who are your favorite authors?

[bookfunsphere]

Mine is Agatha Christie

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Herman Melville, Joseph Conrad, Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Pynchon, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ray Bradbury, H.P. Lovecraft, Vladimir Nabokov, W.B. Yeats, George R.R. Martin, Daniel Abraham, Stephen King.

[The Comedian]

Thoreau, Melville, Euripides, Seneca, Hemingway, Cather, Wordsworth, Keats, Yeats, Plato, Emerson, deTocqueville, Machiavelli, Wallace Stevens, Edward Abbey, Barry Lopez. . . .

[stlukesguild]

Shakespeare, Dante, Baudelaire, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Homer, Ovid, Petrarch, Firdawsi, Ariosto, Spenser, Montaigne, Sterne, Goethe, J.L. Borges, William Blake, Thomas Traherne, Coleridge, Milton, Cervantes, Melville, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Rilke, Eugenio Montale, Leopardi, Proust, T.S. Eliot, Tu Fu, Li Bo, Wang Wei, Hermann Hesse, Dickens, Whitman, etc...

Just a few to start...

[Alexander III]

Not to be flippant but if each of us names two dozen authors, the answers as much as the question become completely useless and, it were better had no names been mentioned than a huge plethora which completely destroys the concept of a single and small group of artists which personally resonate in our hearts to a degree which no other can compare.

I suppose some people may not have such specific and concrete epiphanies and thus do not posses a few elect artists with whom they feel their very being is mirrored, but still let us try to keep the lists at not more than 3 artists, otherwise the notion of favorite becomes usless, and the question to which one replies is not whom are you favorite, but rather, which ones do you like. The former implying the utmost degree of selectivity, the latter merley requires for a heigtened sense of pleasure. Much like the differnce between listing all the women(or men) whom you have fuked and listing all the women(or men) whom you have loved. The former is a large list which revelas very little about the speaker, the latter a specified and selective list which reaveal much about the speaker.

As For me:

- Fitzgerald
- Rimbaud
- Lermontov

[stlukesguild]

Addressing the literary aspect of your post, MortalTerror suggested an opposite strategy. He pointed out that in a list of 10 or 20 authors most of us who have read a great deal will include those obvious authors whom we could not be without: Shakespeare, Dante, Homer, Goethe, Montaigne, etc... Going well beyond this arbitrary cut-off... past the point where all of us might preserve all of those authors that we could not be without... we might then explore the realm of those authors uniquely important to us.

What authors have I read and re-read and read again? What authors do I love well beyond their deserved status? I think I would have to name J.L. Borges, Italo Calvino, Rilke, and Robert Herrick... and perhaps Kafka, Baudelaire, Edmund Spenser, and William Blake.

But again... are these my "favorites"? Would I give up Shakespeare or Dante or the Arabian Nights for Rilke or Herrick or even Borges? I think not.

[stlukesguild]

Perhaps if one wanted to learn something about the "speaker" we should ask him or her for 2 or 3 books (or authors) that the individual particularly liked... yet limit these to authors rarely ever mentioned on LitNet. One might also ask for a bit of info as to just why the individual admires this or that author.

[Alexander III]

But again... are these my "favorites"? Would I give up Shakespeare or Dante or the Arabian Nights for Rilke or Herrick or even Borges? I think not.

But I think they very crux of the question lies here. Not those men who are important for humanity, or who possessed the greatest minds, those who are vital to us. To take the dessert island stereotype, if one could only bring the work of 3 authors with them, who would you choose, the best, the greatest, the most renown? No you would choose those which, (to be all romantic and sentimental and crap) would most give you that pure and almost spiritual delight, a feeling akin to love, which keeps you going, which after having read and during the reading allows you to sit and look out at the waves and sea and be lost in such lofty thoughts that every single one of you burdens and miseries appears in a new light, those men with whom if we were about to be shot by the firing squad, and had one last night in a cell before our execution at dawn, those men whom we would choose to pass our company with for our final night of existence, those men in whom we place something far beyond appreciation, something akin to a kinship which add's a new sense of understanding to our lives.

Let me use a personal example. My grandfathers Cousin, during the war, at the age of 19 ran away from home to join a partisan group fighting against the fascists. A few months later he and a group of other partisans were captured in a failed attack on a military outpost, they were taken to the small town (which has been the home of my family from time immemorial) lined up in the square besides the church and shot, by firing squad for treason.

Now my Grandfather's other Cousin, the sister of the 20 year old who died that day, told me that the night before Antonio was executed, he had asked of one of the Fascist officers (a man who had been the school-fellow of my grandfather) a final favor of having Homer's Iliad in greek given to him during the last night of his life.

