/lit/ - Literature

So what's you're poiont? He was a jerk.

Good point.

It doesn't change his status as the best writer of the 20th century.

>>6711936
I like him a little less now :c

>>6711936
The fact that the biographer had to include "Jill Faulkner Summers" illustrates his point beautifully

>>6711957
>the best writer of the 20th century.
being this pleb

>>6711936
>The writer’s only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it. He has no peace until then. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is worth any number of old ladies.

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4954/the-art-of-fiction-no-12-william-faulkner

>>6711968

Oh noes! Someone called me a pleb! I'm off to slit my wrists now.

>Success is feminine and like a woman; if you cringe before her, she will override you. So the way to treat her is to show her the back of your hand. Then maybe she will do the crawling.

What a boss

>>6711976
If you think Faulkner is better than Joyce, Yeats or Nabokov, just to name 3 English language writers, then yes, you are a pleb.

Don't worry, a lot of insular American entry-level readers would agree with you.

>>6711957
Actually it's his status is that he has one of the best authory sounding names of the 20th Century. His name sounds like the name of a great serious writer even if you never heard of him.

>>6711987

Nice hot air boss.

>>6711990
But you've never lived in a world where you didn't associate "Faulkner" with "author" so you couldn't ever be sure of this.

Most good artists are pieces of shit.

>>6711936

So you can't be talented and nice to your kid?

You can still be a good father while saying shit like that to your kid and being a drunk, you know

>>6712002
Would he have the same status if his name was Chad Dunne? Never underestimate the name. The reason why authors use pen names, to be evocative.

>>6711957
>It doesn't change his status as the best writer of the 20th century.

people didnt even actually start writing until about 1945. everything up til then was practice

Shakespeare by all accounts was amiable, humble, and even meek in person

>>6712002
What if his name Myspace Poptart

>>6711964
I like him a little more.

>>6712021
I'll admit that hard consonants generally have more of an impact (the same is true for the punchline of a joke).

But you do realize there is a well known poet called John Donne, right? Close enough to Dunne. What about Dostoevsky? or Nabokov or any Russian.

>>6712023
>by all accounts

Which are very few. Besides, I'm pretty amiable and meek in person, but I've done some horrible shit.

>>6712033
>Dostoevsky? or Nabokov
Alot of Russian names have gravitas even without trying. Those are gravely serious names.

>>6712037
I'm amiable and meek in person and I've done no horrible shit. Thus, we can safely assume Shakespeare was an all-around great guy.

>>6712037
well faulkner (the shakespeare wannabe) made a point of being a douchebag

and shakespeare (the goat) has no evidence of douchbaggery

sure we dont know that shakespeare wasnt a douchebag, but no amount of none douchebaggery could ever prove he wasn't

The syncophantic sage-artist nonsense by this man.

>>6712050
>shakespeare has no evidence of douchebaggery

Other than hoarding grain during times of shortage for the sole purpose of selling them at inflated prices, you mean?

>>6712096
Well, he was certainly no Breakespeare.

>>6711936
DEVILISH
E
V
I
L
I
S
H

>>6712018

Yes, this quote is totally decontextualized. For all we know it was an inside joke.

>>6712037

>but I've done some horrible shit.

Like what?

>>6712033
>What about Dostoevsky? or Nabokov or any Russian.

These names support his case. Vladamir Nabokov. That is one serious sounding name.

BASED
A
S
E
D

>>6711936
REKT

>>6712117
He wrote a fanfiction where his Sonic OC kills the girl that made fun of him in middle school.

>there are people who unironically post caps of this thread on facebook

>>6712250
what are you talking about?

>>6712231
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJokRFEAupg

>>6712256
I think he is trying to say that some people post the quote featured in this threads OP to facebook unironically.

But he went full retard or is some kind of foreign monkey

>>6711987
>nabokov is better than faulkner
>thinks about art like dbz powerlevels and calls others insular
Pleb af

>>6711987
>ranking authors like pro-football players

I think it is you that is the pleb, pleb

>>6711957
Please please please be b8.

Joyce and Faulkner cannot even be compared; they're not playing the small game, let alone being in the same league.

