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/lit/ - Literature

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18414441 No.18414441 [Reply] [Original]

Name a better prose stylist who wrote non-fiction.
Pro-tip; you can’t.

A History of Western Philosophy is a masterwork of prose. It is the epitome of prose, actually.
Prose is meant to be writing that emulates the natural flow of speech. Russell’s writing does exactly that.

>> No.18414459 [DELETED] 

>>18414441
>Name a better prose stylist who wrote non-fiction.
Montaigne. Browne. Nietzsche. Bacon.

>> No.18414463 [DELETED] 

>>18414441
>Prose is meant to be writing that emulates the natural flow of speech
>meant
spook

>> No.18414471

>>18414441
John Henry Newman and Edward Gibbon

>> No.18414486

>>18414441
History of Western Philosophy is bullshit. That anglo faggot misrepresents anyone he disagrees with.

>> No.18414514

>>18414486
As if the people on /lit/ who hate Russell or analytics in general don't misrepresent them severely.

>> No.18414521 [DELETED] 

>>18414514
This guy is talking about a particular book and here you are, misrepresenting him and making his statement more general. Fuck you, hypocrite.

>> No.18414522

>>18414441
Post a sample, please.

>> No.18414527
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18414527

is his history any better than this? will be buying one soon

>> No.18414529

>>18414486
It’s philosophy, not physics.
He’s just honest about his opinions. Everyone heavily invested in philosophy will have opinions on philosophy. The entire history of Western philosophy is philosophers attacking their predecessors

>> No.18414530 [DELETED] 

>>18414527
Yours is better

>> No.18414540 [DELETED] 

>>18414529
You should reverve your opinions in your warm asshole if your book is called "The History of [whatever]"

>> No.18414554

>>18414521
Wow you literally just misrepresented my post, good fucking job. When I talk about a "them" I'm not saying "he" is part of the "them." It's a mistake of you to think that.

>> No.18414568 [DELETED] 

>>18414554
Then why even reply to him if he has nothing to do with that? Just to blow Russell's decrepit dick?

>> No.18414575

>>18414568
>why do people TALK i just dont UNDERSTAND why they would ever VOICE AN OPINION when they've got the free time and will to do so
It's not that hard dude I just felt like saying something, and it happens to be true.

>> No.18414621

I was about to take you seriously, but your misuse of the semicolon has sickened me.

>> No.18414645

>>18414459
that was easy kek

>> No.18414651

>>18414621
It was unintentional—I know my punctuation. I am phoneposting with large thumbs and blurry vision from allergies.

>> No.18414705

he's not a very good prose writer. he has too much of that dumb, pseudo-witty british sarcasm that you always come across in old textbooks and newspaper articles and stuff like that, gets annoying.

>> No.18414709
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18414709

>>18414441
he's anglo, personified.

>> No.18414738

>>18414709
So, a member of the master race?

>> No.18414743 [DELETED] 

>>18414738
he wasn't German, so no.

>> No.18414804

>>18414527
Grayling is a retard

>> No.18414909

HACK

>> No.18414919

>>18414463
Explain. I bet it was a good one, anon, but I'm dumb.

>> No.18414929

>>18414441
Is that will Durant?

>> No.18416054

>>18414441
bait

>> No.18416063

>>18414529
>philosophy is just opinions

>> No.18416065

>>18416063
Yes

>> No.18416072
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18416072

Luke

>> No.18416979

>>18414441
I agree, Russell's prose in AHOWP is really good. I disagree vehemently with almost all his political opinions but I still like this book.

To say he's the best non-fiction prose stylist is a large claim, though. It depends what you're after. His strength is his clarity. The writing gets out of the way and conveys the ideas to you as simply and elegantly as possible. Most renowned "prose stylists" are much more fussy; the writing itself is really in evidence, with a distinct personality of its own. That can get annoying, but it also allows certain effects that Russell can't achieve. Russell could never have written this, for example —

She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants; and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary; and all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it has moulded the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the hands.

— but then he probably didn't want to.

So you just have to decide what you're after. Plain directness (Wittgenstein, Hazlitt, George Orwell, Hemingway, Raymond Carver, Graham Greene, etc) or elaborate baroque constructions (Thomas Browne, Edward Gibbon, Walter Pater, Thomas Carlyle, James Joyce, etc).

>> No.18417092

>>18414441
Sam Johnson, Thomas Browne, William Hazlitt, Edward Gibbon... go back
>>18416979
This looks like a copy-pasted list of great prose stylists but I hope I'm wrong, hazlitt respecters are rare

>> No.18417152

I dislike Freud but the Interpretation of Dreams read like I was munching on a marshmallow.