And here is the axiom, he chose Homer's Iliad, why do you think he chose it, because it was the best work of literature, because he enjoyed it immensely, or because in that book, he found a kinship, a feeling almost divine, which he knew he wanted to pass his final hours of life with.

So do not tell me you great lists and then use reason to back up the fact that it is impossible to pick one single author for an erudite man. Tell me were you in his position, who would you have picked to keep you company in your final hours of life?

That is a question to which every man replies differently, yet merely listing our favorites authors the same men (Dante, Shakespeare Virgil) always come up out of a sense of duty, it is easy to give a list of 50, but to choose a mere single one, therein lies a true revaluation about your artistic taste.

I do not think that night that Antonio stood there to ponder, about genius or greatness or importance or influence or none of that academic speculation fit for men who wish to while away time. He picked without thought with the same instinct as that of a child when he drinks from his mother's breast.

[stlukesguild]

I'm more than somewhat skeptical of Alex' portrayal of himself, to say nothing of his tales of the dramatic adventures of his family... yet even if I were to accept the above narrative at face value I question the notion that we might all easily choose a single writer who means more to us than any other... and that this writer would quite likely be someone other than one of the greatest, and most canonical writers. Quite honestly, confronted with the desert island scenario I would be torn between Shakespeare, Dante, the Bible, the Arabian Nights, and the Shahnameh for the simple reason that to my mind they represent the greatest wealth of narrative, atmosphere, and character development available. Regardless of their influence and standing within the canon of literature, these are the writers I have turned to again and again. I have 5 or 6 translations of Dante's Comedia and two of his Vita Nuova, 3 translations of the Arabian Nights, two of the Shahnameh, and numerous translations and commentaries on the Bible. A good many of my favorite paintings and works of music have been inspired by these authors, and I have personally turned to their themes again and again in my own work.

Then again... there was a thread not long ago in which one member suggested that he suspected that many who listed Dante, Shakespeare, Homer, Goethe, Aeschylus, etc... among their favorite authors most assuredly must be posing. I see no reason for posing. Bach is also my favorite composer... followed by Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, Handel, Schubert, Richard Strauss, etc... Michelangelo is my favorite artist... followed by Rubens, Rembrandt, Degas, Bonnard, Matisse, etc... I love Rilke, Eugenio Montale, Boris Pasternak, Faure, Rameau, Copland, Frans Hals, Fra Filippo Lippi, and Soutine... but none has given me the same degree of pleasure as Shakespeare, Bach, or Michelangelo.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I can choose as many favorite authors as I want. A person's favorite authors are his favorite authors. Some will have three, some will have twenty.

Frankly, we've had so many of these "list your favorite author" threads it's ridiculous, but it's quick to throw down a quick list. I didn't think much about mine.

[hawthorns]

who are your favorite authors?


It's classified.

[wordeater]

Russian: Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gogol, Pushkin
English: Charles Dickens, Agatha Christie, Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, Graham Greene, Arthur Conan Doyle, Roald Dahl, E. A. Poe

[hawthorns]

It's classified.

In other words, I could never rank these (and a couple dozen more I like equally):

Kafka
Shakespeare
Dostoevsky
Maupassant
Proust
Baudelaire
Borges

[LitNetIsGreat]

Shakespeare, Wilde, Milton, Wordsworth, Keats and Chekhov have persistently followed me around the house over the years and so would certainly be included on my list, amongst many others.

[Desolation]

I was in a local bookstore today. I sold a big stack of books, as a sort of symbol of change and purging and all that, and I realized that I didn't have any hardcover books. Since there's all this talk lately about paper books going away forever some time in the possibly not too distant future, it seemed like now was as good a time as any to start stalking up on some sturdy hardcovers that can take a few decades worth of wear and tear. I asked myself, "Let's say books went away tomorrow, or some horrible thing happened that left you unable to keep all the books you own and you had to reduce your collection to what you could carry on your back...What two books would you want to carry around and study for the foreseeable future?"

I decided on The Sound and the Fury and Ulysses. So, what my rambling story comes down to is that William Faulkner and James Joyce are the authors that have resonated with me most.

To round it out to five, I'd go with:
J.J.
Faulkner
Marcel Proust
William Gaddis
Samuel Beckett

[stlukesguild]

I know that this may prove nothing... but I thought this might suggest somewhat just how important a writer such as Dante is to me when three volumes in two translations from his Comedia sit mere inches from my hand. The Hollander Paradiso sits elsewhere on my desk as it's a hardcover and doesn't fit here.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7259/6991304340_f24fa6cdc8_z.jpg

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Admit it, stlukes, you had to remove the Twilight book that was in that stack before taking the picture, didn't you? :D

[stlukesguild]

No... I had to remove my dog-eared copies of Charles Bukowski and Jonathan Livingston Seagull. :yikes:

[hawthorns]

St. Luke--


Ok, I gotta ask. My eye keeps drifting to that third portrait in your signature everytime you post. Who is it?

