20th century novelists

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Topic: 20th century novelists
Posted: July 15 2020 at 13:35

Charles Bukowski

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Posted: November 22 2019 at 18:38

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn by many, many верстаs.

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Posted: November 02 2019 at 19:35

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.

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Posted: November 02 2019 at 19:28

It's probably impossible to come up with any sort of definitive list for any given century but I thought the below were worthy of being 'honorable mentions'

Martin Amis

John Updike

Irvine Welsh

JD Salinger

Jean Paul Sartre

Vladimir Nabokov

JG Ballard

William Golding

Anthony Burgess

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Posted: November 01 2019 at 10:58

jamesbaldwin wrote:

Laxness... Who is he??

An Icelandic writer and a Nobel prize winner. His novels are very poetic and he has kind of an unique sense of humour. World Light especially is a masterpiece.

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Posted: October 31 2019 at 20:43

Hi,

Just came across this ... so I ended up get "The Prodigious Physician" (my father's) when I meant to get Antonio Tabucchi. I'm definitely going blind missing stuff like that, but my dad's stuff somehow was listed in that middle ... weird.

Anyhoodle, one of the things that got me, was the introduction to my dad's work ... and of course it is done by one of those academic high brows that thinks that their literary criticisms are what the world of literature is all about, and the lady's description of some details are ridiculous and completely out of line, and should be exposed as fake and not intelligent ... she does say that father was a film fanatic but she doesn't know what that means ... FILM MEANS VISUAL ... and it is those "visuals" that are killing literature, because folks like her can not see and explain to "readers" the connection to film. And so, the "shot" is about the horse and rider entering the plain and he is dressed in this and that and IMMEDIATELY the political references start ... it makes the "picture" and the "scene" of the story, totally ugly for me ...

There is no writer, anywhere, that can write so much "reference" into 1 minute of film, or 1 page of descriptions or two, because beyond that you will die of boredom ... where's the story?

Father, was a bit of an intellectual, but it kinda stopped at the door when the professors left ... and HE KNEW IT, and often times my mom would twist the knife behind many of them, one of whom went on to run the Portuguese/Spanish Department in Santa Barbara and proceeded to waste every cent that the Gulbenkian Foundation had given for Portuguese studies in my father's name, which was in the millions!

Reading his poetry, the struggle is to pick up the visual with the words, since one of his "bad habits" (my own take!) is going from "here to there" in one go, which makes the poetry very hard to read and figure out at times, although in other moments, he is just describing things, and appears like ... just talk ... (the Minotaur poem) for example.

But here is the hard thing about literature in the 50's and the 60's and then 70's ... movies and theater were HUGE and my dad as a previous reviewer (black market shows since the films could not enter the country legally, is my guess ... this was NEVER EVER mentioned or discussed) ... and it would be normal for him to try and write something with all the visual elements ... and here comes the 1 TON TUNA ... all of a sudden in a translation every thing has some sort of a political message ... which in my view DESTROYS that visual ... specially in a period time for the story.

Again, I like the critical studies for the most part if they get into the meat and bones, but too many of them don't ... as an example, a famous scholar from Italy, read my screen play ... and you know her comment? ... why do I have to use personal symbols instead of universal symbols? ... I wrote back, because I write what I see, and what I see is not a symbol of anything except my vision ... are you trying to negate my vision ... needless to say, never heard from her again. And she was very famous for her Portuguese studies and teachings in Italy ... OK ... whatever!

Edited by moshkito - November 01 2019 at 08:10

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Posted: October 31 2019 at 18:52

Celine is one of the greatest.

Conrad ok is good but not at the top

Gide is now in decadence. His critical fortune is going down.

Hamsun good but not at the top.

Hemingway is considered well just for his short novels. His style is too much journalistic.

Hesse isn't not considered one of the best writers. Young boys love him, he represents himself like a guru

who mixed occident with orient, his writings are too much educational.

Joyce, Musil, Proust, Kafka, Beckett, Mann, Pirandello, Svevo, Celine, are considered the most important writers of the 20 century.

Laxness... Who is he??

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Posted: October 17 2019 at 07:29

I've read 15 of the authors. I chose authors with at least 3 beloved novels. Voted for Joyce, Conrad, Faulkner, Vonnegut, Orwell, and Miller.

