/lit/ - Literature

pic related

Karl Marx

The structure of the argument in Capital is beautiful.

>>2828678
no one's ever read that, including you

>>2828679

Uh, okay. If you say so.

>>2828666
>dat rutger hauer looking motherfucker

He makes history fun to read

The guy who write Friday Night Lights sounded like Steinbeck.

>>2828704
that guy is an ass and he's a terribly overrated writer

>>2828705
I wasn't saying he approached any of the other writers listed in this thread, just that his prose was similar to Steinbeck and much better than most non-fiction (and even some fiction) writers.

And that book was great; fuck you.

My nigga Hobs.

>>2828709

he writes above average pop-sports books, and some of them are very poor. That particular book was really a good story, but I don't see what's really so special about it

if you want to read well written engaging books on sports, then you should try David Halberstam

I thought the CIA wrote everything for Buckley.

>>2828724
That was only after they started using HAARP to manipulate his brain waves.

>>2828679
lol Americans.

I read Marx's Manifesto on High School, my physics and history teachers had extra classes to debate and explain Das Kapital to students who were interested in reading it (I wasn't, because I was an edgy libertarian back then) and many read in the original german.

Did you enjoy Catcher in the Rye?

>>2828742
>I read Marx's Manifesto on High School

oh so you obsessed over a crap book written by a German because you're a German? congrats, you guys wasted a lot of time

Besides the obvious Nietzsche? Rodney Stark, I suppose.

>>2828742
>many read in the original german
I totally see how they got beyond the first paragraph.

Christopher Hitchens

The answer is Thomas Browne, you plebs.

>>2828742
he was talking about Kapital, you numbskull.

the Manifesto is fucking easy as hell (and was meant to be), and being able to read it is nothing to boast about. Kapital is notoriously dense, quite long, and not at all easy to read. they are not the same. way 2 display yourself as a complete fucking idiot in your rush to get one over on america.

>>2828774

Robert Burton > that guy

ludwig von mises

Mencken? Browne?

>>2828804
>Mencken

+1

Glorious Machiavelli.

>>2828776
>>2828776
>he was talking about Kapital, you numbskull.
And I mentioned Kapital later in my post. Try reading it three times to make sure you understand it, like you were taught to do in school.

>Kapital is notoriously dense, quite long, and not at all easy to read. they are not the same.
Maybe that's why they had help of two teachers and read in extra classes. That's all implied in my post, but please, continue stating the obvious, you're enlightening me.

Btw, if I thought they were the same, why would I have said that I read the Manifesto in school but didn't feel like reading the Capital when they gave me a chance? You americans.

Read more.

Ernest Hemingway

come at me

>>2828817
1) none of those students just read kapital, straight through, unaided

2) someone here was claiming to

3) another person called him out on doing so, because most people haven't done that

4) you just wanted to start talking shit about how you're so much better than america. like you always do. you arrogant shits.

has anyone said bertrand russell yet? because i choose him.

>>2828822
>none of those students just read kapital, straight through, unaided
They were high school students. Just because High Schoolers can't do something without help doesn't mean other people can't.

>someone here was claiming to
2828678? No, he just said Marx was a great prose writer. He didn't imply which circumstances he read das Kapital under, and you don't know anything him to know if he's able to read it or not.
You just assume he's pretending because you want every person on 4chan to be as limited as you are.

>another person called him out on doing so,
Yes, you

>because most people haven't done that
"Most people" haven't read anybody listed ITT.

Abraham Lincoln

>>2828853
I like you. Altough he didn't write it himself.

>>2828870
yes he did

A BUNCH of US Presidents were gifted writers of prose

Ulysses S Grant
Lincoln
Washington
Teddy Roosevelt
Reagan (letters, diaries, some speeches)
Jefferson

Also Henry Adams, but I don't know if I'd recommend reading his histories

>>2828900

Are you implying Henry Adams was a president, or did you separate him from them because he wasn't?

>>2828944
I threw him in there because he's the descendant of two presidents

>>2828774
He's right, the answer really is Sir Thomas Browne, guys.

>>2828956
That's what I thought, I was just hoping I could throw my ego around and correct someone today.

Charles Darwin, guy wrote some excellent prose

G K Chesterton

>>2828666
Hitchens>Buckley

>Mfw no Thomas Paine.

I think I'm gonna have to go with Thomas Browne too. That Urn Burial.

>>2828900
>Implying Reagan wasn't a faggot

>>2830532
This.

