/lit/ - Literature

Me.

If someone had an opinion that some author is the one single greatest writer of all time, you wouldn't want to listen to that stupid person's opinion.

Dosty

Poetry - Shakespeare
Novel - Tolstoy
Short story - Hemingway(?)

Alice Munro

If you disagree you're a baka!

Nabokov

David Foster Wallace

Poetry: Whitman
Short Story: Hemmingway
Novel: Lowry

Goethe, Shakespeare, Dante, Homer, maybe Tolstoy. . . These are the greats I think. Nabokov is also extremely talented but he's far more forced, contrived, trite than the ones first listed.

>>2989631
shakespeare
/thread

>>2989738
Tolstoy & Voltaire disagreed with that (explicitly). Most other writers did implicitly. The cult of Shakespeare is a Victorian fetishism. Shakespeare, like Dickens, manages to 'compromise' between high and low art. He does not stand that far above the other Elizabethans - they're all amazing. He reaches the heights in only a few scenes in all his plays, the rest gesture at them. His mastery of form is not on par with Dante's.

Greatest writer of all time: Stephen King.

>>2989787
You what? Just because Ben Jonson didn't realize his scope doesn't mean he's not a genius. He has an unrivaled sense of the psychology of his characters. Nobody compares. Also, be doing some serious trolling with that King crap. You read for the execution of a plot you have nothing to say about Shakespeare.

>>2989704
Add Joyce and its a win.

>>2989787
>Greatest writer: Stephen King
>mfw

>>2989787
The Jena Romantics (Schlegel et. al.) agreed that Bill was the best English writer of all time.

God

>>2989857
Ancient Jews and a couple Romans wrote that, sorry to burst your bubble.

>>2989875
Die pagan die.

>>2989857
God doesn't write mythologies, people do.

Clearly the most prolific and influential is Shakespeare.

"Greatest" is vague.

>>2989817
The best English writer? Not only the Jena romantics, but also the spiritual princes of Weimar. Still, most of these couldn't read English at all, and had read him in German translation. Goethe himself had poor English and corresponded with Carlyle in German, rather good German too. Goethe's English was bad and just for show. He rote learned some of Shakespeare in English to impress his guests.

Voltaire on the other hand had quite good English, and, unlike most of the Jena romantics and friends of Weimar's spiritual prince, had lived in England. The anglophilia that Voltaire himself fostered in Europe, which stirred Weimar with a passion for Shakespeare and which was bequethed to Jena.

Shakespeare as a tragicomic sentimentalist of uncertain principles but enormous fame was obviously indispensable to the ideological project of the romantics against the enlightenment's rationalism.

Nabokov/Hemingway/Joyce

>>2989890
>most PROLIFIC

/lit/ is fucking stupid. why do I still come here...

>>2989916

Hemingway sucks

>>2989920
What, you didn't know that Shakespeare wrote the most stuff? What a noob you are, sir.

>>2989926
Why do you say that?

The best writer has got to be Stephen King. I know 99% of /lit/ will call me pleb and disagree. However, they cannot come up with any reasons against my claim.

inb4pleb

>>2989950
His work lacks the same theoretical and thematic depth and awareness exhibited in most other so called 'great literature'.

>>2989953
So for a writer to be considered great he has to be 2deep4u? Why can't it just be who writes the most vivid and entertaining literature? You sir are worse than a pleb....

>>2989956

You are implying 2deep4u literature cannot be entertaining

In order of appearance: Euripides, Dante, Cervantes, Milton, Sterne, Blake, Melville, Chekhov, and Woolf.

>>2989961
>implying that you are not mad because I am right

ISHYGDDT

>>2989963
I like this list, this is a good list, I like this list.

Tolkien

>>2989963
Glaring Omission:The Post

>>2989631
I'll just go ahead and cast my vote for Ralph Waldo Emerson.

>>2989963
>Woolf

>>2989995
stop trying to be edgy, Woolf is a legend

anyway, Nabokov or Dostoyevsky

>>2989999
The others were all great, Woolf is shit I wouldn't wipe my ass with.

