Please suggest interesting writers

Hello everyone! Could you recommend me some good writers of old times, whose stories involve intriguing emotional male-female interactions, flirting, adventure… It should be no cheap melodrama, but witty and real. Psychotic obsessions and tragedies probably won’t do... The love of life and discovery is what I’m looking for. I’d like it to be very descriptive as well, so I can feel the time, place, culture and nature as an important part of the story, maybe even more important than the story itself. Old times please, could be in Europe, Asia, Antarctica... Location doesn’t matter, but one should feel if the author has really been there.
My favorite authors are Traven, Le Clezio, Akutagawa, Shakespeare.
I really haven’t read much, so your suggestions might be of great help for me. Actually I’m a traditional painter, looking for a spark.

Thanks a lot.

Stefan

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Originally Posted by Kalapishev

Hello everyone! Could you recommend me some good writers of old times, whose stories involve intriguing emotional male-female interactions, flirting, adventure… It should be no cheap melodrama, but witty and real. Psychotic obsessions and tragedies probably won’t do... The love of life and discovery is what I’m looking for. I’d like it to be very descriptive as well, so I can feel the time, place, culture and nature as an important part of the story, maybe even more important than the story itself. Old times please, could be in Europe, Asia, Antarctica... Location doesn’t matter, but one should feel if the author has really been there.
My favorite authors are Traven, Le Clezio, Akutagawa, Shakespeare.
I really haven’t read much, so your suggestions might be of great help for me. Actually I’m a traditional painter, looking for a spark.

Thanks a lot.

Stefan

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Try The Narrow Corner by W.Somerset Maugham. It has all that you mentioned and is by one of the best 20th century writers.

W Somerset Maugham is indeed an excellent writer. Based on your criteria, Theodora by Stella Duffy would be a great choice.

This may be a bit obvious, but Fitzgeralds Great Gatsby - arguably the most perfect novel ever written.

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Originally Posted by Alexander III

This may be a bit obvious, but Fitzgeralds Great Gatsby - arguably the most perfect novel ever written.

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I concur to this recommendation. The prose is so beautifully written that you will find it difficult to put down.

Not only that, you will also be reluctant to do anything else or go anywhere else except sitting with your eyes intently moving from words to words, phrases to phrases, sentences to sentences, paragraphs to paragraphs, pages to pages, and even chapters to chapters.

And you will not die doing so as you will able to finish it in one sitting if not a day with short breaks between long sessions.

There is not a literary work more perfect for a single-sit reading.

Oh, it is highly re-readable as well.

Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying.

I wish that I hadn't read them so that I could read them again for the first time.

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Originally Posted by Kalapishev

Hello everyone! Could you recommend me some good writers of old times, whose stories involve intriguing emotional male-female interactions, flirting, adventure… It should be no cheap melodrama, but witty and real. Psychotic obsessions and tragedies probably won’t do... The love of life and discovery is what I’m looking for. I’d like it to be very descriptive as well, so I can feel the time, place, culture and nature as an important part of the story, maybe even more important than the story itself. Old times please, could be in Europe, Asia, Antarctica... Location doesn’t matter, but one should feel if the author has really been there.
My favorite authors are Traven, Le Clezio, Akutagawa, Shakespeare.
I really haven’t read much, so your suggestions might be of great help for me. Actually I’m a traditional painter, looking for a spark.

Thanks a lot.

Stefan

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Sounds like you need to read War and Peace.

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Originally Posted by Desolation

Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying.

I wish that I hadn't read them so that I could read them again for the first time.

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Psychotic obsessions and tragedies won't do, he says.

Also, I don't find these two novels rich in geographical and cultural descriptions.

You might want to read the novels by G. C. Edmondson. He was a better writer than Traven, and some of his pieces are as good as shakespeare, especially for humor, but he didn't write in blank verse, so he is easier to read.

I do not know if you would consider this "old time" enough, but I would recommend D.H Lawrence. I think he does a brilliant job at portraying emotional interactions between men and women. He also writes beautifully descriptive prose that does pay close attention to nature.

You may also enjoy Tom Jones by Henry Fielding for a bit of witty, flirting adventure.

