in your own opinion, who is the best author?

[sam1995]

hey, i was wondering who is your favorite author and why? i need some ideas on who to read next :)

[Nate]

james joyce for his command of language, poetic vision, and sense of humor

[Calidore]

It will be much easier to answer that question if you tell us what authors/genres/etc. you like.

[Ecurb]

My girlfriend, who has written 5 books that have been translated into 16 languages, is my favorite author. I like only one of her books, though.

In her dedication to her last book, she thanked everyone who helped her. Then she thanked me, as in, "Also, thanks to Ecurb (who I had to thank, but gave me absolutely no help whatsoever)." She didn't actually write the part in parentheses, but it was clearly implied.

[Prince Smiles]

This question just can't be answered easily. It is the same as asking who is your favorite band, or which is your favorite movie.

Here are some authors who made me think, I need to read all that this person has written now! :

Charles Dickens
Thomas Hardy
J.G. Ballard
Graham Greene
George Orwell
Wilbur Smith
Mikhail Bulgakov
Stieg Larsson
E.M. Forster

[mal4mac]

Leo Tolstoy for his wonderful characters, philosophical vision, and vast range.

Charles Dickens for his wonderful characters, sense of humour, and riveting stories.

George Eliot for her wonderful characters, philosophical vision, and vast range.

Cervantes for his wonderful characters, sense of humour, and riveting stories.

Hmmm... was Leo Tolstoy the Russian George Eliot, and Dickens the English Cervantes?

[Bustrofedon]

Unordered:
Tolstoy
Dostoevsky
Faulkner
Bolano
Borges

[mal4mac]

The OP requested "reasons why", not "just another list". Come on you can do it! Risk having a view.

[Kyriakos]

Each of the good authors had his own world of thoughts and emotions. I like a small number of the great authors:

Homer (some of his passages are just better than anything else)

Kafka (tied to so many chains he still managed to produce a work of delicate patterns and images)

De Maupassant (another tragic figure. Some of his short-stories are just masterpieces of presenting the marching towards self-destruction).

Dostoevsky (by now i mostly like his shorter works, such as the dream of a ridiculous man. A great writer in many notable ways, but also had many weak points as a writer).

Poe (I tend to agree with Lovecraft that Poe seems to be the first that places the narrator in the position of the pathological character. E.T.A. Hoffmann also presented such protagonists before, but not in the first person narrative).

Borges (Another significant writer, who attempted a different kind of complexity in his narrative. Also had some weak points of course).

There are others, too, such as Lovecraft, Baudelaire, Machen, E.T.A. Hoffmann. I am sure there are a number of great writers i never even read, such as many of the ancient Greek ones.

[osho]

Great writers, of course we can label and we can do by comparison, by taking what they excel at into considerations and also by their use of language and plot construction. But the greatest is a matter of judgement. Judgement is the most difficult and at the same time riskiest job and nobody is perfect to be a totally impersonal or objective judge since we all have kinds faults and limitations.

There are so many great writers. I may like James for his experimental methods but not for his intricacies. I may like Dostoevsky far better far more save for the experimental language of Joyce. Philosophically Dostoevsky is superior. Dickens comes not second to any of them for his minute observations of social inequality and comments of socioeconomic realities and industrial societies.

What about Tolstoy? There are non-European writers. Tagore for instance is great from a different perspective. T. S. Eliot was a great poet and so was Milton. Can you preclude Shakespeare. The list any literary agency or society makes is judge mental and suffers a narrow and imitated dimensional method. I want to rise over and above these shortsighted approaches to greatness and read the books I love despite the critical comments I do read at times from these dimwitted critics.

[Nate]

My girlfriend, who has written 5 books that have been translated into 16 languages, is my favorite author. I like only one of her books, though.

In her dedication to her last book, she thanked everyone who helped her. Then she thanked me, as in, "Also, thanks to Ecurb (who I had to thank, but gave me absolutely no help whatsoever)." She didn't actually write the part in parentheses, but it was clearly implied.

lol the op asked for us to suggest our favorite author to him, and you took it as an opportunity to talk about your girlfriend. you didn't even mention her name. how was this post supposed to help the op?

[SilvanDitties]

I like Faulkner for his language, psychological depth, and because I'm a sucker for southern writing. I like Cervantes for his humor, his characters, his storytelling, just everything, really. I like Tolstoy for a combination of some of those things. See? This is hard.

[MorpheusSandman]

Tolstoy for prose, Milton for poetry, Shakespeare for drama. Why? I suppose because all of them combined grand visions without losing their focus on the details that made up the whole, and they communicated that via a complete mastery over language, technique, form, etc. that makes reading them a true experience.

[hannah_arendt]

I love F. Herbert, Tolkien and Forster.

[mal4mac]

I love F. Herbert, Tolkien and Forster.

Why do you like them?

[mal4mac]

Tolstoy for prose, Milton for poetry, Shakespeare for drama. Why? I suppose because all of them combined grand visions without losing their focus on the details that made up the whole, and they communicated that via a complete mastery over language, technique, form, etc. that makes reading them a true experience.