I also would have voted for Virginia Wolfe, D.H. Lawrence, Joseph Heller, EM Forester, Sigrid Undset, Raymond Chandler. Saul Bellow, William Golding, VS Naipaul, and Cormac McCarthy.

I highly recommend "Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset. I'm sure it won Undset the Nobel Prize.

Edited by omphaloskepsis - October 17 2019 at 07:32

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Posted: October 17 2019 at 05:29

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"

I have not read a whole lot of the Portuguese contingent ... I even find, my dad's own work a bit over the top and showy and ... not interesting ... his translations of many books into English and Portuguese (from French, Spanish and Italian) are well known ... and in the case of Shakespeare, much better than some translations that are just out of it, and horrible, in my view.

Even reading my own father's work ... does not excite me ... I find it too "intelectual", and it is missing a visual element, something that is so necessary at that time, and in these days, for most people to appreciate. And sometimes, I find his stuff "forceful" ... although he had a poem about a candle in the wind on the beach ... many years before Elton came up with a song about it, not in a beach of course! In Portugal, that poem, when it was "found" was considered a "freedom" poem, and in the 50's that would have been a huge problem for the writer and his family ...

Because our house was way too "forceful" in the area of trying to get us to study Portuguese ... only my older sister did it, and it was way after her Grad School days ... none of us, really took a strong interest in it, and this would have been my mom's fault, as she was prone to try and swindle us, instead of presenting an honest and caring case. But, myself, I was already tied to THEATER and FILM, and this is an area she did not like, and specially many directors and artists that we met in our days ... almost all of them were ugly, filthy, and smut'ers ... for whatever reason ... a perfect example being Luis Bunuel, whom my father loved the most, and whom my mother detested vehemently.

However, my mom published more of his work since he passed than he did in all of his lifetime, and the quantity of work in his lifetime is amazing, when compared to half those writers listed above, where one piece kinda defines their work.

The left/right thing, in Europe, for me is over rated, since for half the situations, one did not have a choice, and its ability could not be changed at the time ... it was the political system ... specially in many of the communist areas ... but this is something that Americans laugh at and really do not understand, and have a tendency to ignore comments like yours and mine, as too wordy .... because in America, it's mostly entertainment, not politics ... if the public vote is any kind of indication!

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Posted: October 16 2019 at 19:14

moshkito wrote:

jamesbaldwin wrote:

...

Italian literary criticism is very different from american criticism, for various reasons. One reason is certainly that in Italy, culture was divided between Catholic and communist (Italy had the strongest Communist Party in Europe), and especially the communist one prefers books where the content is not a simple story, but the expression of a worldview.

In addition, in Italy we look very much at style, language and artistic experimentation. In short, the writer must be an intellectual who without writing a political book, writes a story that expresses his own worldview, or creates his own world, a plausible world but different from the real one, and does so with a very linguistic operation Staff.

Left-wing critics want this. For this reason, Franz Kafka, who created his own world, has great consideration and in fact he expresses his precise vision of life. Often, American writers, however good, limit themselves to storytelling. This pleases Italian readers, but in Italy it will be difficult to find a critic who would please Hemingway, or Vonnegut, or Carver, or Steinbeck or Bukovskij or Miller.

Nice ... enjoyed that a lot ... since this is something I was aware of, but would not discuss a whole lot ... due to our life in Portugal in the 50's and dad having left for Brazil (probably because of it, though he would never say it ... except that it was a literary decision, not political!!!) ... and it kinda touched on his own literary criticisms and works, of which there were many published in many countries (literary criticism is a joke in America, right?) ... and I tend to look at "Progressive Music" in the same way ... thus Osanna is more important and valuable for their work than Genesis ever was ... despite the western culture "fame" business!

I would like to discuss rock bands a lot better and more but making these kinds of distinctions is almost insane and ridiculous ... Genesis is as political as the cat next door, going outside to do his pee and his morning exercise and ritual ... run across the street ... rub his paws in that one tree ... look around, and then run back across the street. etc, etc ... where as many bands were downright political ... Heldon anyone? ... even if there were no "lyrics".

