Which author has the most amazing prose in the history of literature?
Is there an author whose work you've read and you said to yourself... Fuck, that's amazing?
Could pic related could be an example?
Who else?
>>7904995
>Corncob Tortilla YeCarthy
>good prose
r/copypasta
Fresh off the boat, from reddit, kid?
u/prozac5000236d, 9h
Fresh off the boat, from reddit, kid? heh I remember when I was just like you. Braindead. Lemme give you a tip so you can make it in this cyber sanctuary: never make jokes like that. You got no reputation here, you got no name, you got jackshit here. It's survival of the fittest and you ain't gonna survive long on 4chan by saying stupid jokes that your little hugbox cuntsucking reddit friends would upboat. None of that here. You don't upboat. You don't downboat. This ain't reddit, kid. This is 4chan. We have REAL intellectual discussion, something I don't think you're all that familiar with. You don't like it, you can hit the bricks on over to imgur, you daily show watching son of a bitch. I hope you don't tho. I hope you stay here and learn our ways. Things are different here, unlike any other place that the light of internet pop culture reaches. You can be anything here. Me ? heh, I'm a judge.. this place.... this place has a lot to offer... heh you'll see, kid . . . that is if you can handle it...
>The view is endlessly fulfilling. It is like the answer to a lifetime of questions and vague cravings. It satisfies every childlike curiosity, every muted desire, whatever there is in him of the scientist, the poet, the primitive seer, the watcher of fire and shooting stars, whatever obsessions eat at the night side of his mind, whatever sweet and dreamy yearning he has ever felt for nameless places far away, whatever earth sense he possesses, the neural pulse of some wilder awareness, a sympathy for beasts, whatever belief in an immanent vital force, the Lord of Creation, whatever secret harbouring of the idea of human oneness, whatever wishfulness and simple-hearted hope, whatever of too much and not enough, all at once and little by little, whatever burning urge to escape responsibility and routine, escape his own over-specialization, the circumscribed and inward-spiralling self, whatever remnants of his boyish longing to fly, his dreams of strange spaces and eerie heights, his fantasies of happy death, whatever indolent and sybaritic leanings, lotus-eater, smoker of grasses and herbs, blue-eyed gazer into space – all these are satisfied, all collected and massed in that living body, the sight he sees from the window.
Nabokov
>>7904995
William Gass, of course. Just read this excerpt from The Tunnel:
"Walking along the edge of the river, I no longer saw those lovely pale leaves pass me like petals, as if some river flower were blooming oddly out of season (poetry appearing abruptly in my social prose); rather I took them to be elements of a threatening metaphor, because I had suddenly seen that the world was held together only by frost and by freezing, by contraction, that it's bowels contained huge compressors and ice-cold molds; so the place where I stood looking over a trivial Indiana landscape--snow freshly falling upon an otherwise turgid, uninteresting stream--was actually a point on the hazardous brink of Being. Consequently there appeared before me an emblem of all that was--all that was like a frozen fog--exhaust from the engines of entropy; and I saw in the whitened leaves floating by me an honesty normally missing from Nature's speech, because this adventitious coating threw open the heart of the Law: this scene of desolation--relieved only by the barren purity of the trees--this wedge was all there was; and then I understood that the soft lull of August water was but a blanket on a snowbank; the dust that a wave of wind would raise was merely the ash of a dry summer blizzard; the daffodils which would ring our Chinese elm were blooming spikes of ice, encased in green like a thug's gloves; there was just one season; and when the cottonwoods released their seeds, I would see smoke from the soul of the cold cross the river on the wind to snag in the hawthorns and perish in their grip like every love."
