Who are the best five living authors around now in your opinions?
McCarthy, Pinecone and Gass
They will all probably die pretty soon
Salman Rushdie, Will Self, Kazuo Ishiguro
>>7808864
WILL SELF HAHAHAHAHA
Joseph McElroy, Cormac McCarthy, Don DeLillo, Alessandro Baricco, Russell Banks.
>>7808910
Y u no pinecōn
ishiguro, orhan pamuk, mccarthy,
>>7808844
Dawkins, Dennett, Pinker, Hofstadter, and Jim Goad.
Ishiguro, Naipaul, Pynchon.... uhh.... Houellebecq... ummm..... uhhh....
Oe? That was harder than I thought it would be
>>7808844
Sam Harris.
>>7808922
*respectfully bows at you while raising craft beer pitcher i bought on reddit*
>>7808844
John Green
Murakami
JK Rowling
GRRM
Andy Weir
rl stine.. jim davis... tao lin
Joseph McElroy
Tao Lin
Thomas Pynchon
William Gass
Cormac McCarthy
BRET ELLIS IS ALIVE
>>7808951
>>7808951
At least make an effort
Franzen, Marilynne Robinson, Gass, Pynchon, Murakami.
1. DFW
2. DFW
3. DFW
4. DFW
5. DFW
Haha, in case you didn't notice, I love DFW! The absolute BEST living author imo and I can't wait for the many more healthy years of literature that he's going to crank out :))
>>7809866
>Pynchon, Murakami.
well memed
>>7809866
I agree with Franzen, Robinson, and Pynchon. Haven't read Gass, and while I love Murakami, I wouldn't list him. I'd add Rushdie and either McCarthy or Ian McEwan.
>>7808844
elena ferrante
evan dara
cormac mccarthy
rosmarie waldrop
and blank
>>7808864
>Kazuo Ishiguro
What is good by him? I only read never let me go and it made me feel some feels.
How can you even answer this when "best" is almost entirely subjective and you have read less than 0.01% of authors currently alive?
>>7809903
Remains of the day
An artist of the floating world
>>7809903
the unconsoled is his best
also the buried giant is very good.
>>7809907
fuck off plebian.
>>7809907
just make a list you piece of shit buttfuck
>>7808844
I'm the best five authors alive. All five of them.
Tao Lin
Don DeLillo
Pynchon
Robert Galbraith
Murakami
>>7809922
Those double dubs don't lie.
Pynchon
Umberto Eco
McCarthy
Tao Lin
That remains of the day guy if he is still kickin I dunno
>>7809947
>Umberto Eco
i'm sorry to break it you anon
Anybody know about the rumours that Pinecone has been writing a book for over two decades to be released after his death? Pls be real
>>7809177
>BRET ELLIS
American psycho was fucking shit, I would rather read IKEA catalogue discriptopns
>>7809953
He just died last week, didn't he.
>>7809963
>catalogue
catalog, my bad
>>7809963
This
Fuck white Tao Lin.
>>7809960
d-d-dont play with my heart
>>7809960
I heard he wrote a book under a pseudonym and it went unnoticed. Kinda like when Rowling thought her shit was so good she could write under another name, but it didn't sell shit.
>haha guise!! I actually wrote that xD!!
>>7809960
Wasn't that 20 year old book Mason & Dixon or Against the Day? From what I recall, that rumor comes from a letter of his from the 60s or 70s where he said he was working on 4 books at once.
>inb4pandemoniumofthesun
>>7810027
Gas Sewer and Electric?
In no particular order:
Houellebecq
McCarthy
Vollmann
Buechner
Coetzee
>>7808844
Junot Diaz is pretty good, I would put him up there but maybe not top 5, I haven't read enough of living authors to say for certain.
>>7810058
>Junto Diaz is pretty good
>>7810058
Oscar Wao was a fluke, none of his other work is near the same quality.
>>7810036
Cow Country
>>7810066
I love some of his short stories, "How to date a brown girl" was killer
>>7810074
I read that blog post and was thoroughly unconvinced by it. It doesn't sound like him at all.
