most intellectual writers
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most intellectual writers
I hate to respond to every "Who is the most _ writer" topic with the same people, but I guess that's just the way it goes... Thomas Pynchon, DF Wallace, Shakespeare, Nabokov, and JJ.
Milton
Dante
Petrarch
Borges
Like the above, James Joyce, David Foster Wallace, Thomas Pynchon, Vladimir Nabokov... and I would add JL Borges, Georges Perec, John Barth, William Gass, TS Eliot, Joseph Mcelroy, Rikki Ducornet, Peter Esterhazy, Lyudmila Ulitskaya.
I third Borges. His literary intellect leaves me in awe at times.
I'll add Thomas Mann, John Stuart Mill, and my wild card, Tennyson.
Bunch of pansies,
“For a hundred years or more the world, our world, has been dying. And not one man, in these last hundred years or so, has been crazy enough to put a bomb up the ******* of creation and set it off. The world is rotting away, dying piecemeal. But it needs the coup de grace, it needs to be blown to smithereens. Not one of us is intact, and yet we have in us all the continents and the seas between the continents and the birds of the air. We are going to put it down ― the evolution of this world which has died but which has not been buried.”
“This is not a book in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty... what you will. ”
You all think you're so original and unique but you fall over each other like stark mad Black Friday shoppers to mention the same 3 or 5 dead men.
“The city grows like a cancer; I must grow like a sun. The city eats deeper and deeper into the red; it is an insatiable white louse which must die eventually of inanition. I am going to starve the white louse which is eating me up. I am going to die as a city in order to become again a man. Therefore I close my ears, my eyes, my mouth.”
And it seems to me that you shamelessly put your own utter irrelevance on parade by quoting Henry Miller in a conversation on intellectual writers. Bravo.
As a side note, it appears almost everyone listed different authors, including several living ones. Yet for some reason I doubt you have read the majority of the names listed above.
Quite true, very few writers speak truly to life and of ****.Quote:
Originally Posted by islandclimber
How do you mean by 'intellectual'? It is a vast word.
Who are you calling a pansy? Ducky. If I were a mod you would get a slap on the wrist.Quote:
Originally Posted by E.A Rumfield
LOL I had roast duck for dinner last night. It was not bad at all :pQuote:
Originally Posted by Emil Miller
With only 12 letters I wouldn't say that intellectual is a vast word but in German it's a different story:Quote:
Originally Posted by cacian
Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhaupt-betriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft
:eek2:You cannot be serious LOLQuote:
Originally Posted by Emil Miller
According to his former tutor, David Foster Wallace could have made it as a professional philosopher. I've seen one of his papers and it looked extremely technical. He also wrote a book on infinity which looks similarly impenetrable. As for his fiction and essays, while I'm not a big fan of his style, he was certainly a talented and insightful writer. All in all he seems to have had an extraordinary mind.
Most of the authors mentioned were not especially intellectual; they stayed within the repetitive mold. It is my opinion that Jonathan Swift, G.C. Edmondosn, Umberto Eco, and maybe James Joyce were the most intellectual ones that I can think of.
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W a r n i n g
Please do not personalise your comments.
Off-topic/inflammatory posts have been and will be removed without further notice.
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I thank you.Quote:
Originally Posted by Scheherazade
Nabokov? Unless we're going to go for things like Sartre and Camus.
Plato. Someone, I forget who said that most European philosophy is merely a footnote to Plato. I think Iris Murdoch should be on the list.
I think Murdoch is a fine mention as far as my understanding of the question is concerned.
You're thinking of Alfred Whitehead.
Apparently Jeeves from the P.G. Wodehouse books enjoyed reading Spinoza.
Aldous Huxley was a dazzling polymath who knew his science as thoroughly as his literature (unusual for great writers). He got a first from Oxford in Literature and yet could have been a scientist (like his brother and grandfather, both very distinguished biologists- his grandfather was Darwin's chief defender and friend).
C S Lewis could read Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon by his mid 20s and was even able to read works written in Provencal!!
Ian McEwan can be quite impressive as well.