>>2990003
I raged hard.

>>2990003
coincidentally the only woman on the list
I hate women just as much as the next guy but denying Woolf's brilliance is foolhardy

>>2990003
kill yourself

>>2990013
>>2990009
>>2990005
Get a load of these Woolf loving faggots why don't you all just go suck on her dead maggot infested cunt, I bet you're the type of faggots who like Vonnegut.

>>2990026
i dont no how to understood woofl too im with u anon

>>2990026
Vonnegut's probably my least favorite author of all time lel

Woolf and Vonnegut are completely different thematically and stylistically

Steinbeck

Socrates

tao lin

>>2990061
I see what you did there.


There isn't one..I can't decide.

Shakespeare, probably.

George RR Martin

Also I don't get the hate on Woolf.

Maybe not the greatest writer of all time, but definitely one of them.

I think Mrs. Dalloway and To The Lightouse are two of the best books ever written.

>>2990105

To the Lighthouse*

>>2990076
Tao Lin just posted this on his FB. "Internet says Tao Lin is the greatist writer of all time"

Homer 8th century - 1590
Shakespeare 1590 - 1845
Melville 1845 - present

That is all.

>>2990113
Tao Lin just posted this on 4chan: "Tao Lin just posted this on his FB. "Internet says Tao Lin is the greatist writer of all time"

>>2990105
Would you describe Mrs Dalloway as slow at the beginning? Because I wasn't feeling ill pick it up later this year though.

Qoheleth

Franzen or DFW

>>2989631
Stephanie Meyer, OP. NOBODY IS AS GOOD AS HER.

>>2989994
Emerson doesn't get enough luv around here.

Faulkner, yo

>>2990138

THIS

>>2990140

Yes, it was definitely slowly-paced in the beginning.

Umberto Eco

Asimov, although I don't read him much anymore.

>>2990758
Twain was witty, but not a particularly good author. Dickens was paid by the word, and his writing reflects that.

Not the best, but Dickens and Twain have to get an honorable mention,

>>2990754
he coo'
but I don't know about his being the greatest writer of all time. I'm leaning towards Tolstoy

Thank God it's not competition.
When it comes to storytelling, Stephen King.
When it comes to overall "performance", Goethe.


When it comes to wit and drama, Shakespeare.
When it comes to philosophy, Spinoza and perhaps Schopenhauer.
Just my opinion. I know I'm gonna recieve hate for Stephen King beacuse he's not that good at "writing", but I think his great storytelling ability counts for something as well.

James Joyce is quite clearly the best anglophone novelist of all time. At his best, he is faultless.

>>2990787
Yeah, I really just said that because I'm going through an Eco phase.

>>2990808
>James Joyce is quite clearly the best anglophone novelist of all time. At his best, he is faultless.

Lolnope.

>>2990904
Beyond faultless.

>>2990799
what technical craft? i would imagine fitzgerald, joyce or nabakov

For just putting words together beautifully: T. S. Eliot

Entire package: Plato.

>>2990904
Let me guess: you find him "pretentious".

Tolstoy, obviously.

Shakespeare makes a close second.

Honourable mention goes to Robert Walser and PG Wodehouse for actually making me happy. Fuck all these edgy cynical pieces of shit writers.

>>2989642
>Poetry - Shakespeare
Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets. 2 of them are good. He's almost certainly the master of theater, though.

>>2989787
>He does not stand that far above the other Elizabethans - they're all amazing.
lolno
Marlowe and Jonson aren't bad, but anyone can tell that they're not Shakespeare.

>>2990914
> Plato.
>didn't know modern chemistry or astronomy
>believe in multiple greek gods
>goat of all time

>For just putting words together beautifully
>Not Conrad or Hawthorne

I'm seeing a lot of Tolstoy here.

I only started reading Resurrection and really disliked it, partly my fault, but also because it seemed like an unartistic manifesto.

Will try War and Peace though.

