in your own opinion, who is the best author?

[humbleguy]

Charles bukowski

[PaulMorel]

For me - Dickens is probably the best story teller - though he did write one or two lame novels. Lawrence is my favourite writer - in short fiction and novels - McCullers is great .... carver short stories - Dreiser ....

[stlukesguild]

I'd probably agree with Morpheus with regard to the question of the "ranking" of Blake vs Milton... although considering the Op asked who is your favorite author not who is the best... I'd have to admit, like Hannah, to a preference for Blake. Taking into further consideration Blake's total achievement as a visual artist as well as a poet, I would place him even higher in my esteem.

Other favorites? Shakespeare, Dante, Cervantes, Baudelaire, Montaigne, Kafka, Borges, Italo Calvino, Robert Herrick, Tennyson, Flaubert, Rilke, Montale, Keats, Firdowsi, Pessoa...

[MorpheusSandman]

considering the Op asked who is your favorite author not who is the best... I'd have to admit, like Hannah, to a preference for Blake.

OP asked for our favorites, but threat title for the best, so a bit confusing. Anyway, for me the Milton/Blake issue is somewhat complex, because Blake probably connects to me more emotionally and philosophically. However, being someone who tries to write poetry (even if badly) there's not much in Blake to be inspired by technically. I read Blake and think "this is genius, but I can't do anything with it." On the other hand, I read Milton and get so many ideas about ways to utilize blank verse, structure, syntax etc.. I've often said all of my attempts at longer pieces are really just attempts at rewriting Lycidas, which I feel may be the most perfect poem in the language.

[SFG75]

I love threads like this due to the sheer amount of subjectivity. It's comparable to when people attempt to rate pugilists of different weight classes. Ali or Robinson? Mayweather or Tyson? Hagler or Holmes? I will brave the differences of genres and argue that Dostoyevsky is the best. Artistically, he created substantive characters with different voices and passions, numerous different scenes within a story, all wrapped up nicely with an overall moral tale or problem. He also wasn't a one shot wonder and there could be an equally disagreeable debate about which of his books are the greatest.

[cafolini]

I love threads like this due to the sheer amount of subjectivity. It's comparable to when people attempt to rate pugilists of different weight classes. Ali or Robinson? Mayweather or Tyson? Hagler or Holmes? I will brave the differences of genres and argue that Dostoyevsky is the best. Artistically, he created substantive characters with different voices and passions, numerous different scenes within a story, all wrapped up nicely with an overall moral tale or problem. He also wasn't a one shot wonder and there could be an equally disagreeable debate about which of his books are the greatest.

I agree in many ways.
What do you think will happen with Maidana. Next Mantequilla Napoles? Could develop to that. He's very young.

[hannah_arendt]

I think we can, but I don't think we have to. When it comes to literary theory/criticism/analysis, I'm more of the mind that a critic/theorist should take into account what they want to and ignore what they want to. Every approach yields different insights. Usually, I'm more interested in formal analysis of poetry ala Brooks, Vendler, etc. than I am historical and other contextual analysis, but that's just personal taste. One has to remember that there is no ultimate "meaning" to all literature, there are only different ways to read which yields different meanings.

I have never been able to find any theory of interpretation for me. The meaning is something moving all the time, impossible to catch and describe.

[MorpheusSandman]

I have never been able to find any theory of interpretation for me. The meaning is something moving all the time, impossible to catch and describe.

I'm with you there. If I prefer formalism it's only because I can learn from it as a wannabe poet. I read, eg, Vendler's analysis of formal devices in Shakespeare's sonnets and am inspired to use those devices myself. I'm not opposed to reading theory, or historical/contextual analysis, but it simply doesn't yield meanings that I can make practical use of.

[Nick Capozzoli]

Questions like "Who's the best (or your favorite) writer?" have an irritating quality...and make me think of some divorce-court psychologist asking a seven year old "If your mommy and daddy were hanging from a cliff and you could save only one, whom would you save?" The fortunate fact is that civilization has accumulated a very large amount of great literature. And even if you limit that to English from the Middle through Modern English periods, there is a huge amount of great writing.

That being said, I would answer the question by putting it in a different way: "If you were being banished to some wilderness and could take only one book with you, and that was all you had to read for the rest of your life, which book would you take?" The question would of course be asking about a "literary" book...Let's assume that if you are being banished, Robinson Crusoe-like, you would be allowed to take some basic implements and technical books to help you survive and have some leisure time you to "enjoy" your literary treasure.

To make the question less difficult, assume that your gracious banisher allowed you a "freebie," i.e. you could take a copy of the Bible, the Koran, The Book of Mormon, or any other approved "divinely-inspired" religious text, translated into whatever language you prefer. For my "freebie" I'd take the King James Bible.

My next choice would be "The Collected Works of William Shakespeare." Why? Because I agree with Harold Bloom's opinion (in Shakespeare's Universalism) from Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, that Shakespeare, more than any other writer, was able to render into language a seemingly unlimited range of human experience of the World. We often admire the striking imagery we find here and there in the works of other writers...say in Dickinson's "Twas warm at first like us or Williams' To a Dead Journalist. These and many other works are indeed brilliant linguistic gem-like representations of reality. It's not that other writers haven't written stuff that "catches reality" for the reader. They have done that, and when they do it is "great" poetry.

But Shakespeare's writing is at another level altogether. He captures reality not just here and there but almost everywhere in his writing. And it is not only spread out over the length of his writing. Shakespeare's lines, unlike those of any other writer in English, have the ability to stand up to microscopic analysis (aka "close reading"). This is something that gives his language a quality that makes it seem like "more than language," and "like the real world itself" that scientists, for example, can probe with microscopes.

[Vota]

If I was able to get a freebie spiritual/religious book, it would be probably the King James Bible or the Tao Te Ching. The bible would probably win out because of my western bias.

I would not want to read the complete works of Shakespeare in one volume, which is one reason I don't own a fascimile of the first folio because even though I have a huge preference for leatherbound or high-end books, they all have to be very readable, which for me means a comfortable size and aesthetically easy on the eyes font type.

It's also not particularly fair to have a complete works of Shakespeare because you can, vs a complete set of Dickens which entails a dozen+ books; so I'm assuming that this then becomes a question of which author, whom all their works you could take with you, would you take? I would still probably go with Shakespeare. I would GREATLY miss Montaigne and Plato though, and so many others like Gibbons, Dickens etc.

Man that would be a tough choice. It would be nice if you could also take an additional book or set of books about your chosen author, like a biography, autobiography, or analysis of their works.