>>6712615
You barely speak English, so how would you know?

>>6711957
>Faulkner
> Best writer of the 20th century

I bet you think Dickens was the best writer of the 19th century too

>>6711936
how does anybody think this is mean, he's just being a funny dick; it's amusing, she probably just shook her head

>>6712638
i dont think you know what "barely" means.

Is Faulkner that good? Is he comparable to Shakespeare?

>>6713479
There are a lot of butthurt feminists on this board.

>>6713486
He's god tier, but not Shakespeare tier.

Faulkner is a typical example of the type of trash yanks shill to pretend they matter on a global scale as far as literature goes. Same as Mark Twain, absolute pleb shit but the Americans needs something to be proud of I guess.

>>6714513
kek

>>6714513
Bad bants tbh

>>6714513

It is true that there are many overrated authors and novels from early 20th century America. These are propped up by the "Babby Academy" of American letters, invented to give ourselves a national identity-that is, they're taught in high schools by teachers who, even if they're good, engaged teachers, are nevertheless gushing over government-sanctioned, subpar material. Examples of overrated authors from this period include F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway (lost generation indeed). From an earlier time, the dreadful James Fennimore Cooper comes to mind.

THAT SAID.

I must strenuously disagree with your dismissal of Mark Twain: Huck Finn (and the other material) is legit: the violent alcoholism of Huck's father foretells the national experiment with prohibition, and the constant upset over the n-word sparked just enough notoriety (and relevance) to make the book stick in national life. That this is done in a adventure-bildungsroman is no knock on the book, since it (like Tom Sawyer) /is actually very fun to read/ in parts.

Finally, you could reasonably lament that time-travel and trading places as memes have led to some crap movies, (Disney shit comes to mind), and of course Twain did not invent these memes. However, they've also inspired some very good movies, and their continued popularity in American film these are just notes in favor of Twain's influence.

There's some funny story about Twain walking along with a museum tour group, and him trolling the guide and the group by asking a stupid question about some item. I regret I can't find it right now.

>>6714696
Nah you just have shit taste, hemingway is great. You approach skilled works with a simple mind and wonder why you don't see anything.

>>6714513
i agree with your post and especially about twain but faulkner is legit

>>6714696
>it obliquely predicted the future, therefore it has merit

nope. plenty of shit dystopia out there no matter how much it predicted the future doesn't make it good writing

>there's controversy, therefore it has merit

also no. lots of vulgar trash got censored in the US and remains controversial, doesn't make it good writing. also you use the clause

>stick in national life

that qualifier. i could tell you some brazilian or chinese authors you've never heard of that stick around in their national life, doesn't make them on par with the shortlist of all mankind's fiction

>if its popular it has merit

i shouldn't have to touch this one

>if its fun to read it has literary merit

this one either

this is all coming from an american if thats important to you

>>6714716
>>6714728

The accuracy of these projections have been greatly exaggerated.

>>6711974
That interview is fantastic. Thanks for sharing.

>>6713481
I don't think you know what 'barely' means.

>>6712615
Joyce was a trihard. He has two or three good paragraphs out of 900 pages and the rest is just >ooh creative
when in reality it's
>ooh pretentious

He's not that fucking great. Ulysses was hardly even written sentences. He took Modernism and ruined it by going to extremes.

>>6711976
This is the correct response one should have.

>>6711957
Being this corncobby.

>>6711987
>Nabokov
No, anon, you are the pleb.

#reckt

Anyone remember the movie Barton Fink?

This character was basically faulkner, even though they gave him a completely different name, but it's supposed to be him. Bitch smacks and all

>>6712033
Dostoevsky is a great name.

ITT people thinking they are more intelligent and more well read than the people who awarded these named authors nobel prizes and pulitzers.

>>6716535
Well, who am I kidding... This is /lit/ after all.

>>6716535
>implying I'm not

>>6711957

>what's you're point?
>you're point?
>you're

Get off of /lit/ right now.

>>6717206
he also said poiont

>>6716535
The Nobel prize has been a joke for decades. The Pulitzer isn't any better.