>>2991339
> he thinks Shakespeare's plays are more theatre than they are poetry!

xDDDDDDDD

do you even read faggot

>>2991354
>reading tolstoy when one could be reading Turgenev, Gogol or Gorky

>>2991354
The best of Tolstoy is (in no real order)

Anna Karenina
Hadji Murad
The Death of Ivan Illyich
War & Peace
Master & Man
How Much Land Does a Man Need?

>>2991359
lololololol

-2/10

People only read Gorky to read about Tolstoy. You're a dumb fucker.

>>2991364
>Gorky not a much more dynamic writer

What has tolstoy written that's better than City of the Yellow Devil or 26 Men and 1 Girl?

>>2991379
Like I said, only Gorky's Memoirs of Tolstoy and Chekhov are of any value.

Do you even read?

Waltari.

>>2991409
> only Gorky's Memoirs of Tolstoy and Chekhov are of any value.

Do you even read?

>>2991359
Gorky fucking sucks.

>>2991421
yeah

his personal writings are shit and everyone knows it

>>2991421
This book is a vapid piece of shit. Not the guy you're replying to, though.

Thomas Pynchon from what I've read.
To people who have replied above: are these also your favorite authors?
And don't spout that bullshit "favrit authors are for kids, lol."
We all have one.

>>2991444
No. Favourite != Best.

Hehe, Huxley.

>>2991444
It does for me.

At least, I might acknowledge that only Shakespeare is above Tolstoy, but I prefer Tolstoy. But that's it.

>>2991453
dostoyevsky is above tolstoy, you mad?

>>2991448
Only dishonest plebs preach that BS. If what you consider the Greatest book isn't also your Favourite book, you're pretentious as fuck.

>>2991444
My favourite book is also the best book I've ever read. Guess what it is. I'll give you a clue: it begins with "M" and ends with "ason & Dixon".

>>2991456
>>2991453
I feel like Dostoyevsky vs. Tolstoy is all personal preference.

but I'd still take Dostoyevsky any day of the week

>>2991484
>I feel like Dostoyevsky vs. Tolstoy is all personal preference.

you reckon?

>>2991339
>Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets. 2 of them are good.

>I have only read the two famous Shakespeare sonnets.

>>2991497
There's a reason they're the two most famous.
>>2991358
Except they are. They're designed to be acted out on stage, therefore they're plays. Being written in verse doesn't make them poems.

In my opinion, Shakespeare. Shakespeare or Twain.

>>2991548
Which 2 do you think are the best?

>>2991555
Huxley and Huxley.

>>2991552
>Twain

>laughingignatiousjreilly.png

Shakespeare is the only person who most people would agree on.

So him.

Joyce as a close second.

Honourable mentions: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Tolstoy

Margaret Wise Brown

Would anyone agree with me if I said Orwell?

Best? No clue.

Favorite? Hemingway.

>>2992065
I would but that's because I'm a firm believer in historical materialism.

>>2991346
>Entire history of Western thinking is footnote to Plato
>Actually an exceptional prose stylist and craftsman (Symposium - all that depth)
>Vivid, memorable characters (Socrates, Alcibiades)
>Brilliant images and metaphor (Winged Chariot in Phaedrus; Cave allegory in Republic)
>Touching, tear-enducing moments (Socrates' death in Phaedo)
>Combines great story with genius arguments (Crito, Apology)
>Not greatest writer
>mfw

how did no one say proust?

proust or joyce. definitely not shakespeare, goddamn.

>>2992452
Proust and Joyce are both in an infinite amount of debt to Shakespeare.

Cervantes. Maybe Schulz.

>>2992460
>Proust and Joyce are both in an infinite amount of debt to Shakespeare.

yeah, and ghandi was in an infinite amount of debt to his dad. doesn't mean ghandi's dad was worth a shit.

what does everyone think about hesse

95% of /lit/. And the answer is Shakespeare.

>ctrl -f
>no camus

DISAPPOINTED

>>2992898
Forgot my face

>>2992858
Did you know those statues are outside of a Kafka museum along with some other weird sculptures?

