Which writer has your favourite prose and why?
>>6397852
Wolfe. He is immersive and crafts something very real, mental images I got from here stick with me like no other.
>>6397856
Do you mean Gene Wolfe?
Nabokov.
>>6397866
Cliche response, but he's very good at capturing sensual detail in Lolita, at least. Never read anything else of his, though.
>>6397864
I do mean Gene Wolfe.
McCarthy of course
Woolf or Fitzgerald.
Camus
I don't like prose.
>>6397852
Tolkein. He can write very epic.
>>6397957
For story, yeah he's great, but prose? Really?
Virginia Woolfe. Her prose just really sticks out with me. I don't really have the words to describe what it is about her work.
>>6398012
Not him, but Silmarillion and Children of Hurin have great prose.
Ray Bradbury.
Surprised no one has mentioned Ray Bradbury so far...
>>6397957
Do you remember that part in LoTR where Frodo saw Aragorn talking to the light and there was someone else there? I can't remember the specifics but I remember it precisely because of the prose and image.
>>6398044
arguably his only talent
>>6398044
Why in the world would anyone mention him for good prose? He is Martin level.
>>6397872
Ada, or Ardor is my favorite Nabokov novel. You should read it
>>6398356
I was planning to read Pale Fire next, actually. Which one is better, in your opinion?
>>6397852
Faulkner/McCarthy
There's objectively no other answer.
Calvino
The imagery in Invisible Cities made my heart ache
I really like Jack London and Stendhal.
>>6397866
This.
>>6398595
>muh shit purple prose
Thanks for weighing in, faggot.
GRRM
>>6398585
calvino GOAT
cosmicomics also gr8
>>6398044
is this a joke
goddamn ray Bradbury is such a hack
>>6397852
I get the biggest kick out of Delillo's prose. Man writes music.
Can't decide between Melville and Faulkner. Both write beautifully, and I love both, but each writer has his own particular excellence.
>>6398631
Carver is under appreciated here because of this boards love of 'big prose'. Don't get me wrong, Pynchon, Faulkner, Melville, and others are all great fun to read, but why can't we appreciate austerity as much as we appreciate the big swing.
>>6398619
Delillo is pretty similar.
>>6398597
His prose isn't purple. It's probably because of Hemingway's influence, but Americans have this strange idea that long and complex sentences are purple. No, purple prose is when an author ornaments his writing with unnecessary words, like so many of the Victorian writers did. Look closely at Nabokov's prose and you'll find that each word serves a purpose, whether it's giving us information or simply helping to maintain a rhythm.
>>6398631
I wouldn't call him a favorite of mine, but I agree, Carver's style is pretty great. And the way some of the endings to his short stories are so jolting and abrupt...so good.
Either Melville or Hemingway. Probably Melville for prose itself, and Hemingway for style (can't get enough of those short sentences).
Rilke, if reading him in translation counts.
Otherwise Joyce.
>>6398665
>every word serves a purpose
>All at once we were madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in love with each other; hopelessly, I should add, because that frenzy of mutual possession might have been assuaged only by our actually imbibing and assimilating every particle of each other’s soul and flesh; but there we were, unable even to mate as slum children would have so easily found an opportunity to do so.
Ha.
>>6398630
If they could they'd say Leopardi, or Manzoni, not fucking Calvino
>>6398685
What part's useless?
>>6398688
Wasn't Leopardi a poet?
>>6397887
Should have meant Thomas Wolfe.
>>6398689
Basically everything but 'in love'
>>6398700
confirmed for troll
Joyce of course
>>6398665
Lol I'm a fan of Nabokov but some of his stuff is purple I guess, but it's skillfully so.
>>6398701
Confirmed for maddening, trying, tiresome, bothersome, vexatious, annoyance.
Lem.
The way he plays with language is just delicious.
>>6398685
My point stands. If he had just said, "All at once we were in love," the extent of the love would remain unknown. That is the narrator's voice showing, in case you didn't know. Humbert is not the objective, omniscient 3rd person author of the previous century. Humbert might at times get carried away, but Nabokov sure doesn't. We learn about Humbert and his psychology through how he tells the story.
>>6398698
Shouldn't have.
>>6397866
"the Liberace of prose"
is the best description of Nabokov.
JOYCE
O
Y
C
E
Melville. If you haven't read Bartleby the Scrivener yet, you should. That last epiloguish paragraph is fucking heart stopping prose
Delillo
Joyce and Hemingway
>>6398027
schizophrenic. nonsensical. awful.
>>6398380
pale fire is boring, stick with his stories.
>>6398385
>objectively
>>>/mu/
>>>/v/
>>6398593
>Stendhal
Now there's a writer this place doesn't mention enough.
