/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.11746972]

Who are some of the greatest prose authors that have ever lived? Authors that are so enthralling to read that they nearly constantly remind you, sometimes even on a sentence-by-sentence basis, that their control of the language is unparalleled in its profundity and has been matched only by a select few to have ever lived?

>Once a white man in an unbuttoned uniform, camping on the path with an armed escort of lank Zanzibaris, very hospitable and festive -- not to say drunk. Was looking after the upkeep of the road, he declared. Can't say I saw any road or any upkeep, unless the body of a middle-aged negro, with a bullet-hole in the forehead, upon which I absolutely stumbled three miles farther on, may be considered as a permanent improvement. I had a white companion, too, not a bad chap, but rather too fleshy and with the exasperating habit of fainting on the hot hillsides, miles away from the least bit of shade and water. Annoying, you know, to hold your own coat like a parasol over a man's head while he is coming to. I couldn't help asking him once what he meant by coming there at all. 'To make money, of course. What do you think?' he said, scornfully. Then he got fever, and had to be carried in a hammock slung under a pole. As he weighed sixteen stone I had no end of rows with the carriers. They jibbed, ran away, sneaked off with their loads in the night -- quite a mutiny.

[Anonymous No.11747014]

>>11746972
Herman Melville in Moby Dick. Read Chapter 132: “The Symphony,” greatest single chapter in all of literature in terms of prose.

[Anonymous No.11747073]

>reading
Lmao

[Anonymous No.11747151]

>>11746972
Hemingway (no meme, read the first 2-3 chapters of A Farewell to Arms)

[Anonymous No.11747176]

>>11746972
Alistair MacLeod

[Anonymous No.11747288]

>>11746972
Montaigne
Bacon
Nabokov
Joyce
Faulkner
Melville

Pretty sure those are the tops basically, some people say Pynchon but I don’t see it

[Anonymous No.11747294]

>>11746972
Tolstoy

[Anonymous No.11747307]

>old white guy prose

No ty

[Anonymous No.11747309]

>>11747288
I love Faulkner but only when he uses first person narrators with a distinct voice. When he's using his own I always think it's far too adjective and adverb ridden and also flowery. Wild Palms for instance is especially bad.

[Anonymous No.11747322]

William Gaddis

[Anonymous No.11747328]

>>11747307
no other prose can even compete tho

[Anonymous No.11748495]

>>11747288
I agree with the other anon. Faulkner is one of my favorite authors if not my favorite, but I never thought of him as an especially great prose stylist

[Anonymous No.11748539]

Also Proust

>>11747288
>Montaigne
I'm not positive about it but doesn't he write kinda "without effort" ? I mean - doesn't he write just like he learnt to write, without caring too much about prose itself ? Just wondering.

[Anonymous No.11748592]

Woolf
Mishima (despite the evident difficulty of translation)
Anne Carson
Proust
Nabikov
and I recently read some bedouin love poetry really incredible stuff
>>11747288
can you elaborate on why you don't see pynchon?

[Anonymous No.11748597]

Post excerpts

[Anonymous No.11748821]

>>11746972
I’m gonna get shit for this one but I actually love Dickens

[Anonymous No.11748830]

>>11746972
Graham Greene

[Anonymous No.11748835]

>>11746972
Truman Capote

[Anonymous No.11748936]

>>11747014
Truly, you are my nigger

[Anonymous No.11749174]

>>11746972
Unironically Joyce

[Anonymous No.11749214]

>>11748821

Because great expectations is based

[Anonymous No.11749257]

>>11746972
the once and future goat

[Anonymous No.11749262]

>>11749257
he's very good but certainly not GOAT

[Anonymous No.11749276]

Also /fit/ and devilishly handsome so /lit/ can but seethe.

[Anonymous No.11749603]

>>11749257
Pseud

[Anonymous No.11750239]

>>11749603
>he thinks hating on Fitzgerald makes him smart

sorry about your microbrain, anon-sama

[Anonymous No.11750268]

>>11746972
John Updike, Nabokov, Joyce, Milton, Shakespeare are all English writers who write sheer inner-ear-candy a lot of the times. I feel bad placing Updike besides them because he’s pretty shallow, trite, and repetitive besides the luscious style. He was actually the genuine boomer meme in real life and in his outlook.