>>2830554
>>2830532

lol so edgy epic win XD

>>2830559
Reading for you.

>>2830566
its past your bedtime kid

>>2830532

This.

>>2830575
Not that person, but are you seriously suggesting everyone who dislikes Reagan is a child?

>>2830579
I'm suggesting that they do not like Reagan because they are children

>>2830582

>implying so many things

>>2830582
Ronald Reagan doomed the world by laying the groundwork for neoliberalism.

>>2830575
How much of the Reagan administration do you remember? I was young, but everything in that book checks out. Bunch, being a liberal, is quite fair. Thorough, but fair.

Regan was a shitty president.
Here's the Republican presidential ranking
Lincoln>>>T. Roosevelt>Eisenhower>Bush Sr.>Hoover>Nixon-Coolidge-Harding>Regan>Bush Jr. And now they want to give us worse still.

>>2830593
no, it goes like this

Lincoln>>>T. Roosevelt>Eisenhower>Coolidge>Bush Sr.>Nixon>Hoover>Bush Jr.>Harding>Reagan

>>2830600
Meh. Coolidge wasn't as good as that. He wrote his autobiography in office I believe.

>>2830600
>Bush Jr.>Harding>Reagan
OH And you really mess this up. Bush was officially the worst. I can't decide if its deviousness or ineptitude. massively unsafe under his watch, socially backwards, unprecedented encroachment of church into state, needless massive debt to fund yet more war profiteering. All during peak oil. Regan was awful, but Bush needs to be jailed. Gitmo even.

>>2830602
>As Vice-President, Coolidge and his vivacious wife Grace were invited to quite a few parties, where the legend of "Silent Cal" was born. It is from this time that most of the jokes and anecdotes involving Coolidge originate. Although Coolidge was known to be a skilled and effective public speaker, in private he was a man of few words and was therefore commonly referred to as "Silent Cal." A possibly apocryphal story has it that Dorothy Parker, seated next to him at a dinner, said to him, "Mr. Coolidge, I've made a bet against a fellow who said it was impossible to get more than two words out of you." His famous reply: "You lose."[81] It was also Parker who, upon learning that Coolidge had died, reportedly remarked, "How can they tell?"[82] Coolidge often seemed uncomfortable among fashionable Washington society; when asked why he continued to attend so many of their dinner parties, he replied, "Got to eat somewhere."[83] Alice Roosevelt Longworth, a leading Republican wit, underscored Coolidge's silence and his dour personality: "When he wished he were elsewhere, he pursed his lips, folded his arms, and said nothing. He looked then precisely as though he had been weaned on a pickle."[84]

What a guy.

>>2830612
Yeah, I guess Bush could be switched with Harding, although Harding was more the real criminal of the two. But Reagan was still the most detrimental of the three, in my opinion. Gut entitlements, insane economic policies, and just a headstrong approach to everything. Being headstrong works in foreign policy, but he totally fucked things at home.

>>2830616
>Miles Davis was a man of few words. When he did speak, his words often had a similar effect to a hand grenade being lobbed into the room. In 1987, he was invited to a White House dinner by Ronald Reagan. Few of the guests appeared to know who he was. During dinner, Nancy Reagan turned to him and asked what he'd done with his life to merit an invitation. Straight-faced, Davis replied: "Well, I've changed the course of music five or six times. What have you done except fuck the president?"

>>2830630
What a guy

>>2830630
Not Nancy Reagan, but still happened with some dumb white ho

http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=80295

>>2830499
uhhh, actually Hitchens is terribly overrated. Also Thomas Paine wasn't that great a writer

>>2830687
Thomas Paine was a fantastic writer, but Hitchens is an overrated tumor.

>>2830692
>>2830687
You have biases that cloud your judgment. They both great. One obviously more impactful, and Hitchens knew that.

>>2830658
But no one else but Jane Wyman fucked Regan. The joke doesn't work.

>>2830703
Don;t get me wrong, I'm glad they finally cured his cancer.

>>2828753
The manifesto is like 40 pages dude, you could read it during your lunch break.

ITT: Statists, capitalists

I thought better of you /lit/

pic related

>>2830751
he's nothing but a complete joke, Gore Vidal is much better

>>2830751
Chomsky's prose is nothing to brag about

>>2830757
Never read Vidal, I like Chomsky because his writing is very straightforward and well-documented. To me, the value of a non-fiction book is the value of the ideas presented in it, and the only purpose of the prose or style is to convey those ideas well and accurately, not necessarily move the reader, or be pretty or emotional or whatever.

