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Let's see who I can think of:
Carol Shields
Madeleine L'Engle
Anita Shreve
Marion Zimmer Bradley
Lilian Jackson Braun
Tolkien
Barbara Gowdy
Douglas Coupland
Douglas Adams
James Rollins
James Fray
Wally Lamb
Judy Blume
Nicholas Sparks
C.S. Lewis
Sue Miller
There are others, but it is too early for me to remember everything. Those are just the authors that I have read recently and enjoyed.
Which Lewis?Quote:
Originally Posted by alatar
starrwriter-- thats interesting. Thank you for the input. Yeah, like there is certain things that hemmingway does with his style that blows me away. Other times i'm like man maybe he didn't even do that on purpose. But, he had to of. It is just a little perplexing. And he does seem to have a certain stigma like you mentioned. I did not know much about him but i just finished his a fairwell to arms. I knew about his lodge in Idaho, the alcohol, and the rifle.
Whatever you say, he was beautiful. And i agree that the old man and the sea may be his most minimalistic, true to his style piece.
'Up the road, in his shack,the old man was sleeping again. He was still sleeping on his face and the boy was sitting by him watching him. The old man was dreaming about the lions.'
It is hard at times, the blood and sweat, the aching pains that we go through. Hemmingway just seems so full of life when I look back at him though. Being young and in Europe. The war and the culture.
His short stories and sketches are what first caught my attention.
Like this one:
Chapter V
They shot the six cabinet ministers at half-past six in the morning against the wall of a hospital. There were pools of water in the courtyard. There were wet dead leaves on the paving of the courtyard. It rained hard. All the shutters of the hospital were nailed shut. One of the ministers was sick with typhoid. Two soldiers carried him downstairs and out into the rain. They tried to hold him up against the wall but he sat down in a puddle of water. The other five stood very quietly against the wall. Finally the officer told the soldiers it was no good trying to make him stand up. When they fired the first volley he was sitting down in the water with his head on his knees.
That last part was difficult for me to swallow after I discovered it was true. Maugham died a nihilist. I wonder how he could have written such a spiritually uplifting novel as "The Razor's Edge" if he believed in nothing.Quote:
Originally Posted by Arteum
But I still enjoy his short stories. They are effortless to read and always fascinating. I rank Maugham among the best short story writers with de Maupassant, Hemingway and Salinger.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, George Orwell, Friedrich Nietzsche...
There seems to be a common appreciation for the Russian novelists (Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy) on this site. I find that interesting. I share that admiration.
I also love Oscar Wilde, even if he did only write a single novel. The man's anagrams are pure genius.
Of course, I appreciate God's work, and also occasionally read Kierkegaard, Poe, Shakespeare. I've read the other German / French existentialists, but have lost interest in them. Dabbled in Salinger and Vonnegut in High School, but likewise, have not found them as compelling now that I am older.
T
When you say "God's work," is it the Kierkegaard to which you refer? Do you mean to include also Poe and Shakespeare? (As tone is impossible to communicate/decipher through text in a discussion thread, know that this inquiry of mine is neither sarcastic nor disrespectful in any way, but rather, one amiably rooted in genuine interest.)
Someone is an existentialist. You forgot Kierkegaard.Quote:
Originally Posted by ThatIndividual
My favorite books were written 40-50 years ago or more
Lit. Fiction:
Aldous Huxley (#1 favorite)
George Orwell (who denies the power of 1984?)
Anthony Burgess,
Ray Bradbury (F451: The only lit. fiction book I've read where the author is still alive)
Drama/Playwrites: Shakespeare (I loved Macbeth and I plan to read Hamlet)
Henrik Ibsen for Enemy of the People
Arthur Miller
Indeed. I've been accused of that more times than I can count. However, we existentialists tend to shun the label 'existentialist.' So really, I'm the non-existentialist existentialist. I disagree with every existentialist I've ever encountered in some way or another, as they all do with one another.
(Actually, it's from Kierkegaard that I lifted my screen name. I love him very much, despite his religious deficiencies :) Little joke there. I guess...
I like Dostoevsky more than Tolstoy. His psychological insights go much deeper. "The Kreutzer Sonnata" is the only Tolstoy novel I really enjoyed. "Anna Karenina" is soap operish like Flaubert's "Madame Bovary." And "War and Peace" is far too long with too many characters.Quote:
Originally Posted by Countess
Me, too. Wilde was the supreme European wit. Too bad he died so miserably.Quote:
Originally Posted by Countess
It wasn't an accusation. Existentialism was the most influential philosophy of the 20th century. Some of my best friends are existentialists.Quote:
Originally Posted by ThatIndividual
>When you say "God's work," is it the Kierkegaard to which you refer?
I see why you ask. Taken metaphorically it could be argued that all good literature is a derivative of God, since God is the ultimate source of all talent.
Hmm...I meant the Bible, but now that you mention it, your implication is more accurate.
>Do you mean to include also Poe and Shakespeare?
For the record, if you've read "The Imp of the Perverse", you understand I can imagine no greater work on the psychology of sin in the mind of man (except Chapter 7 from Doestoevsky's "Notes" that bears a *very striking resemblance* to "Imp".).
Shakespeare - all his tragic figures notably asked the very gravest of life's questions.
Good question / conversation.
You could call me an exexistentialist - LOL - but it's a lie. Every day I get up I wonder why.
T
Originally Posted by Countess:
I also love Oscar Wilde, even if he did only write a single novel.
Starwriter said:
Me, too. Wilde was the supreme European wit. Too bad he died so miserably.
I have a friend who is intimately aquainted with Oscar Wilde - knows his biography by memory, met his sons and is familiar with his father's work. Wilde was the victim of his own decadence, which ironically he parodied in Dorian.
It is sad. In my opinion, he has no peers like other writers.
T
I didn't take it negatively. An accusation isn't always bad.