Faulkner
>>7905035
some proof [1/2]
--we sat there, Ringo and I, listening to Cousin Drusilla and staring at
each other with the same amazed and incredulous question: Where could we have been
at that moment? What could we have been doing, even a hundred miles away, not to
have sensed, felt this, paused to look at one another, aghast and uplifted, while it was
happening? Because this, to us, was it. Ringo and I had seen Yankees; we had shot at one;
we had crouched like two rats and heard Granny, unarmed and not even rising from her
chair, rout a whole regiment of them from the library. And we had heard about battles
and fighting and seen those who had taken part in them, not only in the person of Father
when once or twice each year and without warning he would appear on the strong gaunt
horse, arrived from beyond that cloudbank region which Ringo believed was Tennessee,
but in the persons of other men who returned home with actual arms and legs missing. But
that was it: men had lost arms and legs in sawmills; old men had been telling young men
and boys about wars and fighting before they discovered how to write it down: and what
petty precisian to quibble about locations in space or in chronology, who to care or insist
Now come, old man, tell the truth: did you see this? were you really there?
>>7905042
Because wars
are wars: the same exploding powder when there was powder, the same thrust and parry
of iron when there was not--one tale, one telling, the same as the next or the one before.
So we knew a war existed; we had to believe that, just as we had to believe that the
name for the sort of life we had led for the last three years was hardship and suffering. Yet
we had no proof of it. In fact, we had even less than no proof; we had had thrust into our
faces the very shabby and unavoidable obverse of proof, who had seen Father (and the
other men too) return home, afoot like tramps or on crow-bait horses, in faded and
patched (and at times obviously stolen) clothing, preceded by no flags nor drums and
followed not even by two men to keep step with one another, in coats bearing no glitter
of golden braid and with scabbards in which no sword reposed, actually almost sneaking
home to spend two or three or seven days performing actions not only without glory
(plowing land, repairing fences, killing meat for the smokehouse) and in which they had no
skill but the very necessity for which was the fruit of the absent occupations from which,
returning, they bore no proof--actions in the very clumsy performance of which Father's
whole presence seemed (to us, Ringo and me) to emanate a kind of humility and
apology, as if he were saying, "Believe me, boys; take my word for it: there's more to it than
this, no matter what it looks like. I can't prove it, so you'll just have to believe me." And then
to have it happen, where we could have been there to see it, and were not: and this no
poste and riposte of sweat-reeking cavalry which all war-telling is full of, no galloping
thunder of guns to wheel up and unlimber and crash and crash into the lurid grime-glare
of their own demon-served inferno which even children would recognise, no ragged lines
of gaunt and shrill-yelling infantry beneath a tattered flag which is a very part of that
child's make-believe. Because this was it: an interval, a space, in which the toad-squatting
guns, the panting men and the trembling horses paused, amphitheatric about the
embattled land, beneath the fading fury of the smoke and the puny yelling, and
permitted the sorry business which had dragged on for three years now to be congealed
into an irrevocable instant and put to an irrevocable gambit, not by two regiments or two
batteries or even two generals, but by two locomotives.
>>7904995
Gustave Flaubert, obviously.
He's swedish however
Woolf, definitely. Followed by Pynchon and Faulkner.
>>7905086
>Pynchon
>a good stylist
when will this meme die?
Tolstoy, and I don't even like the man's works.
>>7905119
You know Russian?
Nabokov
>>7905051
Someone fell for the "mot juste" meme.
>assonances everywhere
>comparisons everywhere
>ternary rhythm fucked up
Proust is better.
The older I get, the more I grow to appreciate the difference between technical, linguistic prowess and the succinct, but fitting phrase.
Although it of course has its uses, most of the time the verbal athleticism of, say, Nabokov or Joyce or even Shakespeare, leaves me cold. I just don't care for it. Unless employed for a specific purpose, I tend to consider such maneuverings vain attempts at impressing the reader with fireworks, rather than insight. As immature posturing, basically.
I'm not saying that the aforementioned writers aren't writers of merit, I'm saying that they are so, to me, in spite of their verbiage, not because of it.
