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/lit/ - Literature

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19373445 No.19373445 [Reply] [Original]

Best non-fiction with artful prose? Any and all subjects.

>> No.19373450

>>19373445
Radiografía de la Pampa by Martínez Estrada.

>> No.19373452

>>19373445
Edward Gibbon

>> No.19373472

>>19373445
Stefan Zweig's biography of Balzac.

>> No.19373570

>>19373445
Unironically, On The Origin Of Species.
I know evolution triggers autistic contrarian Abrahamists and natural selection triggers retarded histrionic progressives, but Darwin’s prose is often very beautiful. Of all the stem books I have read, none better enobles the beauty of the universe and the divine.
>Inb4 nuh uh he added the “creator” references to the book after the first publishing
Wrong, he added a mention of the creator to the final paragraph later but there are multiple references to the creator/God in the book when he relates his discovery to a wider context of history and the universe at large that have always been there.

>> No.19373594

>>19373445
William James. Varieties of Religious Experience is a good example.

>> No.19373598

das kapital

>> No.19373631

>>19373450
Nice, I just got an anthology of his essays, I'm excited.
I'd rec Octavio Paz and Alfonso Reyes.

>> No.19373673

Consider the Lobster and Other Essays by David Foster Wallace

>> No.19374845
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19374845

>>19373445
In its way the most purely beautiful prose in English. It has only a limited emotional range, but even so, you should at least sample it. The Leonardo da Vinci chapter is the most famous.

>> No.19374851

>>19373445
Montaigne

>> No.19374855

>>19373445
Moby-Dick

>> No.19374857

>>19373452
Oh please, Butterfly.

>> No.19376266

>>19374857
It’s nice prose.

>>19374845
This is a wonderful little book

>>19374855
Non fiction

>> No.19376276

>>19373445
Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey.

>> No.19376336

A Modest Proposal, if you like some 18th century edge

>> No.19377888

>>19373445
The Quran

>> No.19377904
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19377904

>> No.19377954
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19377954

I've only read the Samuel Putnam translation, but it's pretty incredible

>> No.19377959

>>19373445
Huxley's biography of François Leclerc du Temblay "Grey Eminence"
Chekhov's "Sakhalin Island"
Montaigne's "Essays"
Hobbes' "Leviathan" is of course a genius work of English prose.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's essays and Nietzsche's aphorisms.

>> No.19377973

>>19377954
How is the first section "Earth" (I suppose)? Is it too hard to grasp in translation? Because it's almost incomprehensible in the original.

>> No.19377975

>>19373445
If you speak danish, all of Kirkegaard

>> No.19378008

>>19377973
I didn't find it particularly hard to read, but it was absolutely the driest and most dense section of the book. I nearly dropped it early on because I was so confused by how information dense and straightforward it was. I really only stuck with it because the introduction in the edition I have basically just spends dozens of pages raving about how incredible the book is. Very glad I did though.

>> No.19378113
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19378113

Great prose and the only war worthy of serious study

>> No.19378551
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19378551

>>19373445
James Joyce called John Henry Newman the "greatest of English prose writers." He was speaking of his sermons, in particular. See the several potentially useful sources noted in pic related.