I can't draw any conclusion from your post except that my unusually intelligent contribution to the thread evoked feelings of insecurity in you. I don't deserve engagement this stupid.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>autist over analyzes a simple joke and concludes malicious intent due to his delusional superiorty complex
many such cases
5 months ago
Anonymous
James Joyce.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Yes, Melville is a contender. Joyce and Shakespeare (in the prose sections of his plays) are probably the main contenders, followed by Nabokov.
Joyce is interesting but he can’t write honest prose. He needs to be constantly turning and twisting the language, or (probably due to his Irish inferiority complex) or inserting overt references to other works of literature to appear intelligent. He has good moments in Portrait, less so in Ulysses, but overall Dubliners is probably his best work in this regard. Finnegans Wake is unreadable and what’s in it can hardly be called prose. His work was necessary in the context of modernism, but he’s a destroyer or prose and language, not a creator like Shakespeare or someone refines it to it’s possible limits like Melville. Making up words, hacking and sawing words, mixing words together, in a way that bears no relation to the language as it actually exists in human speech means it’s inert. Joyce is a great author, an excellent autor even, but no, we cannot call his glossolalia the greatest prose.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>probably due to his Irish inferiority complex
Projection. >he’s a destroyer or prose and language
The opposite, actually. He takes great advantage of language and takes it to the extreme just for his literary game. He's a fertile creator. >Making up words, hacking and sawing words, mixing words together, in a way that bears no relation to the language as it actually exists in human speech means it’s inert.
You're so boring.
5 months ago
Anonymous
This is like reading a fart sniffing high schooler's opinion on writing.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>honest prose
8 hour vidya essays lingo leaking into IQfy I see
5 months ago
Anonymous
James, without a doubt.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Yes, Melville is a contender. Joyce and Shakespeare (in the prose sections of his plays) are probably the main contenders, followed by Nabokov.
5 months ago
Anonymous
I would also add Emerson, but that might be a personal idiosyncrasy.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Have you read Hardy? Was gonna shit on your postbut decided to be constructive instead.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Agreed with Hardy. I like Hemingway as well.
5 months ago
Anonymous
About to start Ulysses as soon as I finish my current readings. Any prose excerpts to whet my appetite and adorn the thread? His other works are welcome too.
5 months ago
Anonymous
With?
Sinbad the Sailor and Tinbad the Tailor and Jinbad the Jailer and Whinbad the Whaler and Ninbad the Nailer and Finbad the Failer and Binbad the Bailer and Pinbad the Pailer and Minbad the Mailer and Hinbad the Hailer and Rinbad the Railer and Dinbad the Kailer and Vinbad the Quailer and Linbad the Yailer and Xinbad the Phthailer.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Anything but that...
Here's one I like from Moby Dick: >Nor did wild rumors of all sorts fail to exaggerate, and still the more horrify the true histories of these deadly encounters. For not only do fabulous rumors naturally grow out of the very body of all surprising terrible events,—as the smitten tree gives birth to its fungi; but, in maritime life, far more than in that of terra firma, wild rumors abound, wherever there is any adequate reality for them to cling to. And as the sea surpasses the land in this matter, so the whale fishery surpasses every other sort of maritime life, in the wonderfulness and fearfulness of the rumors which sometimes circulate there. For not only are whalemen as a body unexempt from that ignorance and superstitiousness hereditary to all sailors; but of all sailors, they are by all odds the most directly brought into contact with whatever is appallingly astonishing in the sea; face to face they not only eye its greatest marvels, but, hand to jaw, give battle to them. Alone, in such remotest waters, that though you sailed a thousand miles, and passed a thousand shores, you would not come to any chiselled hearthstone, or aught hospitable beneath that part of the sun; in such latitudes and longitudes, pursuing too such a calling as he does, the whaleman is wrapped by influences all tending to make his fancy pregnant with many a mighty birth.
5 months ago
Anonymous
I was just messing with you anon. Although if your reading Ulysses for the first time, keep in mind what made Joyce renowned as an author was his experimentation, so expect more of his playfulness throughout Ulysses.
Anyways here's the concluding passages from The Dead. >The air of the room chilled his shoulders. He stretched himself cautiously along under the
sheets and lay down beside his wife. One by one, they were all becoming shades. Better pass
boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with
age. He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that
image of her lover's eyes when he had told her that he did not wish to live. >Generous tears filled Gabriel's eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any
woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes
and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a
dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast
hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering
existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself,
which these dead had one time reared and lived in, was dissolving and dwindling. >A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again.
