Which author has the best prose?
>>7731078
Joyce
Nabby
Faulkner
Eça de Querioz
Louis-Ferdinan Céline
Machado de Assis
Vladimir Nabokov
Knut Hamsun
Thomas Bernhard
Raduan Nassar
This man--Gass. And anyone who says otherwise I sincerely am sorry for.
>>7731145
As I Lay Dying.
>>7731078
Jimmy J is great and all, but it ultimately comes down to a matter of personal preference and I'd say Hawkes is the best.
>>7731164
Greetings Hawkesposter! Glad to see you again.
>>7731164
I just don't understand this. Can you elaborate, with some examples maybe? I'm asking for a justification, though that's far too strong a word, not a lesson in subjectivity.
>>7731175
It's sad that Hawkes is so underread here that I'm instantly recognizable whenever I mention him.
>>7731191
I don't know. You could always do what I do with Gass--provoke low-level discussion about him and hope that, in time, people read him.
>>7731191
I'd rather him be under-read than another dead meme like Joyce, Pynchon and DFW
>>7731181
If you just want some examples of lines/scenes I liked, here's one from The Blood Oranges.
>But then we emerged from the hollow darkness of a low arch into full view of the black canal whose simple low cobbled embankment was wide enough to accommodate roving dogs, sullen families on foot and, one at a time, those rare engine-powered vehicles that appeared, now and again, from beyond the mountains. Here the crowd was gathered, we saw, not for fire or bicycle accident or fist fight between children with slack jaws and bloodshot eyes, but instead was pressing toward the edge of the canal in anger or with laughter because a large khaki-colored motorbus had somehow found its way off the sloping embankment and now sat, floated, right side up on the still water black with pollution.
>"My God, Cyril, they're going to drown!"
>Her hand was long and white and cold in mine, gently I maneuvered myself so that Fiona could see--it was always essential that Fiona see the cruelest accident, the smallest catastrophe, the gravest incident--but would not be able to pitch us without warning into the midst of the little factioned crowd or into the way of the rescuers. She pulled, I held he firmly, she leaned as far as she could toward the bus that was imperceptibly rocking now about ten feet from the embankment where the nearest brute-shaped member of the fire brigade stood shouting out his furious commands.
>"It's going to sink, Cyril. Isn't it?"
>I frowned, waited, and with pressure on her hand and a movement of my shoulders and a soft thoughtful sound in my nose and throat tried to convey that it was a question no one could answer.
>"But people commit suicide that way, baby. It has to sink."
>>7731292
Blood Oranges was fucking good, kinda made Hawkes my model for prose writing
>>7731292
I like The Lime Twig's prose more.
>>7731292
>That overwritten, tension-destroying, rhythmless, downright repulsive first paragraph
Get out of here with that shit.
>>7731315
Pretty sure it's supposed to be like that, anon. Hawkes purposefully gimps himself sometimes.
>>7731327
not a good sign famiglia
>>7731086
Yes, let's give this one to Nabokov since he has nothing else and so he'll go away and not try to keep putting others down and puffing up his ego.
Excellent job Vladimir and wow not in your native tongue even, very impressive.
>>7731367
Ymous, Anon. Pretentious, puffed-up, ephemeral, displays no talent, big ego. Means nothing to me.
>>7731365
It's justified.
>>7731078
JA Baker
>>7731292
Here's a paragraph from The Beetle Leg
>a man lay buried just below the water level of the dam. He was embedded in the earth and entangled with a caterpillar, pump engine and a hundred feet of hose, somewhere inside the mountain that was protected from the lake on one side by rock and gravel and kept from erosion on its southward slope by partially grown rows of yellow grass. This man--he was remembered in Mistletoe, Government City, and would be as long as the Great Slide came to mind with every ale case struck open--was the brother of one who still hung on, having a place in the fields southwest of the official lines of the town. Boundaries were still marked with transit stakes ten years old.
Here's part of The Cannibal, it's something written by one of the characters in it. Keep in mind that this was published in 1949.
>INDICTMENT OF THE ALLIED ANTAGONISTS, AND PROCLAMATION OF THE GERMAN LIBERATION:
>English-speaking Peoples: Where are the four liberties of the Atlantic Charter? Where is liberty and humanity for the sake of which your government has sent you into this war? All this is nothing as long as your government has the possibility of ruling the mob, of sabotaging Peace by means of intrigues, and of being fed with a constant supply from the increasingly despairing masses--America, who has fostered you upon a bereaved world only turns her masses of industry against that world, the muzzles of her howitzers of insanity and greed against a continent that she herself contaminates.
>While you have been haranguing and speculating in Democracy, while you have branded and crucified continental Europe with your ideologies, Germany has risen. We proclaim that in the midst of the rubble left in your pat there exists an honorable national spirit, a spirit conducive to the unification of the world and poisonous to capitalistic states. The rise of the German people and their reconstruction is no longer questionable--the land, the Teutonic land, gives birth to the strongest of races, the Teutonic race.
>People of Germany: We joyfully announce that tonight the Third Allied Commander, overseer of Germany, was killed. The Allies are no longer in power, but you, the Teutons, are once more in control of your futures, your civilization will once more rise. The blood that is in your veins is inevitable and strong. The enemy is gone, and in this hour of extermination of our natural foe we give thanks to you, your national spirit that has flown, at long last, from Western slavery.
>We pay tribute to the soul of Cromwell of the first war, who, realizing the power of the Goths and forsaking his weakened England, instigated the Germanic Technological Revolution. It is on his inspiration that the East looms gloriously ahead, and on his creed that the Teuton hills and forests will design their Native Son.
>From the ruins of Athens rise the spires of Berlin.
>>7731086
Read his works in Russian. No.
>>7731425
we're talking english m8
>>7731427
Well, I suppose he mastered his native language first and was better writing in it.
>>7731292
Absolutely dreadful, that man is a fucking hack.
>>7731451
>one of the most influential authors of the 20th century
>hack
K
>>7731462
>insinuating influence is equivalent to great writing
>>7731078
McCarthy
>>7731398
>a caterpillar, pump engine
This was probably a copy editing error that because him being tangled to a caterpillar (the company) pump engine by the hose makes more sense than an actual caterpillar being involved.
>>7731512
well memed
>>7731512
>the best prose
>Corncob "Tortillas" YeCarthy
Choose one.
>>7731530
i like you
Leonard Michaels
>>7731078
evelyn waugh
wodehouse
>>7731431
he was trilingual as a child and mastered english entirely before he did russian
>>7731078
Dellilo, desu.senpai
I find this kind of threads ridiculous, since people will mostly pick authors of their native languages. It's also kind of impossible to compare prose from distint idioms btw.
I'm a pleb.
I enjoyed Henry Miller and Tolstoj.
>>7733127
Both are pretty good desu.
>>7733140
I also loved The Winter of Our Discontent. It's one of my favourite books.
I also like Salinger's prose.
But out of these I'd say Tolstoj had the best prose.
>>7731078
Pic related is literally the only author that has objectively decent prose who doesn't inundate it with overly sentimental metaphors of human vivace
>>7733168
I feel hp goes full purple and still makes it work. I have a soft spot for him.
>>7733168