>>6712615
Obviously, but Americans like to think they produce the best artists and thinkers, even though no one else gives a fuck about them.

>>6717232
Faulkner got his Nobel like 60 years ago. Was it a joke back then? When was it not a joke?

>>6717233
Why do you faggots always try to turn these into simple-minded country vs country /int/ threads? It's vapid, lazy thinking.

>even though no one else gives a fuck about them.
Faulkner is so well-regarded internationally precisely because the French were so enamored with him. He was also irrelevant to have won a nobel prize, but I'm certain those evil yankees were in stockholm, planning the whole thing?

>>6714903
>mfw Faulkner has a direct lineage from Roman literature

>>6717257
have you read de bello gallico in latin. I find it much more enjoyable that way.

what faulkner books are must-reads? i already have "the sound and the fury" to read, so if you could suggest any others i would appreciate it.

>>6711936

>you know, no one remembers
>you know, no one
>know, no
>no no

full hack

>>6712033
DONNE IS PRONOUNCED DUNNE RETARD

absolutely B A S E D

she probably needed some ointment for that burn

>>6717468
>implying thats not for effect, emphasizing the idea that NO person will remember them

Falky is mastermind

>>6714822
>two or three good paragraphs
P L E B
L
E
B

And I do not use that word lightly, unlike you other cretins. There is a good bit of masterpiece in every section of Ulysses. Is it all transcendent beauty all the time? No, but neither is Shakespeare himself. It's just the nature of literature (and, I'd contend, every other artform) that you need to trudge through a bit of the mundane and unexceptional before you hit the good stuff. But Joyce's good stuff is some of the very best stuff. Here are a few passages without compare (trust me when I say there are many more whence these came):

Woodshadows floated silently by through the morning peace from the stairhead seaward where he gazed. Inshore and farther out the mirror of water whitened, spurned by lightshod hurrying feet. White breast of the dim sea. The twining stresses, two by two. A hand plucking the harpstrings merging their twining chords. Wavewhite wedded words shimmering on the dim tide.
A cloud began to cover the sun slowly, shadowing the bay in deeper green. It lay behind him, a bowl of bitter waters. Fergus' song: I sang it alone in the house, holding down the long dark chords. Her door was open: she wanted to hear my music. Silent with awe and pity I went to her bedside. She was crying in her wretched bed. For those words, Stephen: love's bitter mystery.

She trusts me, her hand gentle, the longlashed eyes. Now where the blue hell am I bringing her beyond the veil? Into the ineluctable modality of the ineluctable visuality. She, she, she. What she? The virgin at Hodges Figgis' window on Monday looking in for one of the alphabet books you were going to write. Keen glance you gave her. Wrist through the braided jesse of her sunshade. She lives in Leeson park with a grief and kickshaws, a lady of letters. Talk that to someone else, Stevie: a pickmeup. Bet she wears those curse of God stays suspenders and yellow stockings, darned with lumpy wool. Talk about apple dumplings, piuttosto. Where are your wits?
Touch me. Soft eyes. Soft soft soft hand. I am lonely here. O, touch me soon, now. What is that word known to all men? I am quiet here alone. Sad too. Touch, touch me.
(cont.)

>>6718811

He saved men from drowning and you shake at a cur's yelping. But the courtiers who mocked Guido in Or san Michele were in their own house. House of... We don't want any of your medieval abstrusiosities. Would you do what he did? A boat would be near, a lifebuoy. Natürlich, put there for you. Would you or would you not? The man that was drowned nine days ago off Maiden's rock. They are waiting for him now. The truth, spit it out. I would want to. I would try. I am not a strong swimmer. Water cold soft. When I put my face into it in the basin at Clongowes. Can't see! Who's behind me? Out quickly, quickly! Do you see the tide flowing quickly in on all sides, sheeting the lows of sand quickly, shellcocoacoloured? If I had land under my feet. I want his life still to be his, mine to be mine. A drowning man. His human eyes scream to me out of horror of his death. I... With him together down... I could not save her. Waters: bitter death: lost.

