Who's the wittiest writer you've ever read?
Wilde
>>8118299
Shakespeare
sam pink
>>8118299
First thought Wilde
Second thought Shakespeare
Third thought Byron
Giorgio Manganelli
Nietzsche (in his middle period)
The Sophists
Spinoza
H. S. Thompson
Shakespeare
Pratchett
Dante (kinda)
Machiavelli (in his plays, mostly)
Kharms
I mean, they all do it differently so you have to list them all.
>>8118517
>>8118517
>I mean, they all do it differently so you have to list them all.
Even Dante who you think is only "kinda" witty and the thread is about who you think is the most witty?
Barth is the wittiest American author post 1950.
>>8118531
le showoff post
-Terry Pratchett
-Shakespeare
-Mark Train
>>8118299
Burroughs
>>8118635
Seconding this. Man had a pen sharp as a scalpel and was pretty liberal in its use.
>>8118299
Douglas Adams.
>inb4 plebbit.
>>8118299
This here qt π.
>>8118299
William Gaddis
>>8118635
how do you get witty from burroughs. dont get me wrong. love burroughs. but witty?
witty for me would be mememaster wallace or maybe nabokov. lolita is super funny.
me desu
>>8118788
>women
>witty
I am laughing, but only condescendingly
>>8118299
Wilde, the bants are sublime
>>8118299
Peter De Vries.
PG Wodehouse, by a large margin.
>>8118870
Among Brits, even Max Beerbohm was wittier.
Wilde or Nabokov
>>8118869
no, he's not, and he ought to slip into his grave next to his mafia-friend
>>8118299
Shakespeare and Chaucer
Hermann Hesse
Svevo, def.
>>8118506
>>8118305
>>8118860
>>8118879
Can any of you elaborate on Wilde?
>>8119253
What? I don't get that reference.
>>8119301
Read De Profundis he has many o' witty jabs to Douglas
>>8119253
I'm talking about this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_De_Vries
Not the Dutch journalist.
>>8119301
Max Beerbohm was much funnier than Wilde.
>>8119305
De Profundis is more whiny than witty. The whole thing was literally 100000% his fault, reading him whine and trying to rationalize his behavior and blame others is fucking sad.
The plays and Dorian Gray on the other hand...
>>8119324
Don't forget about the canterville ghost. It's his funniest short story; I really adore it.
>>8119311
ops, my bad
>>8119301
Read 'the decay of lying' (I believe it's something along those lines). It's full of incredibly cynical paradoxes and one such
>>8119323
Nabokov's humor was just an imperfect imitation of Peter De Vries. Nabokov was the better literary artist, of course.
>ctrl + f "donne"
>0 of 0
further proof /lit/ is illiterate. donne is literally the canonical answe rhere.
>>8119301
please not the fucking Morrissey Oscar Wilde meme
>>8119362
Decay of Lying is good.
>I am afraid that we are beginning to be overeducated; at least everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching — that is really what our enthusiasm for education has come to.
>The more one analyses people, the more all reasons for analysis disappear. Sooner or later one comes to that dreadful universal thing called human nature.
>Yesterday evening Mrs. Arundel insisted on my going to the window, and looking at the glorious sky, as she called it. Of course I had to look at it. She is one of those absurdly pretty Philistines to whom one can deny nothing. And what was it? It was simply a very second-rate Turner, a Turner of a bad period, with all the painter's worst faults exaggerated and over-emphasised.
>>8119383
Could you please elaborate? I don't mean this in a sarcastic way. Genuinely interested in what you have to say if there's any truth behind this claim.
>>8119383
how???
>>8119383
you are fucking illiterate and you should go back to fucking Turkey
>>8119399
Look at the reviews of Lolita. His humor there is compared to De Vries.
>>8119409
You're gonna have to do a bit better than that mate.
>>8119392
What's wrong; you do want to read Oscar Wilde with me, right anon?
>>8119405
Nabokov was not from Turkey, you fucking retard.
>>8119800
Bait or retarded? Shame them nice dubs go to waste on someone with very poor reading comprehension!
>>8119885
>reads "russian nobility in exile" as "turkish"
>asks other people why they are retarded
unless you're putin, you're a fucking retard. if you're putin, congratulations on your restored homeland, sir, i'll get rid of these maps.
>>8119397
That third quote is gold, it's the one quote from Wilde that has truly stuck with me.
Words fail Norman Mailer yet again
>All these Wilde pseuds ITT
Anyway, the obvious choice is G.K. Chesterton.
>>8119902
>asks other people why they are retarded
I didn't ask why you were retarded. Seriously, learn to fucking read.
<--- the only correct answer
>>8120008
You're a full-on mouthbreathing retard. Go back to Turkey, bitch boy.
Myself of course
>>8118874
>Max Beerbohm
Depends if your idea of wit runs to the epigrammatic.
Not sure if he's the wittiest, but Bierce deserves a mention.
