Rank the Big 4

[Anonymous No.18671966]

Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, Philip Roth, Thomas Pynchon

[Anonymous No.18671972]

>>18671966
Margaret "Meg" Boyle, Giancarlo Ditrapano, Blake Butler, Mira Gonzalez

[Anonymous No.18671975]

Pynchon>roth>mccarthy>delillo
Delillo's the only one i dont really like

[Anonymous No.18671979]

1. Thomas Pynchon

power gap

34. Cormac McCarthy
35. Don DeLillo
36. Philip Roth

[Anonymous No.18671996]

>>18671966
DeLillo does not belong in the same sentence as the rest of these people (and it's Roth>Pynchon>McCarthy)

[Anonymous No.18672085]

>>18671966
Cormac McCarthy>>>>>>rest of the three
Roth being last.

[Anonymous No.18672160]

>>18671966
I'm assuming you got this list from Harold Bloom because he very publicly listed these exact 4 writers as the best writers currently alive before he and Roth died. So I'm guessing you didn't think of this yourself but just copied his thoughts. But who knows, maybe you didn't.

I think the only other writer he praised enough to approach those 4 was Toni Morrison. He probably would have liked her more if she wasn't so political and a part of the "school of resentment."

[Anonymous No.18672165]

Faulkner

[Anonymous No.18672173]

MCarthy>Pynchon>Roth=DeLillo

[Anonymous No.18672174]

Where to start with Roth?

[Anonymous No.18672191]

>>18671966
All are about the same. A decent amount of published novels, a few great books, a few duds and annoying to read if you’re not in the mood for them

[Anonymous No.18672197]

>>18671966
It’s three authors who at least are the best in a particular class of literature and Cormeme McCarthy, patron saint of /r/ifuckinglovebooks

[Anonymous No.18672202]

>>18672197
Of all the books these 4 wrote, Blood Meridian is genuinely the only one that really stands out. I don’t see what the argument that he’s a meme even is.

[Anonymous No.18672224]

>>18672202
based retard

[Anonymous No.18672230]

>>18672197
>who at least are the best in a particular class of literature
What classes are those? Being neurotic retards? (especially Roth)

[Anonymous No.18672250]

The prologue to underworld is the best written thing in the English language even if the novel is ultimately disappointing trash so delillos alright in my book

[Anonymous No.18672280]

>>18671966
Pynchon, Mccarthy, DeLillo, Roth

None of them are what I would call great. American literature has fallen from a great height

[Anonymous No.18672290]

>>18672280
American lit never existed. 90% of the good stuff is from the south and more southern than American. Everything else is very anti-establishment and never embraced america like authors from other countries embraced their own

[Anonymous No.18672292]

>>18672224
How am I a retard? I’m saying that Cormac McCarthy wrote the only really memorable novel out of all of these people, arguably the only really memorable novel of the last 50 years at least. How on earth is he a meme?

[Anonymous No.18672300]

William Gass
William Gaddis
John Hawkes
Robert Coover
*power gap*
Philip Roth
Don DeLillo
*power gap*
Thomas Pynchon
*power gap*
Cormac McCarthy

[Anonymous No.18672341]

>>18672300
This but bottom to top

[Anonymous No.18672347]

>>18672160
> a part of the "school of resentment"
was she? Idk much about her but I'm pretty sure she thought highly of classics

[Anonymous No.18672393]

>>18672290
The USA has a bunch of great writers, especially for such a young country.

[Anonymous No.18672403]

>>18672250
The best part? You can get Pafko at the Wall and have it isolated from the rest of the novel.

[Anonymous No.18672409]

>>18672300
I mostly agree with this. I love Pynchon but he largely fails at creating truly empathetic characters, you never feel like this could be you. A great many of his minor characters and many of the characters in his first two works and Vineland shows he can do it, but we never get the whole package of his great technique and characterization. It is hard to ever forget that his characters are tools of the author. I kind of hope that Pynchon's last novel will be his take on the great American novel.

I might switch Gass and Gaddis, have yet to read Coover but he is on the list. Delillo and Roth seem fixated on the great American novel and never branch out and take chances. Cormac is too busy being Cormac, I would love to see him really take a chance and do something different, he developed his shtick and stuck with it.

[Anonymous No.18672422]

>>18672409
>I would love to see him really take a chance and do something different
Any ideas on that?
Of these writers I find McCarthy to be the one who evolved the most from his first novel to the last one, although I feel Nfcom and The Road were unneeded because they tread on the path his earlier books did.

[Anonymous No.18672481]

>>18672422
>Any ideas on that?
Could be anything, whole world of ideas and themes out there to explore. He and Pynchon both sort of play it safe in this regard. They could learn a lot from each other, Cormac needs to be less serious and Pynchon more serious.