A cloud began to cover the sun slowly, wholly. Grey. Far.
No, not like that. A barren land, bare waste. Vulcanic lake, the dead sea: no fish, weedless, sunk deep in the earth. No wind would lift those waves, grey metal, poisonous foggy waters. Brimstone they called it raining down: the cities of the plain: Sodom, Gomorrah, Edom. All dead names. A dead sea in a dead land, grey and old. Old now. It bore the oldest, the first race. A bent hag crossed from Cassidy's, clutching a naggin bottle by the neck. The oldest people. Wandered far away over all the earth, captivity to captivity, multiplying, dying, being born everywhere. It lay there now. Now it could bear no more. Dead: an old woman's: the grey sunken cunt of the world.
Desolation.

Enjoy a bath now: clean trough of water, cool enamel, the gentle tepid stream. This is my body.
He foresaw his pale body reclined in it at full, naked, in a womb of warmth, oiled by scented melting soap, softly laved. He saw his trunk and limbs riprippled over and sustained, buoyed lightly upward, lemonyellow: his navel, bud of flesh: and saw the dark tangled curls of his bush floating, floating hair of the stream around the limp father of thousands, a languid floating flower.

HORATIO IS CYNOSURE THIS FAIR JUNE DAY

J. J. O'Molloy sent a weary sidelong glance towards the statue and held his peace.
— I see, the professor said.
He halted on sir John Gray's pavement island and peered aloft at Nelson through the meshes of his wry smile.
DIMINISHED DIGITS PROVE TOO TITILLATING
FOR FRISKY FRUMPS. ANNE WIMBLES, FLO
WANGLES — YET CAN YOU BLAME THEM?

>>6715977
indeed. loved the everlasting fuck out of that character. especially his yelling at his wife while in the writer's quarters.

>>6711964
>:c

>>6711987

>Half the thread defending and praising faulkner for being a complete rotten Human being.

I'm literally fucking mad. How can a literature board lack such empathy that they justify the actions of a monster?

>>6719060
>4chan.org

>>6719071
>>6719060
>>>>reddit.com/r/books
>>>>tumblr
did le internet hate machine trigger you?

>>6719071
>>6719094
I've been here for six years faggot

If you honestly think this site is in nature edgy incarnate because le internet hate machine meme in fucking 2015 then you need to fuck off to reddit.

>>6719136
>I've been here for six years faggot
>can't detect obvious sarcasm

>>6719060
>not feeling empathy for monsters

Our empathy is just more advanced than yours. Empathising with the conventional good guy is entry level. Patricians empathise with child rapists and ruthless dictators and such.

>>6719060
He was a bad person and a mediocre writer.
You should be surprised if he wasn't worshipped by il/lit/erates.

>>6719136
you're a faggot. go back to tumblr, faglord.

>>6719162
>he abuses his wife and fucks over less fortunate people to get what he wants? Fucking based!
>we..re j..just recognizing conventionally bad people have feelings to and all. That good bad dichotomy is j..just clouding your mind.

>>6719136
I don't think it's edgy incarnate because it's the internet hate machine. I think it's edgy incarnate because of anonymity and the fact that it's populated by angsty teenagers.

>>6719203
empathy ≠ "i think they are cool and do cool things and want to be like them"

>>6711974
>Success is feminine and like a woman; if you cringe before her, she will override you. So the way to treat her is to show her the back of your hand. Then maybe she will do the crawling.

B A S E D
A
S
E
D

>>6719258
That's exactly what I was implying.

>>6719203
Actually cultivating positive emotions towards monsters is the highest level empathy exercise there is.

Although it's also good for a woman when she can receive corporal punishment.

>>6717242
Not him, but keep in mind that John Galsworthy and Pearl Buck won the Nobel prize before Faulkner did

>>6719592
Terrible people like faulkner need a bullet to the fucking skull.

Absolutely no remorse for scum.

>>6719998
Sounds like that would include yourself, my murderous darling.

>>6711987
>Nabakov
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA

>>6720593
If you can't even spell his name, you probably haven't read anything he's written. I don't consider him an American writer, but if I did he'd be the best American prose stylist of the 20th century. Faulkner wouldn't be in second.

>>6720609
He's as American as an April in Arizona! He said so himself!