>>7810080
How to Date a Brown Girl was derivative at best (how many other guide style stories have a I read? Too many) and was literally only about a teenager trying to get some. The cultural flavor was nothing new either.
>>7810092
It was, like a lot of his work, about a confused cultural identity. Maybe it's because I am mixed race or because I saw him in person talking about his work that I like him. I identify a lot with what he is writing and haven't seen much of that elsewhere (except maybe Camus)
>>7810094
I've met him IRL as well, and he's a prick. My school paid for him to come with money from the MFA program, and he just talked shit about them the whole time. He said it was alright to film his reading, and he proceeded to be a dick to the camera people who were just trying to quietly do their job. Then, he was rude to most people after the reading for god knows what reason.
My school paid stupid money to bring him there for this, too.
The confused cultural identity shit is there, yeah, but he isn't really the first is my point. He's a latecomer, and isn't even the best.
>>7810104
not surprised by this at all desu
Diaz is a fraud. Apart from Oscar Wao (which is a good novel for a number of reasons, but probably not one that will ever get into the canon), Diaz has spent the last 20 years enjoying the life of the famous writer, while publishing repackages of the stuff he had on the New Yorker (including Wao). If you read his interviews, he has flaked out of more projects than he has actually published. Lately he has turned to the decolonial love bullshit because he can count on a fervent internet audience, while enjoying the benefits of the grants he got from the establishment he criticizes.
tl;dr Diaz is a prick.
>>7808910
>Baricco
Srsly?
>>7810155
100% agreed
All Diaz has done for the past couple years is soak up attention and share retard-tier political posts on facebook. Pity he didn't just die after Oscar Wao so that we didn't have to see him descend into pure drivel.
>>7808910
Baricco is a hack
>>7809872
He killed himself because he was a hack and knew he would let down fans like you
1. Charles Portis
2. John Barth
3. Annie Dillard
4. Elfriede Jelinek
5. Robert Coover
>>7808844
Gassposter's favorite five:
William Gass
John Barth
Joseph McElroy
William T. Vollmann
Thomas Pynchon
all the people posting mcelroy are hilarious. you haven't read anything of his
>>7810347
He has like 5 books other than Women and Men that are pretty easy to get.
>>7810349
yes, I know. They still haven't read them
Cormac Mccarthy
Gene Wolfe
Thomas Pynchon
Jonathan Littell
Thomas Ligotti
that's just fiction
i'm ashamed at the lack of wofle itt desu.
>>7809929
isnt galbraith just jk rowling's nom de plume?
>>7808951
/thread
Coetzee
Modiano
Chamoiseau
Laferriere
Cabre
>>7810361
Ligotti is great but nah, definitely top 5 living horror writers though.
>>7810945
Also, I agree with everyone so far who's said McCarthy, despite his last two novels not being all that great, he's a literary God in my book.
DFW
>>7810958
oh wait
Umberto Eco is pretty good imho
Joyce, DEW, Camus, Dostoevsky, and Hunter S
(they live in our hearts)
>>7811002
Top ceck
>>7810955
pleb detected
Michel Houellebecq and Franzen
Kundera too, but he's old and hasn't written anything good in a while
>>7811026
>Houellebecq
Nope. Almost every Goncourt candidate in last years is linguistically superior
>>7810104
really? it must have been a really bad day. i've met him twice and he was as pleasant as can be.even had a chat with him about Los Bros Hernandez. then again, maybe i just caught him on his best behavior. sometimes an author has to be a salesmen, too.
Dostoevsky
>>7810155
how does any of that make him a fraud? he is a legitimately talented writer who works at a hella slow pace with varying results. undoubtedly he peaked with Wao and is in no danger of producing masterworks every year, but where does the fraud come from? hyperbole because you don't like his politics? because a poor guy took money from people offering it? because he markets his self to keep his name relevant? do tell.
>>7811019
Why
>>7811055
He has repeatedly told in interviews that he was under contract with several publishers for things he eventually didn't write. He is not in danger of producing masterworks in a decade, and possibly ever now that he has found a supporting crowd that follows him for his political persona instead of his art. And as you said yourself, he is marketing himself instead of actually doing something to "keep his name relevant".
Anyways, why are you so upset? Are you a Diaz fanboy?
