Need some truly amazing recommendations

[theorange]

I'm searching for fresh, truly worthwhile prose.

Books that have blown me away:
In Search of Lost Time
Oblomov
Middlemarch
The Good Soldier
Absalom, Absalom!
The Runaway Soul
Moby Dick
Caryle's History of the French Revolution
The Golden Bowl
Essays -- Emerson, Nietzsche, William James

Liked & respected: Tolstoy, Dostoevski, Dickens, Austen, the Brontes, Hardy, Conrad, Nabokov, Calvino, Borges, Marquez, Bernhard, Sebald

Haven't been able to get into most contemporary fiction though, but would like to -- if I can find works I love. Do not generally like minimalism, but I am open to suggestions.

What else might I truly love?

[ennison]

Have a look at the book list. There's lots of good stuff there.

[EmptySeraph]

I'm searching for fresh, truly worthwhile prose.

Books that have blown me away:
In Search of Lost Time
Oblomov
Middlemarch
The Good Soldier
Absalom, Absalom!
The Runaway Soul
Moby Dick
Caryle's History of the French Revolution
The Golden Bowl
Essays -- Emerson, Nietzsche, William James

Liked & respected: Tolstoy, Dostoevski, Dickens, Austen, the Brontes, Hardy, Conrad, Nabokov, Calvino, Borges, Marquez, Bernhard, Sebald

Haven't been able to get into most contemporary fiction though, but would like to -- if I can find works I love. Do not generally like minimalism, but I am open to suggestions.

What else might I truly love?

I know not whether by contemporary you aim towards what truly does partake to our time, or is just, aesthetically, close to the art generated by our cultural time. Anyway, you might want to have a look at these titles, have you not read them yet, that is:

Julien Gracq - Le Rivage des Syrtes
Georges Perec - La Vie mode d'emploi
Raymond Queneau - Exercices de style
Arno Schmidt - Zettels Traum
Maurice Blanchot - Le Dernier homme, Le Pas au-delà (special mention to Blanchot, given his mastery use of infinitely varied stylistic devices: hard to find a more accomplished prose stylist, his is just perfect: dense and tortuous, oblique but impeccably crafted sentences, grey and evanescent, a just example of le style triste)

[theorange]

I know not whether by contemporary you aim towards what truly does partake to our time, or is just, aesthetically, close to the art generated by our cultural time. Anyway, you might want to have a look at these titles, have you not read them yet, that is:

Julien Gracq - Le Rivage des Syrtes
Georges Perec - La Vie mode d'emploi
Raymond Queneau - Exercices de style
Arno Schmidt - Zettels Traum
Maurice Blanchot - Le Dernier homme, Le Pas au-delà (special mention to Blanchot, given his mastery use of infinitely varied stylistic devices: hard to find a more accomplished prose stylist, his is just perfect: dense and tortuous, oblique but impeccably crafted sentences, grey and evanescent, a just example of le style triste)

Thank you. This is a very interesting list. I will investigate. By contemporary I suppose I meant books published in the last 20-30 years or so...

[alcala0001]

Soldier in The Mist (also called 'Latro in The Mist ') by Gene Wolfe.

[Ekimhtims]

Hey theorange, hope you're still checking in on this, but anyhow...

I'd love to recommend to you Alfred Doblin's take on Hamlet, "Tales of a Long Night." Quite a wonderful and touching read.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_of_a_Long_Night

I don't read a lot of contemporary fiction, but I was quite impressed with Richard Ford's "The Sportswriter," the first work in his Bascombe Novels series.

[theorange]

Hey theorange, hope you're still checking in on this, but anyhow...

I'd love to recommend to you Alfred Doblin's take on Hamlet, "Tales of a Long Night." Quite a wonderful and touching read.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_of_a_Long_Night

I don't read a lot of contemporary fiction, but I was quite impressed with Richard Ford's "The Sportswriter," the first work in his Bascombe Novels series.

I am indeed. Thanks for the suggestions.

[theorange]

Soldier in The Mist (also called 'Latro in The Mist ') by Gene Wolfe.

Thanks.

[theorange]

Soldier in The Mist (also called 'Latro in The Mist ') by Gene Wolfe.

Thanks.

[Ekimhtims]

Please let us know what recommendation you settle on when you accept one (or more) of those offered here. In the meantime I might throw together a little list of other titles for you to consider. But first let me just say "Buddenbrooks."

[Ekimhtims]

Here's a few titles that I've read in the last couple years that upon finishing I sort of just stared at the book cover like one stares at the rolling credits of a really good movie once it's over.

Thomas Mann – Buddenbrooks
Thomas Mann – Doctor Faustus
Herman Hesse - Narcissus and Goldmund
Alfred Doblin – Tales of a Long Night
George Orwell – Keep the Aspidistra Flying
Mary McCarthy – The Groves of Academe
Richard Yates – Revolutionary Road
Paul Bowles – The Sheltering Sky
Joseph Roth – The Radetzky March
Herman Broch – The Spell
Theodor Fontaine - Effi Briest
Robert Musil - The Man Without Qualities
Joseph Heller - Something Happened
Evelyn Waugh - Brideshead Revisited
Franz Werfel – The Forty Days of Musa Dagh
Aldous Huxley - Eyeless in Gaza
Elias Canetti - Auto-de-fe
Gustave Flaubert - Madam Bovary
Michel Tournier - The Orge
Richard Ford - The Sportswriter
Klaus Mann - Mephisto
Wyndham Lewis - The Apes of God
D.H. Lawrence – The Plumed Serpent

Here's a couple non-fictions:
Stephan Zweig – The World of Yesterday
Roy Pascal - From Naturalism to Expressionism: German Literature and Society 1880-1918

[theorange]

Please let us know what recommendation you settle on when you accept one (or more) of those offered here. In the meantime I might throw together a little list of other titles for you to consider. But first let me just say "Buddenbrooks."

Excellent, thanks! Actually I'm in the middle of Fielding's Tom Jones right now, which is hilarious and just excellent.

[WICKES]

You mention essayists, yet don't include George Orwell! Some consider him the greatest essayist in the English language. And his literary criticism is superb. His essay on Dickens, for example, is a masterpiece (and immensely enjoyable). If you like essays, you could also try Hazlitt.

Aldous Huxley is another writer I'd urge you to read. Like Orwell (who he actually taught at Eton!), Huxley was a wonderful essayist, though more wordy and intellectual. For me, Huxley is the essence of urbane, sophisticated intellectualism. And his novels fizz with ideas. They also contain some wonderful dialogue (Timothy Leary once said that Huxley taught him what it means to be a brilliant, witty conversationalist). My personal favourite is 'Crome Yellow', his first novel.

D H Lawrence is missing from your list as well. He divides the room - some worship him, others loathe him. 'Sons and Lovers', 'The Rainbow' and 'Women in Love' are probably his best works. I have heard it argued that 'Women in Love' was the greatest novel written in English in the 20th century, second only to 'Ulysses.'

Oscar Wilde is always worth a look. Like Huxley he is wonderfully urbane and intellectual. He once said that at Oxford he learnt "to play gracefully with ideas," which is a perfect description of his writing.

Evelyn Waugh is another personal favourite. I have never read funnier or more beautiful prose. Oh, and P G Wodehouse. 'Right Ho Jeeves' is a masterpiece: supernaturally beautiful language, wonderful dialogue, and just so funny.

As for more contemporary writers, you could try Edward St Aubyn, especially the Patrick Melrose novels. A few decades from now these will be considered classics.