>>6398716
see >>6398734
Someone like Hemmingway is sparse and clean because he writes in 3rd person and can do that. Nabakov is speaking through a deranged man who fancies himself a hopeless romantic. None of it is fluff
objective 20th century prose chart:
GOAT tier:
Joyce, Beckett, Gaddis, Gysin
Great tier:
Faulkner, James, Pynchon, DeLillo, Nabokov
Good tier:
Hemingway, Hesse, Steinbeck, DH Lawrence, Borges, later Kerouac
Acceptable tier:
Woolf, Fitzgerald, most Bloomsbury groupies, top-tier Sci-fi and Fantasy (Wolfe, Tolkein)
Mediocre tier:
Orwell, Huxley, Lowry, Heller, most of the Beats, "highbrow" Sci-fi (Bradbury, Wells)
Trash tier:
Vonnegut, Early Kerouac, 99.9999% of genre fiction (King, etc.)
It's samuel beckett's bday guys
r/ing the picture of him that says 'do you even read'
>>6398902
Only three problems I have:
(1) >objective
(2) Steinbeck should be one tier higher in my opinion
(3) fuck you and your shitty meme opinion on Vonnegut
>>6398698
thus saith the prophet
you are correct
>>6398902
im loling at Gysin
>>6398902
>monolingual homunculi who read translations trying to make a chart out of anything
how dehumanizing
>>6399342
>Citing one post
>uses the plural of homunculus
>>6398680
Hemingway is an American meme and he needs to be forgotten.
I can't get some things James Joyce wrote outta my head. Everything just feels so right.
Flannery O'Connor.
I don't think I've read any writer, American or otherwise, who can end short fiction in a more beautiful way. The ending of The Life You Save May Be Your Own is still one of my favorite endings to any short story ever.
HST & Bourdain. They write how they talk and it may be 99% bullshit; I aspire to write as frankly.
>>6397856
How would you describe his style?
>>6400524
>if it has semicolons its good xD
Joyce and Melville
>>6400886
This is by far the most prevalent opinion across threads. Either it actually means they're actually good, or they're just a shitty meme.
Joyce because it's really the only thing he bothered with.
Proust
I've always liked Gaddis, Proust, and Nabokov. Then I also really admire Thomas Mann, but in a different way. He could easily hold my attention for 10 hours.
>>6400962
Lol, it's literally just the acadmics' answers: Joyce, Melville, Nabokov, George Eliot.
Doesn't mean they're wrong, but that's why everyone repeats it ad nauseaum.
Oscar Wilde anyone?
>>6397852
Wilde, such flowery and witty prose. With Joyce a close second
Pynchon, Gass, and Antonio Lobo Antunes (which is really just a mash up of Conrad and Proust).
how does one become good at writing prose.
I want to write beautifully
>>6401047
this
>>6401026
His is probably the most fun to read. It's best when you see his plays performed by actually talented actors.
>>6401047
faulkner gave advice, "read good and bad, literary and pulp, like a carpenter learns his trade." -paraphrase i'm not autistic.
To me it seems this, decide what good prose is for you, and practise writing and reading it for a few years, then you should be able to reproduce what your good is.
Many of the best prose stylists are Excellent at copying previous masters. And then adding a twist once they get worthwhile information.
>>6401047
>>6401099
There's also the question of whether or not your writing matches the unity of your work. For example, Bret Easton Ellis and Hemingway make statements simply by virtue of how they describe characters and events.
And >>6401099 is absolutely right that most hailed stylists can do impeccable impressions of other writers.
>>6398689
Madly, clumsily and shamelessly.
>>6398902
>Faulkner not GOAT tier
>Steinback above Woolf
Man, really?
>>6401894
>adverbs are bad
>its true
>someone else said so and I can't think for myself
>>6401899
Bay dog couldn't follow that logic.
>>6401047
Good prose is basically long form poetry
Victor Hugo.
His style is beautiful, not to mention his characters are brilliantly described; his writing about their emotional states is second to none.
>>6401962
I've never read any of his work. Would you mind demonstrating by quoting a phrase you found particularly brilliant?
>>6398704
/thread
>>6402035
I would, but I don't own his books. I borrowed Les Miserables from the library (Norman Denny translation). Give it a read. It may feel slow at first but it picks up after around 100 pages, and trust me, you'll be gripped - not so much by the plot as by the prose.
>>6402073
>gripped by the prose
lol
Faulkner, Pynchon, Beckett
they know the music
>>6398902
>Good tier:
>later Kerouac
>Trash tier:
>Early Kerouac
How early and late are we talking? Satori in Paris is late but terrible, while some of the stuff published earlier is okay.
Unless by 'early' you mean the 1940s crap that wasn't published till after he died (The Sea is My Brother, A Haunted Life, etc).
Marguerite Yourcenar
>>6402077
What is the problem?
>>6400866
It changes significantly from novel to novel, but The Book of the New Sun is written with a sort of controlled denseness. Creations and scenery are often portrayed through allusions to abstract ideas and a creative marrying of disparate concepts. He often creates sensations that can only be really described as, well, new; there are emotions that I've never felt outside of his books.
tao lin, t.bernhard, celine, dfw
i like it when the prose is formulaic enough to easily be digested yet inventive enough to make me 'get something from it'
>>6402252
>memes
>>6402085
Probably means something along the lines of On the Road compared to Big Sur.
>no edward gibbon
literal plebs
>>6402610
Edward who?
Celine
>>6398585
Same here. Calvino is a fucking god
Dostoevsky - his style is ugly, but you can feel everything. It's earnest and doesn't feel masturbatory.