[Anonymous No.11750284]

>>11749276
>/fit/ author
wow, totally never seen that before

[Anonymous No.11750300]

Conrad, Hemingway and Faulkner were not particularly good writers outside of the odd passage or short story, read more books plebs
>>11750268
>He was actually the genuine boomer meme in real life and in his outlook.
He really was, I'm glad somebody else noticed it. He was an extremely talented writer but just had no interesting stories or ideas inside him.

[Anonymous No.11750322]

>>11748821
Dickens is maybe not the best, but definitely one of the most recognisable/idiosyncratic stylists of his time (maybe with the exception of Carlyle): i feel like one is far more likely to recognise his style than that of Trollope or Eliot or Gissing.

people don't like him on here because he has enduring mass appeal and for some reason Dickens (like Shakespeare) inspires an insane resentment amongst americans

[Anonymous No.11750338]

>>11750322
>for some reason Dickens (like Shakespeare) inspires an insane resentment amongst americans
Jealousy mostly, the French are also pretty salty towards English literature

[Anonymous No.11750358]

>>11750300
>Conrad and Faulkner were not particularly good writers outside of the odd passage or short story
Holy shit imagine being this much of a pseudo-intellectual

[Anonymous No.11750380]

>>11750300
>Conrad, Hemingway and Faulkner were not particularly good writers outside of the odd passage or short story

I think you’re the one who needs to read more books.

[Anonymous No.11750386]

>>11750322
Pleb-tier: hating Dickens for being long-winded
Mid-tier: thinking Dickens is the greatest writer of all time
High-tier: unironically loving Dickens and finding him hilariously entertaining, wishing his books were longer, but recognizing his limitations

[Anonymous No.11750399]

>>11750358
>the horror! the horror!
Conrad is a meme, his work has aged terribly and is just corny boat imperialism these days

Same with Faulkner but instead his work is corny cob southerner woe is me I have some nigger blood in me bullshit, nobody cares unless you are some insecure yank desperate to elevate your provincial writers

[Anonymous No.11750405]

Jack Kerouac has good prose, worth a mention

[Anonymous No.11750411]

>>11750380
stay mad pleb, you probably haven't read more than 10 authors and are some Harold Bloom cocksucker

[Anonymous No.11750415]

>>11750386
Where do I start with Dickens?

>>11750300
>>11750399
>>11750411
I'm curious, what authors do you hold in high regard?

[Anonymous No.11750435]

>>11750415
Gene Wolfe, naturally

[Anonymous No.11750450]

>>11750415
I started with Great Expectations and that was pretty good. David Copperfield is my favorite though.

[Anonymous No.11750460]

Favourite of all time is either Melville or Proust, can't decide. But I've been reading a lot of Don Delilo lately and I've been really, really impressed by his prose. Probably not a goat, but he's much better than I was expecting him to be for some reason. The Airborne Toxic Event from White Noise in particular is fantastic. It's nice to read a more modern and still active writer who can write decent prose.

[Anonymous No.11750542]

>>11746972
/lit/ shits on him for whatever reason, but Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian puts him near the Olympus of the Greats

[Anonymous No.11750566]

>>11750542
this is facts, but if you include McCarthy you have to include Faulkner too.

[Anonymous No.11750578]

>>11750542
The crazy esoteric vocabulary in BM can get a bit much, there are words that I’m not sure even existed before that book, or can’t be found in any dictionaries, but the sentence that goes on for a couple pages and describes the Glanton Gang riding in to wreck shit in the first third or so of the book is a beautiful piece of work. All the Pretty Horses is a different style (more romantic) but also good.

[Anonymous No.11750606]

>>11750542
People talk shit on Corncob here?

[Anonymous No.11750916]

>>11750460
>White Noise
I had to put this down after the protagonist described his son as a school shooter. Some of the worst most plain reading I've ever done

[Anonymous No.11751320]

Bump for Conrad

[Anonymous No.11751401]

>>11750542
Double digit IQ corncobber detected.

[Anonymous No.11751412]

>>11751401
The only reason Corncob gets shit here is because he's popular
Eat shit