Quote:
Originally Posted by WICKES
Despite C. S. Lewis, I would add Tolkien too.
Any animal has an intellect.
Why on earth would you want to do that?Quote:
Originally Posted by hannah_arendt
Tolkien was an intellectual.Quote:
Originally Posted by Phocion
Most of the early twentieth-century modernists were intellectuals with the exception of Faulkner, Kafka, and Proust, and yeah, maybe Henry Miller, as well, although I don't know if that last one can be cleanly pigeon-holed within the category of literary modernism. I don't think Nabokov was an intellectual. He was more of an aesthete, although the two can perhaps overlap at times.
I'm not sure how you can name the likes of Proust or Faulkner as not intellectual. Certainly they're not the epitome, but I could think of several others (Kerouac, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, etc.) before I'd list them.
Plato
I'm not sure what the TS meant by "intellectual" here but I shall equate as something that is enigmatic. Since that is the case now, Kafka towers above the rest. Why? I'm sure I will be re-reading his works more than any other author.
I would like to add Leo Tolstoy to this mix, primarily because of his moral thinking.
I think I read somewhere that his works influenced both Gandhi and MLK Jr.
A lot of writers are / were thinkers and some could actually think in whole sentences and even paragraphs! Some writers are merely sensualists who write as Picasso painted - with their p&@£)s. A writer like Borges ( politically very right-wing) was clearly a thinker. Rand thought she was a thinker too (hearty laugh). But if a writer is only a thinker then for the reader it becomes as difficult as ploughing through Calvin's Institutes - dense thought but little of the light of joy in language that gives a writer zip.
how the hell do you define an "intellectual" writer? it seems to me if you guys deem someone intellectual if you agree with them. ha!
Why are some people insisting on acting confused about what constitutes an intellectual? The word has a pretty clear and sensible meaning.
Anyways I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Aristotle, by all accounts (even Plato's) he was the most learned man of his era.
"You know, I don’t want to be offensive. But ‘Infinite Jest’ [regarded by many as Wallace’s masterpiece] is just awful. It seems ridiculous to have to say it. He can’t think, he can’t write. There’s no discernible talent.” - Harold BloomQuote:
Originally Posted by ladderandbucket
"A fully fledged, fuzzy-brained California mystic." - John Carey on Aldous Huxley. I'd rate critics Harold Bloom and John Carey as "leading intellectuals"; they know how to demolish pretenders to that title!Quote:
Originally Posted by WICKES
But he was a fuzzy brained Anglican fundamentalist. Just because you can read lots of different languages doesn't mean you have a great intellect.Quote:
Originally Posted by WICKES
I thought he was quite impressive in "Saturday" and "Solar", but having just read "Amsterdam", I'm not so sure. The plot is so implausible & silly that it has me wondering about his intellectual ability - certainly it shows that we should never take the Booker judges too seriously; they, for certain, are seldom intellectuals, and often crass celebrities and politicians (Douglas Hurd and Nigella Lawson were on the panel that chose Amsterdam, probably McEwan's worst novel.)Quote:
Originally Posted by WICKES
The distinctive quality of the "intellectual" is not simple intelligence, which all great writers have, but the focus on writing about abstract, philosophical and esoteric matters. Given that all great writers usually bring in some philosophical considerations then all writers are intellectuals to some extent. But I don't think it would be wrong to say, "Aristotle is a more intellectual writer than Dickens." But "intellectual" doesn't mean "best"! I don't think you can say, "Aristotle was a better writer than Dickens", or, "You should read Aristotle rather than Dickens because he is better." In fact, I'll choose Dickens before Aristotle any day. Aristotle provides, to paraphrase Elseabahl, "dense thought but little of the light of joy in language that gives a writer zip."Quote:
Originally Posted by hypatia_
You are right. It is "intellektuelle" in German according to Google Translate.Quote:
Originally Posted by cacian
J. S. Mill ? - Has to be up there in my opinion. Umberto Eco would have to be a contender for holding the literary crown at the moment. Any thoughts on Slavoj Zizek as today's representative of the Zeitgeist?