He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time
had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was
general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills,
falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous
Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where
Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the
spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow
falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all
the living and the dead.
5 months ago
Anonymous
I messed up the greentext I'm moronic.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>Anyways here's the concluding passages from The Dead.
Just read that yesterday fren. You have good taste.
Gimme something you like from Ulysses.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>Adverbs
5 months ago
Anonymous
This is good but do people really think this is better than Shakespeare?
5 months ago
Anonymous
did you miss the word prose
5 months ago
Anonymous
>Stuck on the pane two flies buzzed, stuck. >Glowing wine on his palate lingered swallowed. Crushing in the winepress grapes of Burgundy. Sun’s heat it is. Seems to a secret touch telling me memory. Touched his sense moistened remembered. Hidden under wild ferns on Howth. Below us bay sleeping sky. No sound. The sky. The bay purple by the Lion’s head. Green by Drumleck. Yellowgreen towards Sutton. Fields of undersea, the lines faint brown in grass, buried cities. Pillowed on my coat she had her hair, earwigs in the heather scrub my hand under her nape, you’ll toss me all. O wonder! Coolsoft with ointments her hand touched me, caressed: her eyes upon me did not turn away. Ravished over her I lay, full lips full open, kissed her mouth. Yum. Softly she gave me in my mouth the seedcake warm and chewed. Mawkish pulp her mouth had mumbled sweet and sour with spittle. Joy: I ate it: joy. Young life, her lips that gave me pouting. Soft, warm, sticky gumjelly lips. Flowers her eyes were, take me, willing eyes. Pebbles fell. She lay still. A goat. No-one. High on Ben Howth rhododendrons a nannygoat walking surefooted, dropping currants. Screened under ferns she laughed warmfolded. Wildly I lay on her, kissed her; eyes, her lips, her stretched neck, beating, woman’s breasts full in her blouse of nun’s veiling, fat nipples upright. Hot I tongued her. She kissed me. I was kissed. All yielding she tossed my hair. Kissed, she kissed me. >Me. And me now. >Stuck, the flies buzzed.
5 months ago
Anonymous
I don't like the short sentences. There are too many breaks and not enough progression. It reads like a list of things that is happening without any particular order instead of seeing one action flowing into another. This kind of structure is more amenable to chaos, like describing a battlefield. The language is flowery but the flow is too aggregated.
5 months ago
Anonymous
It's a middle aged man suddenly remembering something that happened to him over fifteen years ago. Joyce is using the short sentences to imitate the very music of memory itself. When you remember things long ago, do they come as one smooth flow, or do they come in short, intense bursts?
5 months ago
Anonymous
>Lead, kindly fowl! They always did: ask the ages. What bird has done yesterday man may do next year, be it fly, be it moult, be it hatch, be it agreement in the nest. For her socioscientific sense is sound as a bell, sir, her volucrine automutativeness right on normalcy: she knows, she just feels she was kind of born to lay and love eggs (trust her to propagate the species and hoosh her fluffballs safe through din and danger!); lastly but mostly, in her genesic field it is all game and no gammon; she is ladylike in everything she does and plays the gentleman's part every time. Let us auspice it! Yes, before all this has time to end the golden age must return with its vengeance. Man will become dirigible, Ague will be rejuvenated, woman with her ridiculous white burden will reach by one step sublime incubation, the manewanting human lioness with her dishorned discipular manram will lie down together publicly flank upon fleece. No, assuredly, they are not justified, those gloompourers who grouse that letters have never been quite their old selves again since that weird weekday in bleak Janiveer (yet how palmy date in a waste's oasis!) when to the shock of both, Biddy Doran looked at literature.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>His soul had arisen from the grave of boyhood, spurning her graveclothes. Yes! Yes! Yes! He would create proudly out of the freedom and power of his soul, as the great artificer whose name he bore, a living thing, new and soaring and beautiful, impalpable, imperishable. >He started up nervously from the stoneblock for he could no longer quench the flame in his blood. He felt his cheeks aflame and his throat throbbing with song. There was a lust of wandering in his feet that burned to set out for the ends of the earth. On! On! his heart seemed to cry. Evening would deepen above the sea, night fall upon the plains, dawn glimmer before the wanderer and show him strange fields and hills and faces. Where?