>>6719060

Oh come, you know this sort of thing doesn't make him a MONSTER. Hitler is a monster, not a man who's at times mean to his daughter. And it may be that this was decontextualized, and his family partook in harsh but harmless banter. Now, if that is not the case, then I would agree that he was a pretty big ass (especially if this sort of thing is indicative of his overall behavior, and he did not apologize), but a MONSTER? Come!

>>6711936
btfo? BTFO!

>>6720716
>spent the majority of his life cheating and ignoring his family.
>not a terrible human being

>>6720716
How was Hitler a monster? Had a moral code, a vision and lived his life in sacrifice to his people. Just because someone's opponents dislike him does not make him a monster.

Some degenerate narcissistic alcoholic wife beater is more deserving of the term than someone whose ideals you dislike.

>>6720965
LOL good fucking lord

>>6720994
Seriously though, Hitler wasn't very different from any other conqueror. It's just because he's the most recent one that people get butthurt. He wasn't more of a cunt than Caesar or Napoleon.

>>6720965
because indignance on behalf of jews is mandatory sociology learnings

tes

>>6719060
You've got to accept that Plato was right when he said that poetry and prose only fills men with popular illusions rather than truth.

>>6721195
I weep, for the death of moderation, for the collapse of civil discourse, for the niche of freedom which its enemies have appropriated as their home and castle.

But mostly, I weep that you will not return to >>/pol/

>>6718811
beautiful, thank you.

>>6721487
>for the collapse of civil discourse
>on /lit/
Of course it's no coincidence that this is really a euphemism for what you prefer to discuss.

>>6718811
>Woodshadows floated silently by through the morning peace from the stairhead seaward where he gazed. Inshore and farther out the mirror of water whitened, spurned by lightshod hurrying feet. White breast of the dim sea. The twining stresses, two by two. A hand plucking the harpstrings merging their twining chords. Wavewhite wedded words shimmering on the dim tide.

pure masturbation with no restraint; the most degenerate romanticism; these phrases are hackneyed, they are mere echoes and regurgitations of the Romantics

>A cloud began to cover the sun slowly, shadowing the bay in deeper green. It lay behind him, a bowl of bitter waters. Fergus' song: I sang it alone in the house, holding down the long dark chords. Her door was open: she wanted to hear my music. Silent with awe and pity I went to her bedside. She was crying in her wretched bed. For those words, Stephen: love's bitter mystery.


Vulgarity begins, Ladies and Gentlemen, with sentiment, all vulgarity! all obscenity! with sentiment! Writers, in parallel with the lady writers, being equally reprehensible these days, Judaized and domesticated unto their ventricles ever since the Renaissance, without cessation, have frenetically done their all for the “delicate,” the “sensible,” the “human”…] as they call it… Towards these ends, they regard nothing as being more convincing, more decisive, than a recitation of the ordeals of love…of Love…for Love…by Love…the entire “lyrical bidet” in sum… The lips of these crumbling degenerates and affected pigs are full of their “Love!”…

...

Just look at the wild animals for a while, always noble, always modest. But the rabbits in their hutches, the dogs in their kennels, the pigs in their sties, there you have beings who speak, dream, think, and act out of Love! All of the degeneracy and reduction to servility of races originates, and is attained by way of love, the “competitions,” the excitements, the whisperings of Love!… One good dose of alcohol from above and down they go! They are now the well-bastardized, well-matured types for all forms of slavery, provided that they continue to embugger themselves for ever and ever…in all of the kennels and coops in which they find themselves…wallowing in their subtleties and their arabesques of Love, they are exultant!… It’s their proper straw bedding!… To speak frankly there is but one obscenity.

>>6721510
>the niche of freedom which its enemies have appropriated as their home and castle

>not recognizing a DFW quote
>on /lit/

>>6721516
But it is elemental, inexorable, and infinitely corrupting biologically, this putrefying “Tell me about love.” Nothing can resist it. All who find themselves in it become, in a very short time, corrupted, worm-eaten, and loutish as never before… This is the true “debauchery”… This unbridled whoring of words and sentiments must certainly cost very dearly, and result in some very cruel tortures. To the deformed, “love-smitten” hordes, infinite servitude!… All of the prostitutions of the ass end are nothing but trivialities compared to the “Niagara-like” puking-forth of “soft murmurings,” “burning sentiments” and “ineffable intoxications”…that entire deluge of reprehensibility which is submerging us in our decadence. The effete nature of these things of the heart hast turned us into a bigger bunch of dolts, serfs, irritating madmen, and deaf and obtuse maniacs, than a century’s worth of poxes all put together would have done.

