Who wrote the best prose in the 20th century?

[John Goodman]

Nabokov and Fitzgerald, with Cormac McCarthy being a less mentioned but very beautiful writer.

[Mark F.]

Hemingway, Salinger, Faulkner, Beckett, Kafka, Camus, Bukowski's dialogue, some of Hunter S. Thompson's narratives, Ellroy's style in some of his later works, Cormac McCarthy (Suttree), Fitzgerald.

[Big Al]

Cormac McCarthy.

[mortalterror]

1.Hemingway
2.Faulkner (sometimes)
3.Fitzgerald
4.Nabokov
5.Kerouac (But only in On the Road)
6.Woolf

I don't think it's the style that makes Salinger so memorable, and as much as I love Thompson he's much too hit or miss. Still, there are so many other characteristics to judge an author by. Steinbeck's style is dog meat but look at what beautiful books he's written. If we were to expand this census to French, then Proust obviously deserves a mention; so too does Marquez if we expand it to Spanish as well.

I think it's important to point out that most of the people on this list were born around 1900 and are representative of a distinct literary era that emphasized style over many other important literary aspects. I think the reason that most people pull a blank when thinking about more contemporary authors is because the criterion we judge them by, or the criterion they judge their own work by, has changed.

[Big Al]

Perhaps I'm simply a philistine, but I cannot stand Nabokov's writing style. Lolita was a grueling chore.

[toni]

I am torn between Franz Kafka and D.H Lawrence, but I''l just go for Kafka.

[Inderjit Sanghe]

There are writers with pretty styles who didn't use the style to add to the content of the writing, so the style was wasted.

This, of course, opens up a wide-range of new questions, such as "What is content?", and, as somebody has already pointed out, sometimes a writer's style can be the content. Nabokov is a perfect example of this, though he has his roots in Russsian symbolism (Bely, Blok) rather than Joyce, the other main exponent of 'style is content'. Quite often writers who value content over style do not have a great (or original) style.

Perhaps I'm simply a philistine, but I cannot stand Nabokov's writing style. Lolita was a grueling chore.

Yes, well, you said it. (It is not as much of a chore as 'The Brothers Karamazov though.)

[WICKES]

Anthony Burgess did some great things with language. A Clockwork Orange (which owes a big debt to Joyce- someone Burgess studied and admired) is startlingly hypnotic. When bits of the book are quoted in the film they are dazzling- partcularly with Mc Dowell's English accent.

When it comes to non fiction, Aldous Huxley's essays (i.e The Doors Of Perception) achieve near perfect prose. In fact, before Huxley became more concerned with ideas than plot and language, his novels were exquisitely written. Like Evelyn Waugh's novels they had a sort of upper class elegance and shine. D H Lawrence's travel writings contain fine writing. The English/ British travel writer Norman Lewis wrote superbly as well (Graham Greene called him one of the greatest prose stylists of the 20th century). C S Lewis wrote excellent literary criticism and deserves a mention.

What about Virginia Woolf? How is her prose rated? I know she is considered one of the 'Modernists', but what about her prose style? Is it any good?

Joseph Conrad and Henry James haven't been mentioned either.

[patrickbeverley]

James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, all the rest are pygmies compared to these two giants.

Why write a sentence as pompous as this? Really, what is the point?

What about Virginia Woolf? How is her prose rated? I know she is considered one of the 'Modernists', but what about her prose style? Is it any good?

It's wonderful.

[raider60]

I think this boils down to personal taste, and although I've been an avid reader for over forty years tomorrow I could pick up a book and find, to me, that author writes the best prose--

[NickAdams]

Anthony Burgess did some great things with language. A Clockwork Orange (which owes a big debt to Joyce- someone Burgess studied and admired) is startlingly hypnotic. When bits of the book are quoted in the film they are dazzling- partcularly with Mc Dowell's English accent.

I would have no interest in A Clockwork Orange, if it was written any other way.

[PeterL]

This, of course, opens up a wide-range of new questions, such as "What is content?", and, as somebody has already pointed out, sometimes a writer's style can be the content. Nabokov is a perfect example of this, though he has his roots in Russsian symbolism (Bely, Blok) rather than Joyce, the other main exponent of 'style is content'. Quite often writers who value content over style do not have a great (or original) style.

I agree, and that I why I question the value of this thread. Some who have excellent style don't have much content, and the real masters of style use it to convey additional content, like Lovecraft and Nabokov.

[PeterL]

I think this boils down to personal taste, and although I've been an avid reader for over forty years tomorrow I could pick up a book and find, to me, that author writes the best prose--

I agree.

[mortalterror]

It's not a matter of personal taste, and I'll tell you why. The same eight to ten names keep coming up over and over again with regularity. If it were a matter of personal taste then you could expect that the sample would be larger after the number of opinions we've registered. Which one of the ten is absolutely the best is still up for debate but we've effectively reached a general consensus.

There were many more great writers in the twentieth century, English and otherwise, than this handful of names. However, we do not consider their merits to be as great in the area of original prose style as the names already mentioned. Other novelists, playwrights, short story writers, and essayists have left their mark in other ways. Either by their content, their dialogue, or the strength of their ideas, they are noteworthy. If the question could be answered as randomly as you imply then their names would surely receive numerous accolades here as well. The list is conspicuous by their absence and points toward a quorem.

[kelby_lake]

Basically, how I work it is: 'Would I still like this book if it was exactly the same story but written by someone else?'

Are we adding playwrights in?