Please suggest interesting writers

[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

[Emil Miller]

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

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

[TheFifthElement]

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

[Alexander III]

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

[Raven Falcon.]

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

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.

[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.

[Raven Falcon.]

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

Sounds like you need to read War and Peace.

[Raven Falcon.]

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.

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

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

[PeterL]

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.

[Dark Muse]

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.

[mal4mac]

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

[Raven Falcon.]

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

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

[KCurtis]

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

Of course it is!!!

[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?

[Raven Falcon.]

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?

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