Not too sure about Milton, but that might just be because I find him hard going, and too Christian. I find Shakespeare the better poet. I think your point "all of them combined grand visions without losing their focus on the details that made up the whole" sums up matters very well, at least for "the big two". For Shakespeare and Tolstoy, taking their major works, in toto, you get the real sense of them creating a whole world with everything, form birth to death, from war to peace, covered in detail, and fitted into a larger pattern, all through a vision that is deeper than that of other artists, or of oneself. I think Shakespeare is ultimately the greater because he is post-Christian, and makes such superb use of language, expressing the biggest ideas, and most acute observations, in concise and beautiful ways.

[mal4mac]

... I like Cervantes for his humor, his characters, his storytelling, just everything, really. I like Tolstoy for a combination of some of those things...

What's missing from Tolstoy? I find Tolstoy no where near as funny as Cervantes... but he is a universal author, *everything* is in those novels. But you have to wait a long time, and look close, to find the humour, and there's seldom a belly laugh. Cervantes is a bit one track... a fun track... but you don't get the wide and deep investigation of a society that Tolstoy provides.

[MorpheusSandman]

I'm an atheist, but I still adore Milton. He was really the first "visionary" poet of the English language (one might say Spenser, but Faerie Queen is more fantasy than visionary) following in the giant footsteps of Homer, Virgil, and Dante, and he did things with the language and blank verse form that Shakespeare didn't even attempt. Shakespeare's art was decidedly more earthbound and human; Milton was trying to envision how the entire cosmos worked.

As for him being too Christian, one must understand him in his own historical context. Yes, Milton was a Christian, but his Christianity was extremely radical for its day. In fact, Milton's politics was an influential forerunner to our modern democracy. As for his theology, have you read Blake? I always found Blake's statement about Milton quite telling: "The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it." To fully understand what Blake meant you'd have to understand Blake's philosophy regarding human psychology and creativity in which he subsumed religion and poetry. He saw "Satan" as being representative of the emotion, passion, and creativity that reason/God/religion tries to "suppress." So in making Satan the "hero" of Paradise Lost, Blake saw Milton as unconsciously allowing creativity to triumph over the shackles of religion.

As for Shakespeare being the better poet, I wrote about that some here. (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?74912-The-100-Greatest-English-Language-Poets) Essentially, I view Milton as THE archetypal poet. The poet that begins by mastering a variety of lyrical forms and modes (odes, elegies, sonnets, pastoral, etc.) and devotes his later life to his magnum opus epic. As much as I love Shakespeare--and I do probably love him more than Milton--there's nothing in his literature that's remotely like Paradise Lost, that reaches towards its cosmic heights, or covers as much breadth, or goes as deep. Shakespeare mastered drama and he mastered the sonnet, but he never attempted an epic or any other lyric forms. So, the way I see it, Milton and Shakespeare's poetic art were concentrated in decidedly different arenas. However, I still consider Shakespeare's primary gift dramatic as opposed to poetic, while with Milton I feel it's the opposite. But that would depend on one's definition of "poetic."

FWIW, I think Tolstoy was a poor philosopher but, again, his talent for depicting humanity, especially psychologically, and placing them onto an epic canvass has a bit of both Shakespeare's and Milton's strengths. Tolstoy is more earthbound like Shakespeare in his narratives/characters, yet the scope of his vision is more Miltonic. All of them has a nearly unmatched mastery over their chosen genres/forms. I really don't see a reason to "choose" between them since they worked in decidedly different arenas.

[SilvanDitties]

What's missing from Tolstoy? I find Tolstoy no where near as funny as Cervantes... but he is a universal author, *everything* is in those novels. But you have to wait a long time, and look close, to find the humour, and there's seldom a belly laugh. Cervantes is a bit one track... a fun track... but you don't get the wide and deep investigation of a society that Tolstoy provides.

True, Tolstoy has it all and more. I just would feel a bit awkward labeling him as hilarious as Cervantes, even though Tolstoy does has quite a few snickering moments. He does it with a subtle approach.

[mal4mac]

FWIW, I think Tolstoy was a poor philosopher...

I don't think he's a great original philosopher, but he doesn't shy away from integrating philosophy into his novels. The character Levin in Anna K is shown "trying on", and living, the philosophies of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Hegel in a highly convincing manner. For instance, in Anna K you can see Levin creating & living the "organic community", that Hegel postulated as the End of History, the greatest idea in social philosophy. Remarkable! But it ends a bit damply with his descent into Christianity. He felt Christianity to be a necessary part of the organic community, and didn't see the way history was going, he hadn't taken in Matthew Arnold. The sea of faith was receding, and just at that moment Tolstoy plunged into the sea of faith... his major failing... and, yes, the main reason he can't be viewed as a great philosopher. Too much feeling, not enough thinking. A good bias for a novelist, perhaps, but not for a philosopher.