Dad used to call his work "quotidian" ... and it created a huge work that got him his accolades at first on the Portuguese poet Camoes ... and almost all of his critical works were "quotidian" which kinda meant how the work related to its day and time and place ... day to day sort of thing ... and of course the funny thing is that I do the same thing is discussing a lot of rock music in my write ups, and this is something that confuses a lot of folks ... for them the music of yesterday is the same as the music of today, and of course, it's not as good, and today's is this and that and yesterdays ... can't be ... because it did not sell ... thus its "validity" is dumped and the only thing that is recorded, is everyone's favorites and any other discussion is irrelevant, to the point of it being insulting.

Edited by jamesbaldwin - October 16 2019 at 19:15

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Posted: October 16 2019 at 19:10

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.

I have never read Vonnegut also because, in Italy, it is little known by both the public and the critics. Critics in general, as far as I know, consider his books in a positive way for the moral aspect that comes out of his stories, for the humanity that communicates as you say, and for the ethical message. In other words, it is considered with respect but also as a phenomenon very linked to American history and culture... His books are all in all quite commercial and in line with a literary genre, so for the average reader, even if he uses literary genres with originality. Ultimately, from a strictly literary point of view, the judgment is good but not elevated to the height of the great.

I would like to read Slaughterhouse-Five; or, The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance With Death, that here in Italy is considered his masterpiece.

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Posted: October 16 2019 at 18:52

Perhaps it may interest the forumists as these writers are considered in Italy by the left-wing literary critic. Since I think I have some knowledge in the field, here's a summary of what I know

Samuel Beckett is considered one of the greatest European writers of the twentieth century. Recently not only his theatre but especially his novels, are increasingly considered absolute masterpieces

Jorge Luis Borges is considered well but not at the highest level. Only form, little content, little passion, mathematical cerebral game.

Charles Bukowski is not considered to be up to the greats. But he is seen sympathetically, how to say? He's a nice guy. Recently, John Fante, to whom Bukovsky was inspired, is already considered of a certain value, despite being in the category of lived men who tell stories, with a simple language. However, Fante is recognized with a depth and an ability to unite realism and feeling, and a genuineness that Bukosky has not

Mikhail Bulgakov is considered among the greatest Russians of the twentieth century along with the little-known Andrei Platonov.

William S. Burroughs is not considered in the slightest, it is more considered as a sociological or historical phenomenon of costume. He recognizes a certain style, but that is not very literary.

Italo Calvino is the most famous Italian post-war writer. It's a classic, let's say. He has never written a long book, and has a scientific preparation that arranges him to follow Borges, of which he has the same merits and flaws.

He is respected by all, he is considered intelligent and always effective, but by militant criticism he is not placed among the greatest. He lacks genius and passion... He was a communist, a partisan, but with the exception of his first novel, political and neo-realist, he took a completely apolitical or ahistorical path and only based on imagination. His writings are ultimately fables written with great intelligence, and as if he were a scientific observer... I don't know how to say, he wasn't someone who wrote because he was tormented and felt an urgency to write... on the contrary, he is considered one who writes as if he were an employee going to work.

to be continued...

Edited by jamesbaldwin - October 16 2019 at 18:56

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Posted: October 16 2019 at 16:35

an interesting list...

but I would have included Aldous Huxley, Vladimir Nabokov, Umberto Eco and maybe even Ray Bradbury.

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Posted: October 16 2019 at 09:49

jamesbaldwin wrote:

...

Edited by moshkito - October 16 2019 at 09:56

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Posted: October 16 2019 at 02:07

^ ditto

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Posted: October 16 2019 at 01:59

Bukowski!

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Posted: October 15 2019 at 21:18

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

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Posted: October 15 2019 at 18:17

In Europe,Vonnegut isn't considered one of the most important writer.

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Posted: September 13 2019 at 19:20

I have been reading a ton of Faulkner of late

Machinemessiah wrote:

the last one I read was 'Out of the Silent Planet'... very interesting and to my liking.

I really love that trilogy, and somehow never knew it existed until I saw it at my local Christian book store (had mostly read his non-fiction before that)

Edited by Triceratopsoil - September 13 2019 at 19:22

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