5 months ago
Anonymous
A warm human plumpness settled down on his brain. His brain yielded. Perfume of embraces all him assailed. With hungered flesh obscurely, he mutely craved to adore.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>ahem
5 months ago
Anonymous
bait
5 months ago
Anonymous
Thomas Browne
Joseph Addison (only his satire)
James Joyce
Cormac McCarthy
Herman Melville
I like Guy Davenport as well.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Nice, the only other person in the thread who name dropped authors not on Reddit's High School Top 100 list
5 months ago
Anonymous
Are you a moron?
5 months ago
Anonymous
GOATspeare >b-but that's not prose
don't care
5 months ago
Anonymous
I am currently reading moby dick and I’ve never read anything quite like this. It would be no exaggeration to say that melville understood the extent of the english language better than anyone else.
Unbelievable
5 months ago
Anonymous
It would be no exaggeration to say that melville understood the extent of the english language better than anyone else.
There is another…
5 months ago
Anonymous
tell me yoda
5 months ago
Anonymous
he's probably talking about hawthorne or mccarthy
5 months ago
Anonymous
I'm 99% sure he's talking about Joyce. Joyce is one of the only authors who fully believed everything could be put into words
5 months ago
Anonymous
I think it's Washington Irving, and it's not particularly close. Depends on what you mean by "greatest" though.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Unironically Tolkien
Even his 'weaker' text the Silmarillion reads like a streamlined version of Macarthy or GRRM but with more substance. Lotr feels like a video game whilst reading like poetry. True genius overshadowed by his own legendarium.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Frick off.
5 months ago
Anonymous
https://i.imgur.com/utpGGCU.jpg
Don't scoff. Anyone can write good prose if they try hard enough, but many authors mentioned in this thread place the experience of the reader second to the technical flex. 'look how many clauses I can fit in one sentence' or 'look how many adjectives can I use to describe this' is impressive to a degree, but too often becomes word-masturbation. It's a lot harder to write impeccable prose, whilst also captivating the reader in a tactile universe. I can enjoy the experience of reading James Joyce, but I can only 'care' so much, and I'm unlikely to be inspired. It's the same reason people reject zach snyder's superman, but a single frame of classic supes lifting a car to save the girl is always iconic. Complex sentences, allegory and allusion are in my opinion some of the weakest language features because they alone don't move people. A true genius weaves life into their writing, whilst crafting a narrative that makes the reader feel more alive. It's obviously subjective, but when you read Tolkien you really feel like he achieves more with his words than others. Every sentence builds upon the last into an impossibly large narrative pyramid, yet when you pluck an excerpt from the climax it is perfectly understandable without any context.
>All about the hills the hosts of Mordor raged. The Captains of the West were foundering in a gathering sea. The sun gleamed red, and under the wings of the Nazgul the shadows of death fell dark upon the earth. Aragorn stood beneath his banner, silent and stern, as one lost in thought of things long past or far away; but his eyes gleamed like stars that shine the brighter as the night deepens. Upon the hill-top stood Gandalf, and he was white and cold and no shadow fell on him. The onslaught of Mordor broke like a wave on the beleaguered hills, voices roaring like a tide amid the wreck and crash of arms.
And with the context of having read the story thus far, every sentence, character, simile etc. has the weight of the world behind it, because an entire world was meticulously crafted for this very moment. To discuss 'prose' as if it exists in isolation from narrative is more akin to a discussion of poetry, which would actually be more appropriate for some of the suggestions here (like shakespeare). Those saying Melville and Nabokov are much more on the right track, even if they are still pandering to IQfy opinion, in my opinion.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>I can enjoy the experience of reading James Joyce, but I can only 'care' so much, and I'm unlikely to be inspired.
You don't know shit about Joyce until you've read Finnegans Wake
5 months ago
Anonymous
You make some very interesting points anon. But I can't expect than you actually believe Tolkien is the pinnacle of story telling?
>I can enjoy the experience of reading James Joyce, but I can only 'care' so much, and I'm unlikely to be inspired.
You don't know shit about Joyce until you've read Finnegans Wake
It's a pseud mess of a book that serves no purpose but for its own masturbatory and its followers. Is it universal? Will people understand its depth for all time? Or is it more a modern game of the current zeitgeist?
5 months ago
Anonymous
>It's a pseud mess of a book that serves no purpose but for its own masturbatory and its followers.
No >Is it universal?
Yes >Will people understand its depth for all time?
