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Who're your picks? I'm not talking about your current favorite, or the author whose writings spoke to you at a tough time in your life. I'm talking about the Absolute Top Five Ever, to Date, Period.
Feel free to give an explanation for each.
You might spoilerize your picks, so as not to influence others.
1. Shakespeare -- This goes without saying.
2. Edgar Allen Poe -- He changed the way we write and read fiction.
3. Walt Whitman -- He started what is effectively the way we write poetry in the modern age.
4. James Joyce -- I think this also goes without saying.
5. I'm still thinking about this one... I want to say Lovecraft, but I'm having trouble objectifying him as one of the most important in all of history. I also want to say Dickens, but I'm having trouble reconciling how exactly he might be this important.
Anyone but Joyce. His influence upon writing has been a plague, and it left behind some still festering scars like the pock scars of a Variola survivor. James Joyce is to the writing world what every pretentious artiste was (and in many ways continues to be) to modern art (which has its own throng of pretentious toadies but is largely mocked and held in disdain by the general public).
Joyce on any top writers lists of all time is about equivalent to Hitler winning Time's Man of the Year.
John Steinbeck-Havent read everything (Sea of Cortez and Winter of Discontent and In Dubious Battle are a few that Ive got in mind to read soon). The Red Pony novella and Chrysanthemum short from the same collection Ive read over and over again since about 9th grade. Some heavy handed pieces but still genius.
Philip K Dick. KING OF THE SHORT STORY! and the paranoid longer pieces are amazing too.
Edgar Allen Poe is HUGE. Even the Sherlock riffs he did are worth reading but its Hop-Frog that blew me away (well, and seeing a theatrical version of The Black Cat in about 5-6th grade). oh and the bells bells bells bells bells bells...
Im going to cop out here and say William Shakespeare for #5. Walt Whitman/Raymond Carver/Lovecraft and a hundred others could easily fit here.
Second tier/JV squad would include SE Hinton/Charles DeLint/Lloyd Alexander/Tolkien/ALAN MOORE
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Anyone but Joyce. His influence upon writing has been a plague, and it left behind some still festering scars like the pock scars of a Variola survivor. James Joyce is to the writing world what every pretentious artiste was (and in many ways continues to be) to modern art (which has its own throng of pretentious toadies but is largely mocked and held in disdain by the general public).
Joyce on any top writers lists of all time is about equivalent to Hitler winning Time's Man of the Year.
So you like Joyce, right? You'll appreciate this:
'Laurel, our friends Jeff and Kristie, and some of their friends were out at a bar down the road from the Well, and Jeff asked how the book was going. Without pausing, I said, "It is like having a rib ripped out of my body, being beaten with it, raped with it, and then being forced to eat it." The table went silent. My reaction had been unexpected by all, including me. I paused and said, "I'm sorry I said that, but I stand by the statement."'
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Anyone but Joyce. His influence upon writing has been a plague, and it left behind some still festering scars like the pock scars of a Variola survivor. James Joyce is to the writing world what every pretentious artiste was (and in many ways continues to be) to modern art (which has its own throng of pretentious toadies but is largely mocked and held in disdain by the general public).
Joyce on any top writers lists of all time is about equivalent to Hitler winning Time's Man of the Year.
Funny, this is exactly how I feel about Alan Moore...
Early Joyce is good...but somehow I know without asking that people weren't reading early Joyce...
OT & possibly inflamatory:
So you like Joyce, right? You'll appreciate this:** spoiler omitted **Anyone but Joyce. His influence upon writing has been a plague, and it left behind some still festering scars like the pock scars of a Variola survivor. James Joyce is to the writing world what every pretentious artiste was (and in many ways continues to be) to modern art (which has its own throng of pretentious toadies but is largely mocked and held in disdain by the general public).
Joyce on any top writers lists of all time is about equivalent to Hitler winning Time's Man of the Year.
Oh how I understand that reaction to Joyce. I am very passionate about my love of books. It horrifies me that anyone would destroy a book, because to destroy knowledge diminished us all just a little. I burned my copy of Ulysses. And I enjoyed it.
OK...somebody's gotta start listing the great dead whites, so it might as well be me--I'd restrict myself to English writers. For me, Shakespeare and Dickens both have to be on that list. Shakespeare for sheer beauty of language and Dickens for humor and characterization. I might add Milton. I might add Jane Austen and Henry James. And Tolkien, just to get the establishment to freak.
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Who're your picks?
I wish I could state that these writers were the inspiration of my life, etc., but I tend to read more "junk food for the mind" than anything else.
T.H. White - I've never had a writer put images in my mind more clearly. His writing for me, his prose, is so magnificent ...
C. J. Cherryh - I've always envied her ability to use five words to explain six paragraphs of detail. I'm especially fond of her Faided Sun and Alliance/Union works.