>She trusts me, her hand gentle, the longlashed eyes. Now where the blue hell am I bringing her beyond the veil? Into the ineluctable modality of the ineluctable visuality. She, she, she. What she? The virgin at Hodges Figgis' window on Monday looking in for one of the alphabet books you were going to write. Keen glance you gave her. Wrist through the braided jesse of her sunshade. She lives in Leeson park with a grief and kickshaws, a lady of letters. Talk that to someone else, Stevie: a pickmeup. Bet she wears those curse of God stays suspenders and yellow stockings, darned with lumpy wool. Talk about apple dumplings, piuttosto. Where are your wits?
>Touch me. Soft eyes. Soft soft soft hand. I am lonely here. O, touch me soon, now. What is that word known to all men? I am quiet here alone. Sad too. Touch, touch me.

More masturbation and crusty romanticism. Seriously. Go read Byron or Shelley. They not only have this "intoxicating" language but also the FORM, the STRUCTURE. Here there is little form or structure, only the amorphous "stream of consciousness" which is not a romantic structure but a peculiarly modern structure. So here you have occasionally romantic ornaments upon a modernist structure. The parts where he collapses into the completely trivial ("she wears . . . suspenders and yellow stockings") and the completely opaque intellectualism ("ineluctable modality of the ineluctable visuality") that is pure modernism. It is wankery. The wankery of the moderns. Their stupid intellectualism coupled with their neurotic obsession for the little "facts" of "daily life". A disgrace to poetry and to the mind.

Can someone post some good Faulkner passages?

Modernist art is completely worthless and if you don't react with the fury of an Inquisitor when coming across it you have bad taste

>>6721543
top pleb

>>6721561
Modernist art was literally invented by plebs for the glorification of the democratic pleb.

>>6721570
Sure thing m8

>>6721529
>talking about Ulysses
>Here there is little form or structure
Ha ha! Oh wow... That's like... the definition of having no idea what you're talking about. Did you only read up to Proteus or something? Ignoring the fact that there's plenty of "form and structure" there that you're just too dumb to see, read Cyclops, Oxen of the sun, or Circe and come back.

>>6721570
You have no understanding of modernism whatsoever.

>>6721543
>>6721570

You don't get to have opinions any more.

>>6711936
That was big of him.

>>6711957
>the best writer of the 20th century
kek

>>6711936
>Actually comparing himself to Shakespeare
Holy shit, what a fucking faggot.

>>6721885
nice me.mes

>>6714513
Americans always revert to some point of plot importance, unlike Joyce who was perfectly comfortable drifting around within the narrative, slinging out literally the height of human creation, unconcerned by muh war, or muh jazz or any of the stupid insignificant shit AMericans care about.

>>6721516
I hate you and all of your people so much: you are thick, dull cunts who serve no other purpose other than to show the world how not to evaluate literature.

>>6722072
What the fuck does this have to do with Faulkner?

>>6722098
People living in Europe and elsewhere that's not the US don't really care about Faulkner or muh Merican authors.

>>6722231
Yfw europeans are obsessed with pretending to not care about america meanwhile we literally never think of you faggots. Stay ridiculous.

>>6722231
yeah you do faggots.

Stop trying to ignore your countries are backwoods, irrelevant muslim shitholes. Besides harry potter, you haven't been relevant in at least two centuries. Don't hate on us for having good authors.

>>6722231
>People living in Europe and elsewhere that's not the US don't really care about Faulkner or muh Merican authors.
Which is why it was originally the French who promoted him so fervently?

>>6722231

hmm, except that Faulkner only got the Nobel because he was so huge with the European Modernists, and ignored in America...

