Non-Fictional Literature

[atiguhya padma]

When I first started to get into literature, I read a whole spectrum of stuff. One of the forms I particularly liked was the essay. I read Lamb, Hazlitt, Bacon, Hume, Mill etc. It occurs to me now, that this site seems exclusively focussed on fictional literature. But does anyone here enjoy good non-fictional writing? Some of the popularisers of science write extremely well. Richard Dawkins for instance is an accomplished writer. I also like Steve Jones, Stephen Jay Gould, John Gray, Noam Chomsky, A C Grayling, and a load of other good writers.

Who are your favourite non-fictional writers?

[IWilKikU]

I like Chomsky, Eco, Moore, Bloom, Eagleton, classic philosophers such as Niezsche, Hieddeger, Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Aquinas, ect.

[Skippy]

Obviously.

[atiguhya padma]

IWilKikU:

Yeah, I forgot about Eco. Have you read Kant and the Platypus yet? Interesting and thought-provoking, if not entirely original. I've read some of his essays too. How to Travel with a Salmon (?) and Serendipities were both good. I like his style and his thinking.

Den:

I think the only non-fiction of Huxley's that I've read is his The Devils of Loudun. That was an impressive study of human behaviour. I have something by Vargas Llosa at home. I'll have to brush the cobwebs off it and take a peek!

Atiguhya Padma

[crisaor]

I like a lot of the authors you've mentioned so far: Noam Chomsky, Umberto Eco, Aldous Huxley (Ends and Means is a big favourite of mine), Pierre Bourdieu, Arthur Schopenhauer, David Hume, Michael Moore, Paul Feyerabend (pretty wacky, but a lot of fun), Max Weber, John Maynard Keynes, Karl Marx, Joseph Schumpeter, and many other that I can't recall right now.

I'm surprised anyone likes Vargas Llosa. Living in South America makes you very aware of his works, and truth be told, I find his fiction work lame and his political views terryfing. If Bush has an undercover agent, I know who'd be my first guess...

[Diceman]

If you want to include "popular science", then I'd mention Stephen Hawking, James Gleick and Paul Davies, among others.

[subterranean]

I read some of Hawking's the simple ones though. Some other non-fictional writers that I read are Umberto Eco, Amartya Sen, Jean Paul Sartre, Freud and Erich Fromm.

[Isagel]

I just read Freuds "Theories on sexuality" , I also have some of his earlier lectures in german. Fromms book "The sane society" is very interesting.

Chomsky is always an intellectual and ethical challenge. I´m reading his "Rouge states".

Freire, and his "Pedagogy for freedom" changed my view on conversation.

In the religion section I wrote about Karen Armstrongs books on religion. I can really recommend them.

[Sindhu]

I like nearly all early English essayists- Lamb, Hazlitt, Ruskin, Pater(Affected, but still interesting) Mill I found hard going but informative. Another branch I loved were the book review essays- It's amazing what masterpieces Macaulay or Viginia Woolf have pulled of in this genre. The Non fictional issue exploring book (too long to be called essay like "A Room of ones Own" or three Guineas" pieces by Greer and Anais Nin are among my top list. Achebe is a marvellous essayist BTW. Among other disciplines, Foucault and Barthes, Edward Said, Sartre and Freud, Bloom,Marx, Frantz Fanon (Sheer Power) Greenblatt. Eco of course and hasn't anyone mentioned Calvino? His two collections of "Literary essays are marvellous.

[subterranean]

O yea, I wanna add Derrida and Francis Fukuyama, and I happen to like that book called "the lexus and olive tree". I have some other names, but they're moslty wrote about international politcs. I spent my college years reading those kinds of books.

[Sindhu]

Derrida used to work for me, but I got disillusioned. I much prefer the Solidity of foucault and if there must be linguistic sport, I prefer it in Barthe's style. derrida takes it to extremes, without sufficient underpinnings.

[subterranean]

Yea I know what you mean Sindhu. I never read Barthe's, what's his main idea anyway?

[Sindhu]

Barthe's main idea would be that of "jouissance" very inadequately translated as "pleasure"- Language and literature and Myths and Signs as systems of play contributing to this "Jouissance". Some of his last works can be a bit daunting but I can enthusistically reccomend Mythologies, Camera Lucida and Image, Music, Text.

[subterranean]

Signs? Not signs/symbols as in semiotica, right?!

[Sindhu]

signs/symbols YES!!

[Sancho]

In Cold Blood, that "immaculately factual" book by Truman Capote scared the crap out of me when I first read it twenty years ago, and it scares the crap out of me today.

Uhhh, so to speak.

[Sancho]

I've gotta toss one more out there: "Desert Solitaire" Ed Abbey

[hal9000]

Originally posted by Isagel


Chomsky is always an intellectual and ethical challenge.

Ethical challenge? How do you mean?

[hal9000]

Seems like some good leads here. I like Michael Parenti, Howard Zinn, John Pilger, and Norm Solomon.

Check this out:

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/General/Recent_Books_Articles.html

[hal9000]

Originally posted by den
I'm reading Mario Vargas Llosa's `Making Waves' right now. It's a great series of essays over a thirty year period he's written on latin american culture and history; Cuban politics; and touching on his relationships with Camus and Sartre; and his opinions of Joyce, Beauvoir and many others.

His `Notebooks of Don Rigoberto', while fictional, are great auto-biographical stories of his own life and philosophy.

I also enjoy Aldous Huxley's `Perennial Philosophy' and other non-fiction, and Aphra Behn's writings on colonial slavery.

Slighty off topic :-), but speaking of South America, just bought an old dog-eared hardbound copy of Young Man of Caracas, T.R. Ybarra, at Goodwill.

[hal9000]

Originally posted by crisaor

I'm surprised anyone likes Vargas Llosa. Living in South America makes you very aware of his works, and truth be told, I find his fiction work lame and his political views terryfing. If Bush has an undercover agent, I know who'd be my first guess...

LOL! Figures.

[dru]

I would recommend "Life on the Mississippi" by Mark Twain. It details his experiences piloting a steamboat on the Mississippi.

[atiguhya padma]

Some of Richard Jefferies stuff is good. As is Edward Thomas. Both great writers of nature.