Ann McCaffrey - Love Pern. Love Ship who Sang. Love her writing.
The others I will have to think about
To have a place in my top 5, the writer has to be able to draw me into the story deep enough that I no longer focus on what is going on around me. My top 5 are as follows (in no particular order):
Tolkien-In my opinion, one of the true masters of the English language.
H.G. Wells-Some of his stuff seems almost prophetic looking back on it.
Louis L'amour-I love a good western, and he's written some of the best.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle-He created one of literature's most enduring
characters.
Brian Jacques-A personal favorite when it comes to pure escapism.
Honorable mentions would be Jules Verne and Baroness Emmuska Orczy.
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These are in no particular order:
1. Jack Vance - What Vance created with his Dying Earth novels was something completely new, something that had never been seen before, and something that still fascinates in the modern era.
Shiny's pick: "The Dying Earth"
2. Henry Rollins - The prose and poetry contained in Rollins' anthologies are straight-up brutal; uncut, raw, and uncompromising. Each word cuts straight to the quick.
Shiny's pick: "Solipsist"
3. China Mieville - Just when fantasy seemed to be getting stale and hackneyed (I'm looking at you, Goodkind), China Mieville burst out of the underground scene. Each book, short story, and poem he writes is pure gold. Mieville seems to have taken the baton from Jack Vance as far as exploring new literary territory.
Shiny's pick - "Un Lun Dun"
4. Kurt Vonnegut - Pure, undiluted cynicism from the man who's seen it all. That's all I have to say.
Shiny's pick - "Welcome to the Monkey House"
5. Joseph Conrad - The best thing about Conrad's work is the multiple levels of reading provided in each piece. If you want escapism, it's there. If you want social commentary, it's there. And if you want philosophy, it's all there.
Shiny's pick - "Heart of Darkness"
I'll add my own 2 cp...
The best writers of all time, to me, are those which have impacted me the most.
#1 The writer of the Quran - Whomever you believe wrote it, there's no denying it's beauty. If you can read it in Arabic, I don't need any further explanation on this. If you're reading a translation, it's like reading a Shakespearean Sonnet translated to another language.
#2 Tolkien - More than his writing, I loved Tolkien's ideas. When I first tried to read LotR, I got through the first book, barely, and had to put it down as I was getting frustrated with how he seems to spend ages on unimportant things, and then dramatic events are over in a couple of pages. However, his world completely captivated me, and I fell in love with reading about his world ala the Tolkien Encyclopedia.
#3 H.P. Lovecraft - Lovecraft's style is very singular. He often writes of madness again and again in the same style. He doesn't seem versatile, but for that one style of horror fiction, he has me captivated and I always enjoy reading it.
#4 Shakespeare - I love Shakespeare for his use of language. Certain phrases, similes and metaphors he uses in his plays are timeless.
#5 Jason Buhlman - "SUCK UP!" Yeah I hear you. But honestly, without Paizo putting out Pathfinder, I don't think I'd be playing D&D again and I certainly wouldn't have met the great guys I play with.
So...what are you angling for, Veector? ;)
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I'm still thinking about my No. 5, but I thought I'd take a second to reiterate my original intent.
The Five Awesome-of-Awesome you pick are, in your opinion, The Best The World Has Ever, Ever, Ever, Ever Seen.
This might mean you can't stand, personally, what or how they write, but you acknowledge them as members of this extremely Exclusive Club...
The Five Best, drawn from your personal knowledge of world literature...
The best are not my best...Andrew...can't brain....aaarrgh....
Seriously, I was answering that, but I felt like I had to limit myself to languages I read really well and, for some reason, I thought you were asking about fiction.
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The best are not my best...Andrew...can't brain....aaarrgh....
Seriously, I was answering that, but I felt like I had to limit myself to languages I read really well and, for some reason, I thought you were asking about fiction.
Good point, M.--I think, subconsciously, I was actually talking about English-language fiction and poetry, since I just noticed all my choices are picked from such. I wonder at my picks, now... I might revise my list--Here are my selectees (which are culled from my 'If I Could Only Save 100 Books From Nuclear Destruction List'), which need to be pared to 5:
Virgil (such an influence on literature, even today)
Socrates and Aristotle (I don't know about this one, because including S. or A. is like including Jesus--world-changing stuff, but they didn't actually write any of it)
Plato (his writings significantly influenced western leaders for hundreds of years, and includes some stuff we can't get any other way, like Socrates' thoughts)
Bede (there would be no English literature, as we know it, without this monk)
Snorri Sturluson (without him, Fantasy Literature probably wouldn't exist)
Shakespeare (no question in my mind; he will always be at the top of any list)
Dickens (father of the Novel)
Poe (changed how we write and is responsible for what we now expect to read in a novel or story)
Whitman (father of modern poetry)
Doyle (Holmes; nothing else necessary)
Lovecraft (I like him; so, yeah, I'm still working on the justification)
Orwell (his influence arguably keeps government in check today)
King (that's right, I wrote it--Stephen King; and there's no way in the world I can justify this one)
OK, so now the rules are, books we'd save from Nuclear destruction?