[Ecurb]

lol the op asked for us to suggest our favorite author to him, and you took it as an opportunity to talk about your girlfriend. you didn't even mention her name. how was this post supposed to help the op?

It was supposed to suggest "Who is your favorite author?" is not identical to, "Who do you think is the greatest writer?" or even, "Which author has written your favorite books?" Good writing is precisely worded. I answered the question literally (also, a little humor might help anyone).

[hannah_arendt]

Why do you like them?

I love Herbert and Tolkien for inventing something incomparable with anything else and Forster for the language, describing emotions.

[WICKES]

Dickens is wonderful: a warm humanist with an extraordinary imagination and unrivalled ability to create characters who are MORE than real. A Christmas Carol never fails to make this 6ft man cry like a baby, no matter what version- even a cartoon or muppet Christmas Carol.

PG Wodehouse: I hate the word genius, but this man was a genius. His prose is magnificent (he has justly been compared to Shakespeare for his abilities with the English language) and no-one is funnier (except maybe Evelyn Waugh). But Wodehouse is more than that- he created an Edenic, unfallen, self-contained WORLD that somehow helps me to see the human species with new, more forgiving and more affectionate eyes.

Aldous Huxley: Maybe flawed as a novelist, but Huxley is THE man of ideas: a true intellectual who knew his science as thoroughly as his literature. He is just endlessly interesting and writes with the urbane wit and polished style of a European aristocrat. The day I get bored of Huxley is the day I'm no longer interested in life.

Blake: Peter Ackroyd believes he is the single greatest and most unique literary genius ever produced by the British isles. Blake is intoxicating, so much so that Huxley writes of "sleeping off my dose of Blake" - immersing yourself in Blake is like undergoing a drug trip. Blake is also fascinating in that he came from a very humble background (unlike the aristocratic Shelley and Byron) and wasn't really a part of any movement or school- just a solitary visionary.



Also Chaucer, Montaigne, Evelyn Waugh, Conrad and Primo Levi.

[NedSiegel]

It is the one I use for my profile picture. He's not an easy read, and sometimes (for Ulysses and Finnegans Wake) you need to get a key if you want to understand everything. But once you get used to his style, nobody sums up the human condition and the thin line between reality and fantasy better than Joyce.

[cafolini]

It is the one I use for my profile picture. He's not an easy read, and sometimes (for Ulysses and Finnegans Wake) you need to get a key if you want to understand everything. But once you get used to his style, nobody sums up the human condition and the thin line between reality and fantasy better than Joyce.

There have been others, but after 1921, James Joyce and Nelle Harper Lee are probably the greatest.

[MorpheusSandman]

Blake: Peter Ackroyd believes he is the single greatest and most unique literary genius ever produced by the British isles. Blake is intoxicating, so much so that Huxley writes of "sleeping off my dose of Blake" - immersing yourself in Blake is like undergoing a drug trip. Blake is also fascinating in that he came from a very humble background (unlike the aristocratic Shelley and Byron) and wasn't really a part of any movement or school- just a solitary visionary.Can't disagree about Blake. The only thing that prevents me placing him over Milton is that Milton matched his visionary poetry with an unmatched poetic, technical proficiency. Blake had no technical proficiency, and I don't think his attempt at finding new forms was very successful. He pretty much relies on the power of his visions and allegory to make his impact, and it's a testament to his power that it works almost entirely.

[hannah_arendt]

Can't disagree about Blake. The only thing that prevents me placing him over Milton is that Milton matched his visionary poetry with an unmatched poetic, technical proficiency. Blake had no technical proficiency, and I don't think his attempt at finding new forms was very successful. He pretty much relies on the power of his visions and allegory to make his impact, and it's a testament to his power that it works almost entirely.

I think that comparing poets from different periods is meaningless. Blake is different from Milton.

[MorpheusSandman]

I think that comparing poets from different periods is meaningless. Blake is different from Milton.Wrong on the former, partly wrong on the latter. All poets draw on poetry from the past, and this is especially true of Blake regarding Milton. Blake looked to Milton as a model, and took much from Milton except Milton's established forms. Blake says he did this for philosophical reasons ("I must create a system or be enslaved by another mans"), but, as I said, I don't think he was as successful. His "fourteeners" (really just quatuordenary) lines don't read much differently than prose. This is not like Eliot's/Whitman's/etc. Free Verse that was still very poetic. Of course poets from different generations are different, but they're also often quite alike. Cleanth Brooks showed this in Well-Wrought Urn how seemingly profoundly different poets could still have many relevant things in common that were worth analyzing.

[hannah_arendt]

All the writers are influenced by the past but look at the same things in a different way.

Personally, I enjoyed more Milton than Blake. I like Blake`s 'images' but if it comes to language I prefer Milton.

Do you think that analyzing a poem/ novel/ short story, we shouldn`t take into account historical period, context?

[MorpheusSandman]

Do you think that analyzing a poem/ novel/ short story, we shouldn`t take into account historical period, context?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.

[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.