So to answer OP's question, yes, though I haven't gotten around to read McCarthy yet. I myself am very fond of DeLillo's prose, which I guess is not usually considered particularly beautiful, but I admire him for his workmanlike ability to reliably convey rather complex ideas in readily accessible terms, without forcing himself on the reader (the way Nabokov's ego, for example, is all over every word of every page of his books is particularly nauseating to me).
>>7905135
Just stop
>>7905092
If you can read GR and M&D and not see his stylistic prowess, something is wrong with you.
>>7905149
If you like delillo look at the second post
>>7905149
>Although it of course has its uses, most of the time the verbal athleticism of, say, Nabokov or Joyce or even Shakespeare, leaves me cold. I just don't care for it. Unless employed for a specific purpose, I tend to consider such maneuverings vain attempts at impressing the reader with fireworks, rather than insight. As immature posturing, basically.
This is the funniest thing I have ever read here. thanks
>>7905034
>your prose will never be this edgy
Relief has never been so forthcoming
>>7905154
Uhhh, I'm not the one who praised Tolstoy's prose style without even being able to read it.
Thomas Browne and Djuna Barnes (McCarthy is my favorite)
>>7905174
Keep telling yourself that, buddy.
>>7905148
Have you read both of them in french ? Somehow I doubt it.
>>7905199
"My favorite books are written in Linear A."
>>7905214
Yes, most of Flaubert's novels and A la recherche.
I can't comment of writers I've only read in translation, but in English it's Melville.
>there are people who actually read translations
How embarrassing.
BEE
>>7905149
DeLillo's "workmanlike ability" is easily surpassed by Haruf, Cather, and Carver. It doesn't sound like you read much outside of the memes.
>>7905034
Gass is archetypal for "good prose" but i dont care much for what he writes about.
>>7905149
Shakespeare is functional and poetic
>>7905725
I found Omensetter's Luck nearly unendurable.
gad
dis
>>7905260
He wrote beautifully. Been reading Moby Dick.
>>7905187
Browne is the right answer
>>7905587
What an embarrassingly silly inference to make.
![cuckoo-nest[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/8p1Did7.jpg "cuckoo-nest[1].jpg")
>>7904995
Maybe not the best, but I was pleasantly surprised by Ken Kesey. Pic related was somehow his first novel.
>>7906080
It's masterful and I have Sometimes a Great Notion to read at some point, but I think everything afterwards shows the effects of eating too much acid for too long, not that he wrote much more. I read a book of his later short stories. Not essential.
>>7906540
Proust's prose is unpolished in half of la recherche. It's also just him speaking really. In a way Céline went further that direction and had the time to paracheve his work.
Pascal I can understand, Rousseau and Retz non.
>>7905034
So purple prose with a veneer of philosophical depth is all it takes to impress you fucks?
>>7906559
Yes, Céline is a good answer. Arguably the best 20th century prose stylist in French.
John updike.
He does not write about much but his style topnotch shit.
>>7906559
Pascal is easily the best prose writer of any language, allowances for taste notwithstanding.
Rousseau is pretty crisp, and De Retz is a bit more expansive, although I would say he is more valued for his satirical wit and his asides about human nature, sort of like Thucydides (he is in no way as objective as Thucydides though).
>>7905260
Was going to say exactly this.
>>7906695
La vraie éloquence se moque de l'éloquence, la vraie morale se moque de la morale.
Pascal is a badass, too, really.
>>7905149
shut the fuck up
>this lack of Joyce
wew
>>7905024
Whats this from?
![MTE4MDAzNDEwNTg2OTk0MTkw[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/WV5tLLm.jpg "MTE4MDAzNDEwNTg2OTk0MTkw[1].jpg")
>>7906523
Thanks for the warning Anon. I'll look to pick up Sometimes a Great Notion but skip the others then.
>>7906863
http://granta.com/human-moments-in-world-war-iii/ One of my favorites
Sir Tom Browne, Sam Johnson, Robert Burton, AKA Democritus Junior, AKA The DON.