But again, I've never read Vidal, so maybe he is just as good or even better.

>>2830757
I want to like him, but he's too much of an asshole.

And his fiction is bland as sin.

>Buckley
The man was an eloquent speaker, but a mediocre writer.

>>2830777
Also all his opinions were shit. Did people forget this

>>2830777
>>2830780

you can't really say so since you've never read anything by him

Howard Zinn.

>>2830783
Yes, I have. I honestly think his prose isn't special.

>>2830792
well clearly your bias clouds your judgment

>>2830793
You just can't handle people disagree with you can you?

>>2830793
Shit, it's the ghost of Buckley. The Power of Christ Compels You.

>>2830793
I never stated my political opinions.

However, I will say, he had a rather insane view on the use of nuclear weapons.

>>2830805
only a blind liberal would suggest that Buckley wasn't a master of prose

>>2830751

Winston Churchill

Lord Macaulay

Albert Jay Nock

>>2828794
The Anatomy of Melancholy is almost entirely unintelligible.

Samuel Johnson?

I think Philip Gourevitch deserves a mention. I was really surprised by his exquisite writing when I cracked open his book on Rwanda.

>>2832211
+1

Orwell

author(s) of the King James Bible

>>2834140
-9001/10

>>2834141

lol epic win XD

Malcolm Muggeridge

Daily reminder that Buckley is a bumbling idiot.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dt-GUAxmxdk

>>2834166
wow one little clip really proves that one of our finest writers and orators ever was a bumbling idiot

wfb was a fascist thug who knew his way around a thesaurus. i have a soft spot for ott flowery, goofily-ornate prose but not when it's being used as a vehicle for garbage-ass thought.

How has no one mentioned Tom Wolfe?

>>2835617

Tom Wolfe is for old people.

>>2834163
I've been interested in reading some of his work. Where should I begin?

>>2835595
william f buckley was not a "fascist thug". i do not agree with the man but let's have some fucking honesty in our expression. he was an intelligent man who had political positions with which you disagree. that does not make him either fascist or a thug.

>>2835638
I know this is 4chan, but I don't think you have to respect a white supremacist segregationist just because he was well-educated and genteel.

>>2835658
Nothing wrong with segregation, bigot

And the claim of "white supremacism" is obvious nonsense.

>>2835694

>nothing wrong with segregation, bigot

wtfamireading.jpg

>>2835696
Do you believe that male/female bathrooms and changerooms are sexist and oppressive?

Do you believe that canadians are oppressing americans by not letting us use their health care?

Do you believe that the rich oppress the poor because they don't give away all their money?

>>2835658
>>2835658
>I don't think you have to respect a white supremacist segregationist just because he was well-educated and genteel.

well... i think, firstly, that "white supremacist" is misleading because it implies things that are not true. it would lead one to think that wfb was a member of the klan or something, which he was not. it may be technically accurate - and i certainly do not want to defend the content of wfb's views on race, with which i entirely disagree - but i think it implies a far more extreme situation than the truth, and i think that's intellectually dishonest.

second i would say that, i mean, you don't have to respect him, but disagreeing with his views - especially across time and space - is not an inherent reason to disrespect him. and to me, him being intelligent and reasonable is enough reason to respect him. so that's where i'm coming from. i don't want to defend his views on race, which were wrong then and now, but i think that declaring him verboten and terrible and evil because of them leads down a path that i don't like, where you're only allowed to engage with people if you agree with them. and that's not something i'm comfortable doing. if nothing else it is at least useful tactically to understand the arguments of people we oppose; but more than that it is, i think, something we are obliged to do.

>>2835739
I can dig where you're coming from, and I do also tend to roll my eyes when the young and righteous make a show of being more enlightened than the ghosts of the past, but Buckley surfed such a ridiculous wave of (in my opinion) unearned good PR upon his death that years later I'm still jerking my knee whenever someone speaks well of him beyond complimenting his wardrobe. I'm also not comfortable with applying the term "white supremacist" strictly to violent Klansmen and Neo-Nazis when presented with the case of someone who believed in the practical superiority of the white race at a time when he was in a far better position to influence policy than any single cross-burning dipshit in a bedsheet.