For your health

Joyce and Shakespeare.

shakespoyce

Nabokov all the way.

>>2992898
Babby's first existentialist

Hard to say, but it's one of Faulkner, Joyce, or King.

watterson

Philip K. Dick

>>2989956
No. But it must have a fair amount of depth.

>>2989638
>If someone had an opinion that some author is the one single greatest writer of all time, you wouldn't want to listen to that stupid person's opinion.

A thousand times this.

>>2992947
I know this is your opinion, which I totally respect, but I can't see him as being the greatest. I found Three Stigmata as being absolutely well written but I can never see him even top Frank Herbert.

I would say Shakespeare. Though that is very cliche and overstated, I feel it is absolutely true. He molded the English language into shapes I have never seen in another author.

>>2992425
Plato wasn't a great prose stylist, in fact 5th Century Greek is rubbish compared with 6th century Greek. You don't know what you're talking about. You're probably not even a classicist, although you could be - many classicists today hold absurdly immature opinions about the value of classical literature that would make the real and mature culture of classicism that flourished and peaked (Spenglerian decline) centuries ago laugh wildly in your face.

>ctrl+f gene wolfe
>no results

What the actual fuck. I thought you guys loved good authors.

>>2989738
>anglocentrism

>>2993282
In high school, my class had to translate Plato's Apologia. There was one fragment which consisted of one unbroken sentence which went on for about twenty lines. The caption said "Death Is One Long Night", which we quickly changed into "Death Is One Long Sentence."

This sick bastard.

>>2993282
You seem to know more than I do about this, so I cede your point. Where do you stand on the other points I made?

>>2992425

>implying the apology isn't just basically a word for word account of Socrates' speech at his trial

>>2993397
>implying Socrates wasn't just Plato's Tyler Durden

>>2993354
What other points? It's a cliche that the entire history of western thought is a footnote to Plato. Of course, this point can't be made separately of the old and hackneyed Ancients vs Moderns dispute, in which, it is true, the ancient claim, once good, had been made bad, by the overwhelming advances the moderns have made in every direction. It is yet a testament to the ancients, however, that their world of literature and the though therein can stand nary toe to toe with us, and if it can no longer topple us entirely. As a enormous mine, that just keeps growing, the ancient world will never be entirely quarried, and not just for that solemn reason that one day we will be the ancient world, and newer moderns will dispute our petty claims to greatness with their advances.

For the rest, yes, Plato had an art of storytelling which he inherited. But he is not read for his stories, and in fact today, sadly that's probably true not just of Plato, but among the great mass of scholars and halfwits, true of Homer as well.

>>2993410
Forgive the flabby syntax & [an] and so much else. It is long past my bedtime.

>>2993410
I can't help but despair of the obvious effect of years spent turning Latin & Greek into English. I would counsel against their study. It will just infect your prose & your mind and make you more tiresome & irrelevant than I already feel I have become.

>>2993403

How does that work?

>>2993410
nary - nigh
though[t]

dfw
grr
you

>>2993397
Ancient authors almost never made word for word accounts of anything, least of all 5th Century Greeks, quoting from memory, writing years or decades later, of things for which the only record was their memory, - writing 'accounts' which differ little from their own personal style, - to say that it is a 'transcript' today, after so many centuries of scholarship on this question, is just gross ignorance, and you have obviously betrayed the fact that you are NOT a classical scholar, - of if you are, I'd like to see you get your out-dated (medieval-level misconception) and ignorant opinion published in any respectable philological journal.

>>2993430
Almost never, I mean that - there are a few exceptions, and we have literal proof of this through epigraphical and non-literary testimonies that differ so widely from literary evidence of historical evidences, that gives positive proof of the extent - as often as not going as far as outright lies and pure fabrications - of creative licence in the ancient world.

>>2993434
historical [events]

>>2993434
It's also a basic anachronism - assuming the ancient world had our standards of veracity for reporting historical events, or events of any kind, in our 'objective' manner.