Title says it all, which writers do you find have the most authentic, powerful, memorable, or skillful dialogue?
I would say Raymond Carver, Ernest Hemingway, and occasionally Don DeLillo just to name some of the more recent writer's I've read.
Title says it all, which writers do you find have the most authentic, powerful, memorable, or skillful dialogue?
I would say Raymond Carver, Ernest Hemingway, and occasionally Don DeLillo just to name some of the more recent writer's I've read.
particularly in the Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo/
Faulkner
'For sale: baby shoes, never worn'. Hemingway
For skillful dialogue is saying Austen or Wilde too obvious?
I agree, Don DeLillo is a virtuoso of realistic dialogue that he manages to impregnate with poetry and meaning that corresponds to the general theme of his works.
Out of Milan Kundera's books, I have only read "The Unbearable Lightness.." but found the dialogue there particularly striking.
William Gaddis...He puts more emphasis on dialogue than description, and manages to give each character such a distinct voice that you are aware of who's talking even when no name is given (and it usually isn't).
Have to give this one to Joyce.
I wrote a poem on a leaf and it blew away...
There's very little dialogue in the Faulkner and Joyce I've read (Absalom, Absalom! S&F, and P of A). It's all monologue. i would have to give this to Harper Lee.
Talk to me sometime. http://dysfunctional-harmony.tumblr.com/
Steinbeck, for sure.
"All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours." -Aldous Huxley
"Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires." -William Blake
I just finished reading JR and I do agree with you in that his characters are readily identifiable through their dialogue, yet I must say that a large portion of what is said pointless, though that was probably Gaddis' point, along with how the characters always talk past each other, rather than interact in coherent conversation.
I didn't enjoy reading JR very much, which was disappointing because I enjoyed The Recognitions and Agape Agape a lot, have you read JR, if so, what did you think of it?
Last edited by ChicagoReader; 03-15-2012 at 05:15 PM.
Nope, not yet...I have it, though, and I loved The Recognitions so much that I was tempted to start JR immediately.
Gaddis took a hell of a lot outta me, though. It might be a few months before I get around to his second novel. I hope that I like it whenever I do read it. He's the best new discovery I've made in years.
R C Hutchinson. Golding. Scott (in some parts) Stevenson. Burnett