And while it is true that much of Thomas Hardy does tend toward the Melodramatic/Tragic I find that Far From the Madding Crowd is not so much so, and I think it would fit many of your criteria.

Great Expectations - Dickens
Jane Austen - anything, if "Emotional male-female interactions, flirting, ..." are the main desiderata.
Vanity Fair - Thackeray

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

Great Expectations - Dickens
Jane Austen - anything, if "Emotional male-female interactions, flirting, ..." are the main desiderata.
Vanity Fair - Thackeray

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Great Expectations is boring.
Why not A Tale of Two Cities?

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Originally Posted by Alexander III

This may be a bit obvious, but Fitzgeralds Great Gatsby - arguably the most perfect novel ever written.

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Of course it is!!!

Goethe- The Sorrows of Young Werther
Flaubert- Madame Bovary
Zola- Nana
Hugo- Les Miserables
Stendhal- The Red and the Black
Dumas- The Three Musketeers
Jane Austen- Sense and Sensibility
Dickens- A Tale of Two Cities
Walter Scott- Rob Roy
Proust- In Search of Lost Time
Jean Giono- The Horseman on the Roof
Italo Calvino- The Baron in the Trees

Avoiding "tragedy" in literature involving male-female emotional relationships may be a real challenge. Perhaps Austen and Dickens come closest. Giono and Calvino offer a more modern take on such traditional novels.

So what do you paint?

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Originally Posted by stlukesguild

Goethe- The Sorrows of Young Werther
Flaubert- Madame Bovary
Zola- Nana
Hugo- Les Miserables
Stendhal- The Red and the Black
Dumas- The Three Musketeers
Jane Austen- Sense and Sensibility
Dickens- A Tale of Two Cities
Walter Scott- Rob Roy
Proust- In Search of Lost Time
Jean Giono- The Horseman on the Roof
Italo Calvino- The Baron in the Trees

Avoiding "tragedy" in literature involving male-female emotional relationships may be a real challenge. Perhaps Austen and Dickens come closest. Giono and Calvino offer a more modern take on such traditional novels.

So what do you paint?

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The lack of Tolstoy disturbs me. Sorry, I am very into Tolstoy these days.

Wow, thank you everyone for all the recommendations! Of those I’ve read some Flaubert and Tolstoy, but not much.
I’m looking for certain moods that are hard to describe – something like passion and detachment at the same time. I’ve sensed that in the books of the writers I mentioned. I’m not against tragedies, I love many of those I’ve read. I think in all arts the “how” is more important than the “what”, so the guidelines I gave are just general.

@ stlukesguild
Regarding my paintings – I do mostly landscape and still life, but I love to paint people, figures and meaningful scenes as well. I’m just not very inspired by modern life, that’s why I turn to literature of old times to get that powerful vision and purpose. I’ve uploaded a few of my works here – www.kalapishev.com

Thanks again, if anything else comes to mind, please share. Looks like I’m going to the library tomorrow, you got me excited!

Herman Hesse's Narcissus and Goldmund. Not exactly what you're looking for but it meets several of your requirements.

The lack of Tolstoy disturbs me. Sorry, I am very into Tolstoy these days.

My list was in no way intended to be all-inclusive. Just a few suggestions. I would certainly include War and Peace, some tales by Gautier, probably something by D.H. Lawrence, Garcia-Marquez' Love in the Time of Cholera, Vargas-Llosa's In Praise of the Stepmother, G.B. Shaw's Man and Superman and Pygmalion, and any number of others....

Stefan... I asked about your painting because I am an artist myself. I quite like Modernism... up through the mid-20th century... and after that I admire some artists... and have little use for a great many more. Perhaps, not unlike yourself, I have made a conscious choice to abandon or reject Modernism in my own work. Where you are enamored of the 19th century (and it is surely a period worthy of admiration in the art of painting) I have turned elsewhere... to the early Italian Renaissance, the Byzantines, Japanese Ukyio-e prints and screen painting, Persian painting, etc...

The Awakening, by Kate Chopin.

There are many interesting writers in literature, some writings inspire few and so not, it depends on one's mindset understanding the writers way of presenting the story / characters, try to read some and continue the wchich you like the most i mean their collections