[Anonymous No.18672512]

>>18671966
This is my ranking of the big postmodern fiction writers:
>Samuel Beckett
>Don Delillo
>A.S Byatt
>Graham Swift
>Donald Barthelme
>Thomas Pynchon
>Philip Roth
>Cormac McCarthy
>John Barth
>Saul Bellow
>Vladimir Nabokov
>William Gass
>Salman Rushdie
>Paul Auster
>Toni Morrison
>Haruki Murakami
>Kurt Vonnegut

[Anonymous No.18672522]

>>18672512
Beckett, McCarthy and Nabokov are not postmodern

[Anonymous No.18672526]

Delillo>>>>Coomer Bellow>Faulkner for Redditors>Gaddis for Normies

[Anonymous No.18672536]

>>18672522
What on earth are you talking about? Of course, they are. Beckett was pretty much the bridge between European modernism and postmodernism especially when you look at his trilogy Malloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable, McCarthy is definitely in the post-modern camp, and how can you read something like Pale Fire and not see the post-modern soak from its pages?

[Anonymous No.18672544]

>>18672536
>Beckett was pretty much the bridge between European modernism and postmodernism especially when you look at his trilogy Malloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable,
explain how. and don't use Wikipedia.

[Anonymous No.18672557]

>>18672544
The breakdown of the narrative, plot, and even structure within that trilogy aligns with the many different techniques of postmodern fiction. Fucking hell, The Unnamable is pretty much just a floating hoshposh of different consciousnesses. Literally, Beckett is deconstructing the entire notions and techniques of fiction, which is one of the quintessential trademarks of postmodern fiction. What's your argument to say it isn't postmodern?

[Anonymous No.18672569]

>>18672557
>What's your argument to say it isn't postmodern?
that you just described modernism.

[Anonymous No.18672573]

>>18672536
Beckett's writing is primarily about the voice, the I. That is a modernist concern. Inspiring later postmodernists have nothing to do with it, otherwise Joyce would be a postmodernist himself. McCarthy doesn't have a single postmodern work.
Pale fire is postmodern in the metacontext but most of Nabokov's works are not like that (Pnin is another exception). He doesn't tick other criteria for being Postmodern either. Experimental writing =/= postmodern

[Anonymous No.18672583]

>>18672557
>deconstructing the entire notions and techniques of fiction, which is one of the quintessential trademarks of postmodern fiction.
No. Modernist works did them too. Faulkner is more daring than 90% of the postmodernists but he is a pillar of modernism

[Anonymous No.18672615]

>>18671966
Based Tim Buckley

[Anonymous No.18672632]

Of those authors I have read:
>All of Pynchon’s works
>Delillo:
White Noise
Mao II
Libra
>McCarthy:
The Road
Blood Meridian
Child of God
>Roth:
Operation Shylock

Of those, Operation Shylock was the one I liked the least and his obsession with Jewish identity completely turned me off his work. Pynchon is, however, my second favorite writer, with his V. and Against the Day being two of my favorite books. White Noise was great and I liked Libra. The Road was mediocre, but I like Child of God.
So Pynchon> Delillo> McCarthy> Roth for my personal tastes.

[Anonymous No.18673933]

bump

[Anonymous No.18673977]

>>18672160
I'm assuming you got this language from English because it's very public and these are the exact letters that English uses. So I'm guessing you didn't invent this language yourself but just copied it's form. But who knows, maybe you didnt.

[Anonymous No.18674202]

>>18672409
Actually a great critique of pynchon. I say he can get away with non empathetic characters because his books are far more plot and idea oriented. He has a mastery of narrative but his characters are his weakest point. I just think that he gives so much other great stuff in his writing and that many of the characters are compelling, albeit not as compelling as a woolf or faulkner character. See young stencil, esther, blicero, slothrop, frenesi gates, mason/dixon. It's a minor flaw, but he more than makes up for it for me. Maybe other types of readers wont agree.

[Anonymous No.18674253]

>>18671966
Pynchon > Delillo > McCarthy
Roth doesn't really deserve to be placed among those three. He's almost as worthless as Johnathan Franzen.

[Anonymous No.18674401]

>>18672292
Because it's something popular and 4chan mistakes contrarianism for being intelligent

[Anonymous No.18675124]

>>18671966
I have read atleast 3 books from each and I would say that only Cormac McCarthy is the truly great one. Transcends his region; transcends the literary movement (if he does fall under any umbrella).
Pynchon and Delillo would be next but fairly behind. I can't choose among them, Delillo's the better stylist but Pynchon is overall more interesting. Both are very incompetent at characters and emotions though, but Delillo has a certain Americanness to his writing which might make him less appealing in the broadest sense.
Roth I don't understand. He is funnier than the other 3 but I feel you have to be jewish to really appreciate him. If Bloom could put away his biases (he could not; unsurprisingly, 3 of the 4 here were his NY buddies) Saul Bellow was more deserving of a place than those 3. Maybe John Updike as well, but I haven't read him enough as of yet.

>>18674202
In his early books, he seems to be floundering desu. It isn't for a lack of trying because he does try hard to make the reader feel for Benny, but it feels kind of artificial. That scene with those 3 jailbaits really soured me on profane; it was oversentimental. From your list I would pick only Blicero as a compelling character. Rest have their moments but don't seem fully human. Even Blicero has his downs.
Haven't read M&D yet.