P.S. I don't have a Princess Amidala fetish. I'm not even a Natalie Portman fan, heaven forbid. :biggrin5:

[stlukesguild]

http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lirvgd9xNt1qa1j80o1_500.jpg

The painting in question is entitled Portrait of a Young Girl (Woman) and was painted by the Netherlandish artist, Petrus Christus c. 1472. It resides in Berlin in the Gemäldegalerie. It's one of my favorite Renaissance portraits.

[mona amon]

Ooh, it's really lovely. And I never noticed it all these days in your signature, St Lukes.


Mine is Agatha Christie

I love Agatha Christie!

My favourite authors would be those that I re-read often (so Shakespeare doesn't make it to my list, along with many others), those who have written more than one book or series (Exit Emily Bronte and J K Rowling), and when I love more than just one of their works (sorry Joyce, Cervantes, Nabakov etc).

That leaves me with Charlotte Bronte, Jane Austen, P G Wodehouse, Dickens, George Bernard Shaw, Hmm... I thought there were more but can't remember any at the moment.

[hawthorns]

http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lirvgd9xNt1qa1j80o1_500.jpg

The painting in question is entitled Portrait of a Young Girl (Woman) and was painted by the Netherlandish artist, Petrus Christus c. 1472. It resides in Berlin in the Gemäldegalerie. It's one of my favorite Renaissance portraits.

http://beyondthebarbell.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Facepalm-guy.jpg

Doh! I knew I'd seen that before. Most of my favorite artists are Dutch.

Thanks!

[hawthorns]

I don't mean to hijack the thread or take away from the St. Luke/Alex III debate, but...

Is it just me, or is wordeater smokin' hot?

http://i811.photobucket.com/albums/zz40/rimpini/avatar75417_1.jpg

I see your favorite novel is The Brothers too...

Are you married?

[DynamicDhaliwal]

my favorite author is J. M. Coetzee

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I don't mean to hijack the thread or take away from the St. Luke/Alex III debate, but...

Is it just me, or is wordeater smokin' hot?

http://i811.photobucket.com/albums/zz40/rimpini/avatar75417_1.jpg


No, you're definitely not just you. I noticed that right away. Let's hope she isn't one of those new members who post a few times and then never return.

Stick around, wordeater. I like that you're pretty, but I like that you make good, thoughtful posts more. Okay, maybe not more . . . but it's equal. :D

[kelby_lake]

I'm always swapping round the positions of my favourite authors. I always feel a bit guilty when I list mine because I haven't read all or even most of their stuff. So:

Hugo and Tolstoy are going through on the merit of the one book of theirs I've read (The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Anna Karenina, respectively). Actually, I've read the Introduction to Cromwell, so that's one and a bit :) Seeing as their "better" novels are ones I haven't read yet, I am sure they will cement their positions.

Shakespeare: It's a bit cliche but then he has had a pretty impressive output. I'd be very surprised if somebody hated all of Shakespeare's plays (barring the language barrier, which is overcome through reading them!).

Hardy: I think his poetry is wonderful and his novels are brilliant. I find Far From The Madding Crowd strangely uplifting.

Fitzgerald: I think he has a lovely way of writing.

I could go on, naming more poets and playwrights, but I think this is a good indicator of my tastes :)

[hawthorns]

No, you're definitely not just you. I noticed that right away. Let's hope she isn't one of those new members who post a few times and then never return.

Stick around, wordeater. I like that you're pretty, but I like that you make good, thoughtful posts more. Okay, maybe not more . . . but it's equal. :D

Ok, thanks for confirming. I figured while I was on the subject of eye-catching pics, I might as well mention it. Not many of us use our own, but that one should come with a warning label--"may distract and/or hypnotize." :lol:

[smerdyakov]

Moderns: James Kelman, Agnes Owens, Irvine Welsh, Joseph O'Connor, J G Ballard, Hanif Kureishi, Bukowski, Raymond Carver, J M Coetzee, Tobias Wolff

[irinmisfit92]

John Ajvide Lindqvist.

No one here probably knows who he is, but he's just amazing. He really resonates with me. I like Shakespeare and Bram Stoker, but for me personally, Lindqvist is the best.

[smerdyakov]

John Ajvide Lindqvist.

No one here probably knows who he is, but he's just amazing. He really resonates with me. I like Shakespeare and Bram Stoker, but for me personally, Lindqvist is the best.