Yes >Or is it more a modern game of the current zeitgeist
No
5 months ago
Anonymous
sorry autist but breaking down points into paragraphs and giving yes or no answers doesn't make you right. I understand you have a condition, but you have to understand you are moronic to functioning people.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>hurr durr you're a moron lol
Don't get mad at me because you were filtered by Finnegans Wake
5 months ago
Anonymous
you can be an obsessed autist over your autism book all you want but you have yet to give a good reason to appreciate it
5 months ago
Anonymous
>a good reason to appreciate it
It's very funny.
5 months ago
Barkon
I'm coming out with new movie.
5 months ago
Anonymous
The imagery of that passage borders on kitsch. You’re better off with Tennyson‘s Idylls of the King if you’re looking for the same vibe. Tolkien is great for the ages 9-14, after that you should learn to appreciate literature that concerns itself with life as it is and not some lukewarm allegories and merely entertaining plot. And yes, in every paragraph of Joyce there is life interwoven in it and life and language become inextricable. Tolkien was one who merely used language as a medium to tell an epic story, therefore his prose cannot even remotely qualify as one of the best that the English language has.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>Don't read Tolkein. Thats fantasy nonsense with nonbearing on real life. >Goes on to read a bunch of made up soup kitchen dramas that never happened.
Midwit post anon. The only saving grace was the Tennyson recommendation.
5 months ago
Anonymous
5 months ago
Anonymous
Carlyle. One of the biggest influences on Melville.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Mervyn Peake.
>He no longer wanted to kill his foe in darkness and in silence. His lust was to
stand naked upon the moonlit stage, with his arms stretched high, and his fingers
spread, and with the warm fresh blood that soaked them sliding down his wrists,
spiralling his arms and steaming in the cold night air – to suddenly drop his hands
like talons to his breast and tear it open to expose a heart like a black vegetable – and
then, upon the crest of self-exposure, and the sweet glory of wickedness, to create
some gesture of supreme defiance, lewd and rare; and then with the towers of
Gormenghast about him, cheat the castle of its jealous right and die of his own evil
in the moonbeams.
Gormenghast
5 months ago
Anonymous
holy cringe
5 months ago
Anonymous
lol
But in all seriousness, that's worth a read.
5 months ago
Anonymous
he tore his heart out, that's bad ass
5 months ago
Anonymous
[...]
Don't scoff. Anyone can write good prose if they try hard enough, but many authors mentioned in this thread place the experience of the reader second to the technical flex. 'look how many clauses I can fit in one sentence' or 'look how many adjectives can I use to describe this' is impressive to a degree, but too often becomes word-masturbation. It's a lot harder to write impeccable prose, whilst also captivating the reader in a tactile universe. I can enjoy the experience of reading James Joyce, but I can only 'care' so much, and I'm unlikely to be inspired. It's the same reason people reject zach snyder's superman, but a single frame of classic supes lifting a car to save the girl is always iconic. Complex sentences, allegory and allusion are in my opinion some of the weakest language features because they alone don't move people. A true genius weaves life into their writing, whilst crafting a narrative that makes the reader feel more alive. It's obviously subjective, but when you read Tolkien you really feel like he achieves more with his words than others. Every sentence builds upon the last into an impossibly large narrative pyramid, yet when you pluck an excerpt from the climax it is perfectly understandable without any context.
>All about the hills the hosts of Mordor raged. The Captains of the West were foundering in a gathering sea. The sun gleamed red, and under the wings of the Nazgul the shadows of death fell dark upon the earth. Aragorn stood beneath his banner, silent and stern, as one lost in thought of things long past or far away; but his eyes gleamed like stars that shine the brighter as the night deepens. Upon the hill-top stood Gandalf, and he was white and cold and no shadow fell on him. The onslaught of Mordor broke like a wave on the beleaguered hills, voices roaring like a tide amid the wreck and crash of arms.
And with the context of having read the story thus far, every sentence, character, simile etc. has the weight of the world behind it, because an entire world was meticulously crafted for this very moment. To discuss 'prose' as if it exists in isolation from narrative is more akin to a discussion of poetry, which would actually be more appropriate for some of the suggestions here (like shakespeare). Those saying Melville and Nabokov are much more on the right track, even if they are still pandering to IQfy opinion, in my opinion.
These are terrible. If it's not about density then it's about elegance, which both of them lacked.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Got that from your high school lit teacher? Good prose is determined by the intensity of the images or sensations it produces in the reader.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Did you get that from 20 year old Burke? homosexual
5 months ago
Anonymous
I can understand getting filtered by Mervyn Peake, but imagine being so low IQ that you got filtered by Tolkien. lol.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Peake writes dogshit prose. You are a pleb.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Your inability to comprehend a sentence with three syllable words is a failure on your end. Not the writers.