1. The Bible (More specific?)
2. Plato (yep, to get Socrates)
3. Shakespeare
4.
Wait, you're doing how many? And it's OK to count the works of X as "one book"?
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No--I was saying I could pick writers from my Nuclear List. The problem with the Nuclear List is that's it's a combination of books I would want saved for posterity as well as books I personally like.
This is easy if it's a Top Five Writers I Like To Read List, but exceptionally difficult when it's the Top Five Writers, Ever List.
This means you couldn't include the Bible, because it was written by many different people over many, many years; or Socrates, because he didn't actually write anything attributed to him, unless, like you mention, he's included under Plato.
OK, so 5 writers, not books, and our judgment of universal importance.
I'm going to have to think some more.
This is both a personal list and a list of writers whose works justify the existence of humankind:
1. Jorge Luis Borges
2. Italo Calvino
3. Zeami Motokiyo
4. Heinrich Boll
5. Nathanael West
With the exception of Zeami (I considered Sophocles or Euripides too as replacements), all relatively modern writers. And all men (I did think about Jane Austen and maybe replacing West with Flannery O'Connor).
I also favor fabulists.
MY top 5 writers in ENGLISH are:
Raymond Chandler (hey, I'm reading him now), PKD, Poe, Shakespeare (and it took me 4 years of teaching his plays to get it), Vonnegut.
No judgment of universal importance, if there is such a thing.
Anyone but Joyce. His influence upon writing has been a plague, and it left behind some still festering scars like the pock scars of a Variola survivor. James Joyce is to the writing world what every pretentious artiste was (and in many ways continues to be) to modern art (which has its own throng of pretentious toadies but is largely mocked and held in disdain by the general public).
Joyce on any top writers lists of all time is about equivalent to Hitler winning Time's Man of the Year.
Well said.
As a German I have been influenced, of course, mostly by Poets in my own language. The most important writers for me would be
Hermann Hesse,
Johan Wolfgang von Goethe,
Heinrich Böll
Max Frisch, the things he did with language are incredible
Tolkien is my favorite writer ever
I never liked Shakespeare and the Russian writers (of course I acknowledge their importance, strange that no one listed them jet) but I have always been fond of Hemingway, Poe, Lovecraft, Bradbury.
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As a German I have been influenced, of course, mostly by Poets in my own language. The most important writers for me would be
Hermann Hesse,
Johan Wolfgang von Goethe,
Heinrich Böll
Max Frisch, the things he did with language are incredible
Tolkien is my favorite writer ever
I never liked Shakespeare and the Russian writers (of course I acknowledge their importance, strange that no one listed them jet) but I have always been fond of Hemingway, Poe, Lovecraft, Bradbury.
I was talking to my wife about this last night and she said, "Don't be pretentious. Anyone who knows you knows Ray Bradbury is your favorite author."
"What?!" I said, not actually yelling, but certainly in that incredulous-whatever-do-you-mean tone of voice.""Sure," she continues. "What book do you pull out every single October? [Something Wicked This Way Comes] What book do you pull out every rainy Saturday? [Bradbury Stories: 100 of the Best] Who do you always quote, next to You Know Who?" [Bradbury; and YKW is the Bard]
"Oohh--that last one is pretentious, huh?"
et tu, todd stewart....
#1. Hermann Hesse
#2. Bill Shakespeare
#3. Gabriel Garia Marques
#4. J.R.R. Tolkien (the haters got in it for the wrong reasons)
#5. Frank Herbert
Not best EVAR, just best that I've read recently.
Early Joyce is good...but somehow I know without asking that people weren't reading early Joyce...
agreed, I really enjoyed Dubliners
I'll nominate, in no particular order:
Aleksandr Pushkin
Chaucer
Albert Camus
Voltaire
Goethe
Shakespeare is a runner up, as are Yeats and TS Eliot. Proust gets disqualified for length, but had a very strong initial showing.
I was talking to my wife about this last night and she said, "Don't be pretentious. Anyone who knows you knows Ray Bradbury is your favorite author."
"What?!" I said, not actually yelling, but certainly in that incredulous-whatever-do-you-mean tone of voice."
"Sure," she continues. "What book do you pull out every single October? [Something Wicked This Way Comes] What book do you pull out every rainy Saturday? [Bradbury Stories: 100 of the Best] Who do you always quote, next to You Know Who?" [Bradbury; and YKW is the Bard]
"Oohh--that last one is pretentious, huh?"
You might not be pretentious. You might believe the others are the most universally important, but just not personally care for importance!
:)That said, Ray knows how to write.
