Francis Bacon.
Francis Bacon.
Most of his novels bore me to tears, but I greatly admire Henry James' style and craft. He doesn't use every big word he knows in every sentence; and the devices are used sparingly to a greater effect. The texts are smoothly written.
I don't know what a prose stylist is meant to convey ....
If you mean a writer who has a unique style, then I prefer Hemingway above all others. How anyone could find The Sun Also Rises boring is beyond my comprehension. I have read that novel 4 or 5 times, and find it intriguing. I have just gone through his major novels on cd, and they are a joy to listen to. I have just finished listening to around ten of his short stories, read by Stacy Keach who does a remarkable job. I read A Moveable Feast last month, but now I am going to listen to a new updated version with more of Hemingway's original writing thrown in. When first published, this book was edited by Mary Hemingway and others at Scribners. Now a new edition with a very good introduction by H's grandson is available. For the first time, in this Introduction, Hemingway's suicide is discussed and blamed upon his loss of memory and inability to write again caused by electric shock treatments at The Mayo clinic. The Health Care clinicians won another victory, as so aptly told by Ken Kesey. Someone posted here a month or so ago that H had cancer. Not true! He was killed by the Mayo Clininic.
Listening to the major works of Hemingway is my fourth time through hismajor works, and the clarity of his writing always amazes me. And his staging of flashbacks, as another poster said, are incredible.
Last edited by dfloyd; 07-06-2010 at 10:46 AM.
Could you say why he was attending the Mayo Clinic?Originally Posted by dfloyd
"L'art de la statistique est de tirer des conclusions erronèes a partir de chiffres exacts." Napoléon Bonaparte.
"Je crois que beaucoup de gens sont dans cet état d’esprit: au fond, ils ne sentent pas concernés par l’Histoire. Mais pourtant, de temps à autre, l’Histoire pose sa main sur eux." Michel Houellebecq.
Nabakov is a great recommendation, he's got wonderful prose style. Honestly, I haven't yet made it thru any Joyce, his language is far too, well, dull to me. One obvious choice for me is italo Calvino. I can't believe nobody mentioned him (okay, maybe because he isn't classified as an English author? Either way he deserves mention!), he's got enormous creative power and beautiful literary style, his prose is rich, well thought out, and original!
"Her friends' lips were red, their teeth white, and their tongues and gums were pink. Pink, too, were the tips of their breasts. Their eyes were aquamarine blue, cherry-black, hazel and maroon."
-Cosmicomics; Without Colors; Italo Calvino.
...
"The lawn mower attends with defeaning shudder to the tonsure; a light odor of fresh hay intoxicates the air; the leveled grass finds again a bristling infancy; but the bite of the blades reveals unevenness, mangy clearings, yellow patches."
-Mr. Palomar; The Infinite Lawn; Italo Calvino.
Last edited by EddytheFlow; 06-27-2010 at 06:03 PM.
Calvino isn't classified as an English writer because he doesn't write in English. If we are going into non-English writers it would seem you'd need to speak the language and be able to read the work in the original before you begin speaking of this or that writer as a brilliant prose stylist in Italian, German, French, etc...
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
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Gertrude Stein's prose always puts a smile on my face.
edit:
"Clarity is of no importance because nobody listens and nobody knows what you mean no matter what you mean, nor how clearly you mean what you mean. But if you have vitality enough of knowing enough of what you mean, somebody and sometime and sometimes a great many will have to realize that you know what you mean and so they will agree that you mean what you know, what you know you mean, which is as near as anybody can come to understanding any one."
Last edited by OrphanPip; 06-27-2010 at 07:00 PM.
Well, that's not what we mean by prose style. All authors are unique - that's part of being human. It seems as if you're saying u prefer him for his uniqueness rather than his actual skill. Which is fine - regardless - his style does not lend itself to prose like awesomeness.
{edit}
Last edited by Scheherazade; 06-27-2010 at 07:08 PM. Reason: personal comments
Nabokov, yes....maybe Fitzgerald (though coming back to him I find his novels to be a mess--there are some brilliant and beautiful blurbs--but the construction is a disaster.)
Lawrence kind of rocks. And Truman Capote.
I am looking at this as talking about the beauty of language at it's highest.
LOL! And I'll keep my mouth shut about Hemingway--I'm mad at him right now.
"I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult."
~E.B. White
Jazz music began as a relatively easy style to listen to, and even to play, but as it progressed, it grew more complex and difficult, until along came bebop and only virtuosos could play that music and it got pretty hard to listen to. So along came rock and roll - simple instrumentation, simple chord progressions and rhythms, and woo hoo! We're back to something we can all play and listen to.
Then rock got pretentious, with the arrival of highly skilled players such as Hendrix and Clapton, and with the development of progressive rock, only virtuosos could play it and relatively few liked listening to it. So along came punk rock, and woo hoo! We're back to what's easy and comprehensible.
Maybe a similar thing happened in literature. In the late nineteenth century, prose was getting pretty flowery, and with the late Henry James and others, it was maybe getting a bit unwieldy. And with Joyce's Ulysses in 1922, it got, for many people, unreadable. So along comes Hemingway in the 1920s and he writes simply, and woo hoo! Literature is easy again!
Hemingway was literature's punk rocker.
I'm just tossing that out there; I'm not prepared to defend it with actual arguments or anything. I'll just mostly use emoticons.
minstrelbard--I think you're my new favorite posterI'm not prepared to defend it with actual arguments or anything. I'll just mostly use emoticons.
"I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult."
~E.B. White
Agreed.minstrelbard--I think you're my new favorite poster
Yeah, I can see James Joyce as Jimi Hendrix. The timing doesn't really add up, but Henry Miller is, of course, Keith Richards.
Hemingway can be Sid Vicious.
I like the writing style of Cather, Thoreau, Edward Abbey, John McPhee, Barry Lopez, and Rachel Carson.
“Oh crap”
-- Hellboy
People may not be able to play like Hendrix, but they can listen to Hendrix. Normal people can not write like Hemingway or Joyce, does not matter much.
The complexity of Joyce is exagerated, it is not his invention, Mallarme was as much obscure as him and literature always had some tendency towards obscure meanings. Neo Classics like Voltaire aimed simplicity, Poe or Tchekhov too. But then you have Borges with a language simple enough for a kid and the entire complexity of themes. Even James, stilized, but far from the word-play of Joyce or even Carroll (Coleridge was already complaning about simplification of prose writers while compared to poetry writers), and of course, Stevenson was simple as hell.
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