Yeah, he wrote "Let the right one in"....good book.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Is it just me, or is wordeater smokin' hot?

No, you're definitely not just you. I noticed that right away. Let's hope she isn't one of those new members who post a few times and then never return.

Not that guys a bunch of drooling guys tripping over their own hanging tongues could possibly scare a girl off.:leaving:


Well, just to ameliorate this possibility . . . wordeater, I was lying. You are very, very ugly. :D

Problem solved.

[hawthorns]

Sorry, just meant it as an innocent jest there wordeater--if you're still there.

I promise that neither my knuckles nor my tongue drag.

Don't drink and write: as demonstrated, alcohol can get the better part of flattery...

[stlukesguild]

Man, things have changed...All of my friends who attend art school (which pretty much equates to everyone I know in this city) have to attend 6-hour long drawing studio classes.

Oh the classes were 6 or 7 hours long... but we did not spend a great deal of time on extended poses. The first hour was almost always spent on "gestures" (rapid drawings that may last a minute or less) with the idea of developing the ability to rapidly grasp the major movement in the pose as well as the proportions. After this, the rest of the morning might be spent on poses that grew increasingly lengthy... up to perhaps a half-hour. In the afternoon we focused on longer poses (at least once we had moved on to the more advanced levels: year 3 onward)... perhaps an hour or two.

Many students enter art school having spent endless hour rendering every pore in the skin... yet failing to see that the overall structure is weak. The teachers pointed out that this was akin to worrying about the wallpaper before the foundation has been laid. As such, a great deal of the time spent in the first two years of my art school experience were spent in breaking bad habits, in learning to look... and gaining a basic knowledge of the underlying structure of that which you were looking at. We spent endless hours in studying anatomy, physiology, perspective, geometry, etc... We also spent a good deal of time studying the drawings of the masters as well as critiquing each other's drawings.

Very few students, at that time, retained an interest or passion for drawing from the figure once they had entered the advanced levels and declared their majors. Abstraction ruled at the time. As a result there were few opportunities for working from the model in an extended pose... one that lasted for days and allowed for a highly finished drawing or painting. I had to petition the school to gain access to a life drawing model once a week for the full day. One of my two formal mentors established the evening sessions with the model in response to the interest shown by myself and 3 or 4 other advanced students who were serious about drawing from the model.

[mortalterror]

Addressing the literary aspect of your post, MortalTerror suggested an opposite strategy. He pointed out that in a list of 10 or 20 authors most of us who have read a great deal will include those obvious authors whom we could not be without: Shakespeare, Dante, Homer, Goethe, Montaigne, etc... Going well beyond this arbitrary cut-off... past the point where all of us might preserve all of those authors that we could not be without... we might then explore the realm of those authors uniquely important to us.

Thank you for remembering. For anyone interested, I kept my list of 65 favorites with brief explanations for each on my blog.
http://www.online-literature.com/forums/blog.php?b=12266


But I think they very crux of the question lies here. Not those men who are important for humanity, or who possessed the greatest minds, those who are vital to us. To take the dessert island stereotype, if one could only bring the work of 3 authors with them, who would you choose, the best, the greatest, the most renown? No you would choose those which, (to be all romantic and sentimental and crap) would most give you that pure and almost spiritual delight, a feeling akin to love, which keeps you going, which after having read and during the reading allows you to sit and look out at the waves and sea and be lost in such lofty thoughts that every single one of you burdens and miseries appears in a new light, those men with whom if we were about to be shot by the firing squad, and had one last night in a cell before our execution at dawn, those men whom we would choose to pass our company with for our final night of existence, those men in whom we place something far beyond appreciation, something akin to a kinship which add's a new sense of understanding to our lives.
That's all very colorful, Alexander, but the circumstances I find myself in has a lot to do with what I want to read. If I had one night left to live I'd assuredly read the Bible, because I think that could do me the most good where I'm going. If I were trapped on an island, I don't think I could bear reading Hemingway's lovely descriptions of man alone in the wilderness. I would rather have a survivalist book than Shakespeare. And if I were asked to choose just one book to encapsulate me, I would have to say that I am not so one sided as that. How could I choose another man's words to express what is deepest inside of me? If I had just one night, I kind of like to think I'd spend it writing, but there's a good chance I'd spend it looking at pictures of naked women.

[stlukesguild]

If I had just one night, I kind of like to think I'd spend it writing, but there's a good chance I'd spend it looking at pictures of naked women.

:smilielol5:

[Logos]

Trollish, inflammatory, and insulting posts have been removed.

Any more trollish, inflammatory, insulting, or off-topic posts will lead to infraction points being issued or a forum time out.

--

[Motherof8]

Mine are Charles Dickens and George Eliot.