>>7811072
just interested to know why you'd criticize him so. takes some effort to disparage a man you've probably never met.
i cannot fathom why you call him fraudulent, though. a writer follows his muse and it seems Diaz's is fickle. so what? he already wrote a great (well, very good) book. he also corresponds with his fans. neither makes him a fraud.
btw, a writer keeping his name relevant is in no way fraudulent, mate. it's a legit way to maintain an audience and keep his brand, which is himself, alive. simple business tactic.
also, not really a fanboy, as you say. i really dug Wao but found How to Lose Her disappointing. his short Monster from the New Yorker was pretty sweet, though.
>>7810066
>Oscar Wao was a fluke, none of his other work is near the same quality.
strongly disagree. I thought Oscar Wao was a bit of a letdown compared to Drown.
>>7811095
> takes some effort to disparage a man you've probably never met.
I never met you but I know you are a faggot.
>>7811095
I actually spent some time researching Diaz and his works for uni, and I came to the conclusion that he is a prick from several of his interviews. In particular, when promoting Wao he ranted against other authors that were doing the same genre-mixing stuff, which was completely unwarranted and a show of either ignorance or unprofessionality on his part. The same can be said about the pieces he wrote against university writing programmes when he spent years working in one. And it's fun that you bring up Monstro, since he spent at least 10 years hyping it as his great caribbean sci fi novel before copping out and reducing it to a short story,
Finally, if you are so adamant that a writer has to keep a public image to sell himself, you cannot criticize people for forming an opinion based on that image.
>>7811105
really, mate? is your argument so insubstantial you resort to name calling? jeez, i wasn't even really trying here, just pointing out your bullshit. dude's not a fraud. he's just a slow writer.
>>7811130
Junot plz go
Wolfe, Pynchon, McCarthy, Gass
>>7809960
pandemonium of the sun
Pynchon, DeLillo, Le Guin, Ferrante, Rushdie
>>7808922
No Chomsky? You're a disgrace to r/books and r/philosophy
>>7811237
oh I forgot Ishiguro, he belongs here, dunno who I want to remove though. maybe Ferrante
>lunch time
>herded into gymnasium because it's raining
>hoping some kind of epic rainy recess adventure happens like in that episode of recess
>nothing at all happens
>sit around eating lunch
>mom packed me a Five Alive
>i fucking hate five alive
>pray for an orange juice every day
>always get some bullshit like hawaiian punch and want to kill myself
>the ice pack made my sandwich soggy
>eat it
>talk to negro friend tristan
>wonder what's in the room behind the stage and whether it's haunted
>weird (retarded?) 6th grader with behavioral problems starts screaming about murdering people with a letter opener
>teachers escort him out of the gym
>in hindsight he was pretty precociously violent for a 6th grader
>somehow he became my model for all troubled youths so that every time i think of a troubled misunderstood youth who will probably shoot up a place, i think of him
F U C K F I V E A L I V E
>>7811245
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfoEawfqJgM
>>7811338
The way the juice squirts out of the fruits without them being squeezed is really weird.
Lazlo K, Pynchon, John Crowley, Javier Marias, Gass or Vila-Matas
The only living writer of fiction I actually like is Wolfe. Would be Bolano too if he was alive.
Mc Carthy was bad in The Road and only read it, didn't enjoy Pynchon at all in CoL49 but I get why people would like him. DeLillo was fucking unreadable, horrible on all levels.
Will try out Gass soon.
>>7809876
haha ya i think macarthur fellows are shit authors too and definitely not in the running for the greatest author to have ever lived, much less the top 5 still alive
>>7811555
mate, if you only read an author's minor works, your opinion of them as writers is invalid.
Pynchon, McEwan, Houellebecq,Knausgaard, Marias
Not discounting a lot of the popular living writers that lit loves. I simply haven't read many of them.
>>7809169
look at tao lin amongst those names. you can all but visualise his effeminate body get ruthlessly gangbanged by those four old white wrinkly cocks
Gene Wolfe
Mo Yan (first mention, for shame)
Roth I guess, though I kind of despise him
>>7812768
It's my opinion on them based on the work I did read, at least I made that clear.