>>2835750
>I can dig where you're coming from, and I do also tend to roll my eyes when the young and righteous make a show of being more enlightened than the ghosts of the past, but Buckley surfed such a ridiculous wave of (in my opinion) unearned good PR upon his death that years later I'm still jerking my knee whenever someone speaks well of him beyond complimenting his wardrobe

thats completely valid and i definitely dislike, eg, many of the people who are writing at the magazine he founded today. but that's more about his image / reception than anything else. i don't know. these are deeply tricky matters and you seem pretty reasonable.

>'m also not comfortable with applying the term "white supremacist" strictly to violent Klansmen and Neo-Nazis when presented with the case of someone who believed in the practical superiority of the white race at a time when he was in a far better position to influence policy than any single cross-burning dipshit in a bedsheet.

yeah i mean i don't want to rehabilitate him, i just personally tend to get really worried about words and their implications in political contexts, and i really don't like it when words are used in ways that imply things that aren't true. this might just be my person tic but i do feel it's important to use words in a way that respects the way they're understood. & calling him a white supremacist doesn't do this. but this is fundamentally a semantic debate and i think we basically agree on his actual positions.

oh and i also think it's completely absurd to mention wfb in a thread about "greatest writers of prose non-fiction in english" anyway. i mean, he definitely does not belong in that conversation and it's absurd to say he does. he had a bit of style but that's it.

should probably make that clear.

>>2835767
>>2835773
That is more than fair! Thanks for engaging so generously with my self-righteous drunk keyboard mashing.

>>2835623
Recognize the greatest living American writer you stupid shaved monkey.

Lovecraft....

>ctrl+f
>no Robert Leckie for 'Helmet for My Pillow'

/lit/, I am disappoint.

Nietzsche

Bump

Tom Wolfe. Apart from him, I liked some Mailer, Thompson, a little DFW.

Fucking JOHN JEREMIAH SULLIVAN.

>>2834166
Buckley must have been the most insufferable person to have been around.

>>2836798
>Buckley

that's a strange way to spell Chomsky

>>2836704
none of those have written remarkable prose, please stay on topic

>>2835773
actually WFB should probably top the list

>>2837225
Don't you dare insult Chomsky in comparison to Buckley.

> only one Hunter S. Thompson mention in the entire thread

>>2837254
his prose is absolutely mediocre

>>2837250
Chomsky is an ignoramus, a bigot, and a spreader of lies and misinformation. I can't wait for him to die

>>2837264

In what way does he spread lies and misinformation?

>>2837274
by writing them and having them published, and also with his mouth

>>2837275

What specifically has he said that's false or misleading?

>>2837277
everything he's said is false or misleading

>>2837281
One example, please

This fine gentleman.

>>2837281

Can you cite something specific?

>>2837297
>>2837295
he says Iran is not a threat to other countries, when Iran is clearly a threat to free nations

>>2837297
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

>>2837307

>>2837311
yea, a crazy Islamist government pursuing nuclear weapons that already engages in terrorism, not a threat at all

>ctrl + f
>no Frederick Douglass

dayum shame

>>2837355
yes it must be crazy to oppose the designs of international jewry.

Just like you are a crazy white supremacist if you oppose mass immigration.

>>2837308
But how do you know?

W.E.B Dubois is an amazing writer

>>2828699

My nigga right here. 1776 was awesome.

>>2839070
>>2828699

what of his would you recommend? I don't read history often, but I'm interested

>>2839941
FTFY

>Some guy /lit/ hasn't heard of: 1932-2007

>>2839973
>Adam Hills

RIP Spicks and Specks

>>2837264

It's always funny to see the hate Noam gets. He writes almost purely for human rights, he inspires thousands to help others and fight for human rights also, yet his opponents, dirtbag, lowlife fucktards such as yourself say things like these.

And he isn't a spreader of lies and misinfo. A quick glance at WikiLeaks tells you that anything Noam says about the US government isn't just likely, it's probably true.

>>2839984
this is what ignorant liberals actually believe

Matthew Collings
Bertrand Russell
David Hume
Bishop Berkeley
Richard Dawkins
Christopher Hitchens
Daniel Dennett

Here's Dennett's philosophical story "Where Am I?" from Brainstorms:
http://www.newbanner.com/SecHumSCM/WhereAmI.html

>>2840095
please remember the purpose of this thread, this is not about which non-fiction writers are your favorite

>>2840098
don't talk to me like I'm an idiot

>>2840104
then don't be one

>>2840185
I'm not. Stop being an ass.

>>2840202
Over-responding to him isn't gonna get you anywhere dumb boy.
Ok. Prove to us that you are not a dum-dum.

>>2840207
what kind of reply is that? do you have antisocial issues or something?