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/lit/ - Literature

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File: 8 KB, 259x194, george saunders.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
21656992 No.21656992 [Reply] [Original]

is he the best living writer? shill me your favorites

>> No.21657014

>>21656992
>shill me your favorites
What do you want to read? Will help narrow down things.

>> No.21657023

>>21657014

high quality contemporary short stories mainly, but also poetry and novels. doesn't have to be Saunders-like, just looking for the best literature being published today

>> No.21657026

>>21656992
Gavin McInnes was so funny back in 2016

>> No.21657063

>>21656992
There's no living writer towards whom I don't have at least one or two strong criticisms to make.
But... The usual ones. Krasznahorkai, Pynchon, and others I mentioned in some other thread yesterday.

On a second consideration... I suppose I don't have any strong criticisms towards Barth, and I have read one of his books from cover to cover, so maybe he is my favorite.
Lost in the Funhouse was maybe too slow, but that's a minor fault, and I found it pretty funny sometimes. He's not a genius like Pynchon, but Pynchon a lot of the time is just too verbose. That's also one of my criticisms of Krasznahorkai - the other being that he's too sentimental at times, with suicide children and all that. But he has amazing moments too, as though Kafka had read Beckett, and his humor is better than Pynchon's and Barth's, so maybe Krasznahorkai. It's hard to choose.
Who else? Blood Meridian and White Noise are fine books. Handke is good, specially in his essays, but not great (maybe in German he is), and again perhaps too sentimental. Vargas Llosa can be really fun, and so can César Aira and Vila Matas. Fosse is good, but too highly influenced by Beckett, at least in what I've read of his -- he needs more originality, maybe he has some more original books I haven't read.

Other than those, I liked what little I've read by Jacques Roubaud, Pere Gimferrer, Bei Dao, and Adonis, and also enjoyed random pages by Vollmann, Claudio Magris, and others.

I won't "shill" them. If you're curious, just google it.

>> No.21657070

>>21657063

thanks!

>> No.21657166

>>21656992
Paul Auster's novels share at least the sentimentality, minimalism and subtlety of Saunder's fiction. (I love Saunder's stories btw) New York Trilogy, Mr. Vertigo, Man in the Dark and The Music of Chance are some of my favorites by him. Kazuo Ishiguro is another brilliant contemporary writer, I'm sure you've heard of him, his short story collection Nocturnes is pretty great

>> No.21657174

>>21657166
*Minimalist prose, I should've specified. Although his novels tend to be on the shorter side, I don't know whether Auster's fiction could be considered minimalist on the whole since his plotting can get pretty sprawling at times

>> No.21657175
File: 37 KB, 452x678, 2575790045679.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
21657175

>>21656992

>> No.21657191

>>21657063
Lol

>> No.21657281

>>21657191
There's no one better than those.

>> No.21657297

>>21657281
Lol

>> No.21657370

>>21657297
Who, then? What are their names?

>> No.21657419

>>21656992
read his first two collection. tryhard at being funny, saying something smart and relevant, but it's none of that, it's all very on-the-nose, often downright sentimental. hundred leagues under Barthelme, Pynchon or Vonnegut.