20th century novelists

BrufordFreak wrote: It was. The Hyperion cantos blew me away to such an extent that it made me give up on reading fiction for a while (especially SciFi), but Dan's 21st Century work has been inconsistent--often overly-wordy, pedantic, and flowing less smoothly. And I'll be the first to admit that the three Hyperion sequels were not quite up to the standard set by the first. But then, I could say much the same about any of the above authors. For me, Hesse and Salinger have probably set the bar the highest--in terms of pairing consistently great writing with consistently great story telling.

Hyperion is one of those books that can be pedantic and blow you away at the same time. I bought the sequel but never cracked it...

I have been reading a ton of Faulkner of late

Edited by Triceratopsoil - September 13 2019 at 19:22

I don't know how much Vonnegut is here, perhaps he is becoming more-so, certainly he had many critics and writers who extolled his virtues, but he still had that pedigree of sci-fi, which was often seen as lesser. Not that that's all he wrote. Never-the-less, he's one of my favourite writers. He was a humanist, a socialist and witty. He wrote quite simply in a sense, which I'm sure was deliberate. His wry observations of society/ social criticism, his talent for satire, the dark humour that could traverse inanity while being deeply moralistic, this puts him at a high level for me. His writing resonates with me. He didn't just come up with imaginative and humorous stories, he imbued a sense of humanism throughout his work. Vonnegut has said that his motive for writing was political, and I feel that his linguistic style worked well for his fiction and essays. One impression I got was that he made the reader feel like he wasn't taking himself too seriously while still imbuing serious messages in his work.

Edited by Logan - October 15 2019 at 21:19

Logan wrote: I don't know how much Vonnegut is here, perhaps he is becoming more-so, certainly he had many critics and writers who extolled his virtues, but he still had that pedigree of sci-fi, which was often seen as lesser. Not that that's all he wrote. Never-the-less, he's one of my favourite writers. He was a humanist, a socialist and witty. He wrote quite simply in a sense, which I'm sure was deliberate. His wry observations of society/ social criticism, his talent for satire, the dark humour that could traverse inanity while being deeply moralistic, this puts him at a high level for me. His writing resonates with me. He didn't just come up with imaginative and humorous stories, he imbued a sense of humanism throughout his work. Vonnegut has said that his motive for writing was political, and I feel that his linguistic style worked well for his fiction and essays. One impression I got was that he made the reader feel like he wasn't taking himself too seriously while still imbuing serious messages in his work.

jamesbaldwin wrote: ... After Italo Calvino, one of the most important writer of the end of 20th century was Antonio Tabucchi, who lived in Portugal. He was a great connoisseur of Fernando Pessoa, and translated his works into Italian. He also assembled Pessoa's Book of Restlessness, which consisted of unrelated clips. Tabucchi is a great writer, his masterpiece is set in Portugal, at the time of the dictatorship of Salazar, and is called "Pereira argues"

Celine is one of the greatest.

jamesbaldwin wrote: Laxness... Who is he??

Faulkner and Borges are my favourites on the list (of those I'm familiar with, anyway). Another worthy mention I would have voted for if he was in here would be Naguib Mahfouz.