>>6711978
Literally paraphrased Machiavelli.

>>6722231

topkek.

>In France, I am the father of a literary movement. In Europe I am considered the best modern American and among the first of all writers. In America, I eke out a hack's motion picture wages by winning second prize in a manufactured mystery story contest.

>>6722273
>Besides harry potter, you haven't been relevant in at least two centuries.

The worlds best writers since 1945:

1) Philip Larkin
2) William Golding
3) Ted Hughes
4) Doris Lessing
5) John Fowles
6) Will Self
7) George Orwell
8) V.S. Naipaul
8) Muriel Spark
9) Kingsley Amis
10) J.R.R. Tolkien
11) C.S. Lewis
12) Iris Murdoch
13) Salman Rushdie
14) Ian Fleming
15) Jan Morris
16) Roald Dahl
17) Anthony Burgess
18) Mervyn Peake
19) Martin Amis
20) Anthony Powell
21) Alan Sillitoe
22) John le Carre
23) Penelope Fitzgerald
24) Philippa Pearce
25) Barbara Pym
26) Beryl Bainbridge
27) J.G. Ballard
28) Alan Garner
29) Alasdair Gray
30) Angela Carter
31) Derek Walcott
32) Kazuo Ishiguro
33) Anita Brookner
34) A.S. Byatt
35) Ian McEwan
36) Geoffrey Hill
37) Hanif Kureishi
38) Iain Banks
39) George MacKay Brown
40) A.J.P. Taylor
41) Isaiah Berlin
42) Michael Moorcock
43) Philip Pullman
44) Julian Barnes
45) Colin Thubron
46) Bruce Chatwin
47) Alice Oswald
48) Benjamin Zephaniah
49) Rosemary Sutcliff

>>6718811
>Here are a few passages without compare
Sorry, bub, but these passages are very pedestrian and uninspired. Any old hack with a trained hand could write this.

You need to take off those romanticism shades and realize that writing is, first and foremost, a technical skill; moreover, it's an easily mastered technical skill if you have the patience.

Joyce had a good, trained hand but he was a bad writer.

>>6722275
>>6722980
>>6722992
Yuropoors BTFO

>>6723019
>that list
no Pepe is sufficient to cover the lel.

>>6723019

> Tolkien in 10th place

youre just being obtuse now

>>6711987
Yes, but it is arguable that Faulkner wrote the pinnacle, Modernist work. This being The Sound and the Fury.

All authors named are awesome, I think. The best writer of the 20th century is a little far, but they're pretty okay.

>>6721540
the Quentin section of TSATF is top 10 english language passages

>>6721516
>>6721529
>L.F. "yo, check ... my ... ellipsis!" Celine

>>6723054
Have you actually read all of Ulysses? Because you'd have to be kinda retarded to call Joyce a bad writer in terms of not being creative enough, or in any terms really.

>>6723111
You're twisting the meaning of the word 'creative' so hard that it's starting to rip at the seams.

Look, it's obvious that you don't know how (or why) literature exists in the first place, so I'll teach you: the quality of writing isn't in "how" it's written, or even in "what" is written, it's in the "why" it is written.

Before you flash your peacock feathers (or, more aptly, baboon ass) about Joyce's so-called 'creativity', answer me this: why was "Ulysses" written in the first place?

>>6723132
>the quality of writing isn't in "how" it's written, or even in "what" is written, it's in the "why" it is written

[citation needed]

>>6723132
You could've just said no instead of doing all this ridiculous posturing. You're just making yourself look worse.

>>6723143
You didn't answer my question.

You're misunderstanding what the word "creative" means; Joyce never wrote a creative thing in his life.

I don't need to read all of 'Ulysses' to know if he's "creative" or not.

(And no, I did not read all of 'Ulysses'.)

This board gets so far up its own ass it comes out the other side as bizzaro contrarian pretentious /lit/

>>6723181
So basically you've been talking out your ass the whole time. Good to know.

>>6713469
Dickens pwns pleb

>>6712615
>let alone being in the same league
>comparing English novels and being smug about it
Ok

>>6723181
This is a really good college freshman impression.

>>6723019
>Doris fucking Lessing