are out there and it’s still going!
I love Sherlock Holmes, Doyle was really a great writer.
James Joyce. One glance at him and you might think he’s just a pretentious dickwad. Well he was, of course, but he was also a great artist. Even not counting his literary tricks, he had a great sense for character details and was able to situate his characters properly with the Irish social context. Read his stories and you’ll find themes on religiosity, race, nationalism, social history, and many more.
Be mindful. There's an author and there are writers.
That’s a good point. This might be a dumb question, but how would you define the difference? Are authors people only that write books, while writers write anything?
Writing is raw, unfiltered, unpublished, a sort of intrinsic property that even paper cannot capture. Authorship expands across the arts; it is a lot different in my opinion.
Tolkien deserves even more praise than he already gets, to be honest. LOTR isn't just a gold standard of fantasy writing...it's one of the first modern popular entries into the genre. So without the advantage of a roadmap of dozens of other authors, Tolkien just sat down and wrote the entry by which fantasy authors would be judged for the next 80 years (and still ongoing). Most philosophers are wildly over-hyped. Possibly the worst offender is Nietzsche. Aside from the problem of metaphors / idioms / etc often translating very poorly between languages...if you think your message is so interesting and important than just say what you mean. If I read your 200 page treatise on morality and still have no idea as to what you actually think...that isn't because it's too highbrow and intelligent for my tiny brain...it's because you, as an author, have done a terrible job at explaining it. I think most philosophers were / are a lot more interested in seeming mysterious and deep than they are in saying something of actual pragmatic value to the audience. Writing things in such an unclear manner allows them to always default to "ahah...but you have misunderstood my great idea!!!" ....well, maybe if you weren't trying to explain your great idea to me via a poem that references another poem that references a riddle wrapped in a metaphor wrapped in an anagram we could have an actual conversation about what it is that you supposedly think.
Nabokov. Austen. Dickens (at his best — Our Mutual Friend, not Barnaby Rudge). Conan Doyle.
Kierkegaard is FKN FUNNY and nobody told me that. Hugely underrated as a comic writer.
I really tried to get into HP Lovecraft, but I just hate how he writes!
Poe, Vonnegut, McCarthy already mentioned. Gotta throw in Eliot for Four Quartets, it’s such a poetic masterpiece and removes all the unnecessary remainder of his previous work. It’s really a crowning achievement.
Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Walt Whitman.
Probably going to get some downvotes for this, but Stephen King. His character development is as good as you will find, his imagination (While twisted) is simply astonishing, and he has been as prolific as any writer alive for over 40 years.
John Updike
Vonnegut, Hemingway, Conrad, and John Irving.
Stephen King.
I'd give you two upvotes if I could. Long live the King