Go to some YA thread.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Peake is one step above YA. Frick off.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Enough with the copeing. Literally every writer and literary scholar whose read Peake thinks he's one of the most original prose stylists of the post war era.
Bloom, Lewis, Borges, Greene, Burgess, and the list goes on and on.
Go read some YA trash or a shitty light novel. That's more up your alley.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>copeing
Lol. Trash like Peake serves you right. The audacity to mention him in a thread like this. He isn't even better than Gene Wolfe lol.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>He isn't even better than Gene Wolfe
lol. Here i thought you were being serious. Good troll anon.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Nothing trollish about it redditspacer. Gene Wolfe is the only genre writer with literary merit. Glorifying Peake is like glorifying Dunsany because both died a 100 years ago.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Bait used to be believable.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>Wolfe is the only genre writer with literary merit
This role your playing of the literary critic that will only read novels about a lesbian being forced to be a house wife in the 50s and her decision to abort the baby she had with the milkman, all told from the POV of the down syndrome sister, is out of date. Everyone knows people like you are just faking it.
5 months ago
Anonymous
lmao
>He isn't even better than Gene Wolfe
lol. Here i thought you were being serious. Good troll anon.
ikr
5 months ago
Anonymous
Bait used to be believable.
>Wolfe is the only genre writer with literary merit
This role your playing of the literary critic that will only read novels about a lesbian being forced to be a house wife in the 50s and her decision to abort the baby she had with the milkman, all told from the POV of the down syndrome sister, is out of date. Everyone knows people like you are just faking it.
Samegay mad I say the truth
5 months ago
Anonymous
>criticizes others for their prose >writes in ebonics
5 months ago
Anonymous
That way your chimp brain will be able to understand.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Says the Black person filtered by Peake.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Nah. Your just outnumbered because your takes are sub 70 IQ.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Nah. Your just outnumbered because your takes are sub 70 IQ.
Samegay butthurt moron
5 months ago
Anonymous
Nah. Your just outnumbered because your takes are sub 70 IQ.
5 months ago
Anonymous
cope
5 months ago
Anonymous
remind me what prose means first??
5 months ago
Anonymous
Thomas Browne
Shakespeare
Melville
Joyce
I'd honestly consider Pynchon on the list, for Mason & Dixon. Some might put Conrad and Nabokov there, but I feel they try a bit too hard, they lack the fluidity of e.g. Melville.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>Thomas Browne
Hawthorne.
>
Have you read Hardy? Was gonna shit on your postbut decided to be constructive instead.
>Hardy
Hawthorne.
where do I start with them?
5 months ago
Anonymous
I recommend Jude the Obscure
5 months ago
Anonymous
Not him, but Urn Burial is Browne's most famous essay -- about 50 pages, an excellent piece of Christian Renaissance scholarship and pious meditation. I also enjoyed Letter to a Friend, which is something like 20 (27?) pages and was written on the occasion of Browne and the recipient's mutual friend's death, which is less famous but also very good. Not an expert on him, but he's fantastic.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Thanks, brother.
I'll try Urn Burial.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Pynchon is the biggest tryhard of them all.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Early Pynchon I'll concede, but M&D has some sublime parts
5 months ago
Anonymous
It's the same but more pretentious because of the pastiche. It's the most tryhard book of a tryhard writer.
5 months ago
Anonymous
its gripping but sublime is the wrong word. That shit is for our own degenerate era. Nobody would find it beautiful in such an ugly ironic tone in any other period of history.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>Pynchon
Mason & Dixon or V.? What should I read?
5 months ago
Anonymous
>Conrad >try a bit too hard
Read anything other than Heart of Darkness, c**t. Lord Jim runs circles around whatever homosexual books you like.
5 months ago
Anonymous
The Secret Agent
5 months ago
Anonymous
Iunno anons they just look like long-winded word diaherra to me
5 months ago
Anonymous
Hilary Mantel
5 months ago
Anonymous
Has to be Nabokov.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Edgar Alan Poe
5 months ago
Anonymous
His vocabulary can be tough to overcome. Eureka filtered me tbh.
5 months ago
Anonymous
He purposefully used shit that was already considered old in his own time when the language of even his journalist pieces would filter out 95% of native English speakers today. The game was rigged from the start.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Any answer other than Shakespeare is absurd.
5 months ago
Anonymous
The Bard, of course.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Nabokov.
