/lit/ - Literature

>>16953177
>doesn't feel like he is using prose to show off.
That would filter all of /lit/ memes.

>>16953204
I am willing to make a concession that he does not use prose to show off except when there is an appropriate moment to do so, but >50% of the text shouldn't be >look at what I can do with words

>>16953219
Clark Ashton Smith.
Anyone who says Nabokov or Joyce or homo proust is a fag.

>>16953248
Just downloaded Smith's Penguin Classics collection because of your mention, where to start?

>>16953321
Just there. He is not exactly horror but more weird with a fantastical bent.

>>16953357
>He is not exactly horror but more weird with a fantastical bent.

ngmi

d h lawrence
maupassant

>>16953177
Borges.

>>16953177
Walter M Miller jr. He's incredibly skilled, but also very humble in his writing. Though his short stories are very hit and miss, mostly miss.

>There were several dead refugees, one dead horse, and the dying cavalry officer who was pinned under the horse. At intervals, the cavalryman awoke and faintly screamed. Now he screamed for Mother, and again he screamed for a priest. At times he awoke to scream for his horse. His screaming disquieted the buzzards and further disgruntled the Poet, who was feeling peevish anyhow. He was a very dispirited Poet. He had never expected the world to act in a courteous, seemly, or even sensible manner, and the world had seldom done so; often he had taken heart in the consistency of its rudeness and stupidity. But never before had the world shot the Poet in the abdomen with a musket. This he found not heartening at all.

>>16953177
Is Nabokov your idea of a good prose writer?
Then what you're looking for is baroque and classical prose.
Read the French moralists, Pascal, Francis Bacon's essays, learn Latin and read Cicero etc.

>>16953177
In French, probably Proust, although many others do to a lesser extent, especially 17th and 18th century stylists like Pascal or La Rochefoucauld.
In English, I wouldn't know since I'm ESL, but Joyce, himself a great prose stylists, was fond of the clarity of cardinal Newman. So try pre-FW Joyce of Cardinal Newman.

>>16953724
Both Joyce and Proust wrote show-off prose.

>>16953709
>Is Nabokov your idea of a good prose writer?
Not really, I just needed someones picture.

>>16953177
Steinbeck

>>16953357
Sorry, I meant more like which stories are the best. I'm too lazy to "read on and find out" so I'll just read a few creme de la crème and move to the others when I have nothing else to read.

>>16953177
melville

Gordon Lish

hes the guy who cut down raymond carvers stories to one tenth the size. he pissed of nabakov by editing one of his passages and sent it back to him once. his writing is either exploding with words or immensely minimal and reserved. some guy had a review of him where he called it editing of nothing and its pretty accurate. he also has the most autistic sense of humor. almost every sentence he writes is perfect but he drives you insane. read the first 6 pages of peru or his short story "the dead" if you want something nostalgic and beautiful. read zimzum or the story "wouldnt giving it a title make it worse" if you want to see his stupid side

christopher isherwood

he was weimar pedo but the man knows a good sentence

>>16954603
Fug, he’s still alive.

>>16955135
he weirdly endorsed, wrote a blurb for, this poem called "Brand New Ancients" which is simply one of the worst things i've ever read. Petty or not, that endorsement always put me off Isherwood

>>16953177
Richard Hooker and G.K. Chesterton

imagine not using prose to show off

>>16954044
You can uhh...uhhh....google, y'know

>>16953177
WG Sebald

>>16953177
Tom Clancy

>>16953937
Steinbeck is a shit prose stylist.

>>16956566
t. 110 iq

>>16953825
Joyce was sometimes show-off, but not always, especially before Ulysses. Proust isn't a show off at all.

>>16953177
Flaubert is actually great at writing something that appears effortless. Except in some key moments (like the death of Emma Bovary), you have to actually take a step back and reread a sentence to realize how good it is.

>>16956577
wrong

Kierkegaard

Harper Lee maybe, if you want to emphasise the not showing off part. Her prose is very beautiful and simple at the same time.

Gass.
Though >>16953204 is somewhat right.
I feel he has the most beautiful flow.

>>16953177
This guy can do literally anything he wants with language

>>16956836
>Proust wasn't a show off
Yes he was. Page long sentences about going to sleep on bed is fucking showing off.
"Look at me, i can beautify even the most mundane activity"
Isolt is very self indulgent because of his prose.

>>16958138
Gass' prose has no substance. He is the worst choice in this thread because writing with alliteration and ""music"" was always his first priority. He is the definition of show-off.

>>16958557
you're an idiot if you think writing long sentences is showing off and if writing sentences about mundane activities is somehow bad.
you can fault proust for his essayistic digressions on his ruskian theories of art as showing off but the sentence structure and content about mundane life is completely fine..