>>7905149
>the older i get
Let me guess youre like 20
>>7907203
31, with an MA in linguistics.
I find it quite amusing that so many people lose their shit over what I thought was a pretty reasonable, albeit perhaps somewhat arrogant response to the original question.
I'm not a native english speaker, so perhaps that is part of the reason for my unsentimental attitude. But I feel the same about writers closer to home. Don't waste my time with masturbatory exercises in convoluted bullshit. So I'm to kneel down and kiss the ring because some asshole rambles off half a thesaurus or goes on and on with underhanded references to local mythology that has at best cursory interest for the reader? Please. Give me real emotion or psychological insight or a decent narrative. Something honest.
It is a massive, massive turnoff for me when I get the feeling that something is written not to elucidate, but to impress. That is all I'm saying.
>>7907382
I thought it was reasonable. Fancy prose for the sake of fancy prose isn't impressive.
>>7907382
i agree completely, and given all that you've said you would love mccarthy
>>7907494
Loving corncobs tortillas yecarthy is a sign of plebbery
>>7907382
Sounds like youre just really insecure about having to confront writers whose intellects dwarf yours.
>>7906559
Retarded
>>7907613
Yawn.
This whole notion of writers as demigods is frankly laughable, especially taking into consideration how much work someone like Nabokov or Joyce put into making their reader perceive them as such. It's pathetic.
>>7907613
B8t
>>7907382
While I agree with you, I also enjoy it when the author gives me the feels, the insight, and the honesty, but in a what you'd call masturbatory way. That's why a lot of people like Ulysses, for example -- it has something for everyone.
>>7907926
I agree with you. It's tiresome peacocking that fails the entire premise of art.
But really, what the fuck do you expect from humankind? Curiosity and honesty, or arrogance and jockeying for status? Not even in literature can we escape our nature.
>>7908606
How can you be so retarded?
>>7908606
I do speak French, asshat. Why else would I be rating French prose stylists? Durp.
>>7905260
Came here to post this. Glad to see that others agree. No other writer captures me like Melville does. He is my idol and one day I hope to write even half as well as he could.
I wonder what McCarthy would say if he knew we were saying he has "the most amazing prose in the history of literature." I wish we could all go to his house and hoist him up on a sofa like a king and chant "Based McCarthy!" while he smiled sheepishly like, "What can I do? They want to celebrate me, I can't stop them." Then at night the atmosphere would shift from a celebratory revel to a something more serious and subdued as the joints come out and we urge McCarthy to partake and after a little cajoling he finally does and says, "I haven't done this in a long time." And somebody would say, "It's a good a time to start back up as any," and McCarthy would nod and then cough and try to say "True that" through the coughing. "C'mon Cormac, you can't take those big '70s hits anymore, you're an old man, and plus this shit is more powerful!" Then we'd ask him if he's feeling it yet, and he'd say "Oh yeah, you guys weren't kidding, this is powerful stuff, not like when I was young." And we'd start asking him what he meant in this book, what he was trying to say when he said that, and so on, and he'd smile and shake his head and say, "It was so long ago, and now you've got me high, I can't remember, I'm sorry!" OK, OK, then, we'd say, we'll give you a break. Sorry. We know you're high. Maybe when you come down a bit. Then somebody would shout, "McCarthy did 9/11!" and people would get annoyed and shout at him to shut up and somebody would say, "Who is that? Who brought that asshole?" And when it got late, and we began to feel like we were overstaying our welcome, I would corner McCarthy and say, "Hey, listen, I feel like I'm having a panic attack, or something, and I can't go outdoors, something's wrong with me. Is it cool if I crash here? I won't tell anybody." And he'd say Fine, fine (still high as hell), and I'd say, "Thank you, based McCarthy," and as I lay awake in the guest room in the dark I would try to think of really smart and insightful questions to ask him over breakfast, which I would have ready for him when he awoke.
>>7910639
it was good but got old already. Pasta moves too quickly nowadays.