[Anonymous No.18675223]

>>18672409
I don't think Pynchon's intent is ever to make the reader empathize with the character. His characterization techniques are literally lifted from Looney Tunes and the like.

[Anonymous No.18675231]

>>18672300
I can't believe you put Pynchon below DeLillo.
Are you retarded, or something?

[Anonymous No.18675730]

>>18672409
You guys don’t empathize with Rachel telling Profane to stop hanging out with his weed buddies and talking about Wittgenstein and Ionesco and whoever? You don’t sympathize with Mexico and Swanlake’s “they’re in love. Fuck the war?” What about Pirate looking at Mexico and seeing that it is just like his relationship with Scorpio Mossmoon, and he doesn’t know whether to root for Mexico or not? What about tchitcherine thinking that if it weren’t for the girl and the war, he and slothrop would be buds. What about margherita and her abuse and her advice for slothrop against the word random? What about the husband and wife in V who are Shakespeare’s Katherine and Petrrucio? What about Stencil and his search? Owen fucking Wilson? Mexico freaking out because he worried too much about statistics? Profane’s Hispanic mob-boss girlfriend? The jazz player? Fucking winsome who drove the car to be preoccupied and Mafia??? What about Ethel and her nose job bro? I know compassion is compassionless, but do not deride character!

[Anonymous No.18675818]

>>18674202
He absolutely pulls it off, but the scatter shot use of empathy seems to have no logic and the overall trend in his works is to further remove the reader.

>>18675223
I can not tell if you are trolling, first sentence suggests no, second yes. LooneyTunes have a fair amount of room for empathy, a surprising amount considering the limitations of the format. The problem most people have is they never look at them any deeper than a 5 year old would, LooneyTunes and their ilk had a tendency to give you both a childish and a mature view at the same time and they cram an insane amount into those shorts. On the childish level we have a basic good triumphing over evil theme, very black and white. On the more mature level we realize that roles of protagonist and antagonist are actually the opposite of what they seemed in our youth, the antagonists of our youth are just doing what is in their nature, they are attempting to survive and get by in an increasingly ludicrous and complex world.

[Anonymous No.18675856]

>>18675730
as I said
>A great many of his minor characters and many of the characters in his first two works and Vineland shows he can do it.
Just think about how soul crushing of a novel it would be if we empathized with deeply with Slothrop, he absolutely attempts this but it falls short.

[Anonymous No.18676906]

>>18672174
Goodbye Columbus

[Anonymous No.18676935]

Pynchon>McCarthy>DeLillo>Roth
Roth is not on the same level as the other three

[Anonymous No.18677056]

Pinch>Lilly>Mac>Roth

[Anonymous No.18677137]

DFW
*power gap*
everyone else
*power gap*
*power gap*
my diary desu
*power gap*
thomas pynshit

[Anonymous No.18677975]

>>18675856
Entropy overtakes compassion. But Pynchon is an artist so he also says otherwise and gives us Mason & Dixon.

[Anonymous No.18677995]

>>18671966
Bloom's shilling for fellow members of the tribe is so obvious. It's ludicrous to believe that Roth compares.

[Anonymous No.18678005]

Post your top three American writers of all time. I'll start:
1. Edgar Allan Poe
2. Flannery O'Connor
2. DFW

[Anonymous No.18678064]

>>18677995
And 2 honorary members of the tribe as well (Pynchon and Delillo)

[Anonymous No.18678068]

The only one of these I don't like is Roth, but each has entirely different talents that to rank them seems foolish. Pynchon can build grand, weaving plots that require much interpretive work of the reader, as well as writing amazingly long-winded sentences, while Delillo is great at connecting seemingly disparate ideas (nuclear war and football, pop culture and death, Lee Harvey Oswald and identity construction, etc.) And making pretty sounding sentences. McCarthy excels at aesthetics and atmosphere - his work is truly chilling - and his characters are fun to speculate about

[Anonymous No.18678072]

>>18678005
>Delillo
Gonna get crucified for these next two but
>Kerouac
>Hammett

[Anonymous No.18678147]

>>18678005
Don Delillo, William Gaddis, Donald Barthelme

[Anonymous No.18678156]

>>18672292
Don’t listen to that retard, you’re right and you know what you’re talking about. It’s fucking great. Distinctly American. And more memorable and entertaining than anything any of the others have ever put out.
That said, if we’re ranking strictly on talent alone, I’d say:
>Pynchon
>McCarthy
>Roth
>Delillo
Pynchon indeed had the most potential out of all of them. Truly had the potential to be an all time great. But he fucked up and the worst part is he knows it. And the evidence is his last few books that have quite clearly tried to garner a bigger audience like McCarthy always tried to do. It’s why he started licensing for movies, etc. He was/is jealous of McCarthy’s success.

[Anonymous No.18678168]

>>18672512
>trying way too hard

[Anonymous No.18678190]

>>18678005
Melville
Twain
HL Mencken

[Anonymous No.18679216]

>>18672174
goodbye columbus

[Anonymous No.18679216,1]

>>18678168
fucking idiot

[Anonymous No.18679216,2]

>>18672526
DeLillo is LITERALLY Gaddis for normies