5 months ago
Barkon
I know how to do it perfectly. My art is always this kind of masterwork...
5 months ago
Anonymous
It’s Milton. All other writers mentioned in this thread peaked too early.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Any modern-ish authors that are like Melville? Just finished the Dick and it was beautiful.
5 months ago
Anonymous
China Mieville is spelled similarly.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Cliched answer/comparison, but McCarthy at his best also has that same epic grandeur Melville achieves and splendiferous, somewhat archaic, grandiloquent and poetic prose style.
Mason & Dixon might also somewhat scratch that same itch of a lovelily written, big novel that’s deeply American and has a broadly overarching quest/adventure narrative (Mason and Dixon traveling and becoming acquainted with the Americas).
If you want to go in another direction and back to the past, Conrad is another great one, with some of the same nautical settings.
Melville’s best other works are also well-worth reading, even if they never redo the grandeur of Moby Dick. Like: Bartleby, Billy Budd, and (weird choice of mine, but I truly think this is a truly great and underrated novel by Melville) The Confidence Man.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>Conrad is another great one
I am about two thirds through Heart of Darkness and I have to admit the influences on McCarthy that I have noticed are rather rare, maybe three passages in total and none really had the epic style of Melville or McCarthy. Will it become more apparent once Kurtz shows up? And of course I haven't even finished one of his works so I will not make a judgement before I have. Are his other perhaps more similar to Melville's or McCarthy's styles?
5 months ago
Anonymous
His influence is more visible on Faulkner than McCarthy. He doesn't have a super Grand style either tbh. At his best, it is the right kind of elegance with mild density.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Read Nostromo and The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Lancelot Andrewes
Thomas Carlyle
Runners-up:
Nabokov
John Updike
Thomas De Quincey
Edward Dahlberg
G. B. Shaw
5 months ago
Anonymous
You guys are all wrong and I'm not going to share with you who is the best. I will have the best author for myself so you freaks don't hoard the world's supply of their books. If only you knew...oh well all for me.
5 months ago
Anonymous
didn't ask
5 months ago
Anonymous
Stay mad.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Nobody is mad or even cares about you
5 months ago
Anonymous
Clearly you are and you do.
5 months ago
Anonymous
P.G. Wodehouse
5 months ago
Anonymous
Nice!
5 months ago
Anonymous
He ain't the GOAT, but I think Truman Capote wrote (at least some) good prose.
5 months ago
Anonymous
5 months ago
Anonymous
5 months ago
Anonymous
Either James Joyce or Oscar Wilde
5 months ago
Anonymous
Tolkien. The greatest prose to grace the English language couldn't be achieved by anyone other than an Englishman.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Are you 13?
5 months ago
2
Hart Crane is the richest English I know. I comprehend probably 5% of his meaning, but I read him again and again just for the music of his words.
5 months ago
Anonymous
That is Shakespeare, although I see him as the intermediary between middle english and the current modern variation which peaked with Irish writer James Joyce
5 months ago
Anonymous
What do we think of Melville's poetry? Like Clarel.
5 months ago
Anonymous
it's very abstract and contextual, at least Clarel is. as opposed to his prose, his poetry feels very constricted.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Read Chapter 35 of Moby Dick. Big kino
5 months ago
Anonymous
>all these joycegays and melvillechuds
is IQfy, dare I say it, back?
5 months ago
Anonymous
after reading Typee i've decided to move to Nuku Hiva and become a Polynesian.
Hawthorne.
Me
post a sample please
No
worlds funniest redditor
unironically Melville
Robert Aickman
>robert ACK-man
I can't draw any conclusion from your post except that my unusually intelligent contribution to the thread evoked feelings of insecurity in you. I don't deserve engagement this stupid.
>autist over analyzes a simple joke and concludes malicious intent due to his delusional superiorty complex
many such cases
James Joyce.
Joyce is interesting but he can’t write honest prose. He needs to be constantly turning and twisting the language, or (probably due to his Irish inferiority complex) or inserting overt references to other works of literature to appear intelligent. He has good moments in Portrait, less so in Ulysses, but overall Dubliners is probably his best work in this regard. Finnegans Wake is unreadable and what’s in it can hardly be called prose. His work was necessary in the context of modernism, but he’s a destroyer or prose and language, not a creator like Shakespeare or someone refines it to it’s possible limits like Melville. Making up words, hacking and sawing words, mixing words together, in a way that bears no relation to the language as it actually exists in human speech means it’s inert. Joyce is a great author, an excellent autor even, but no, we cannot call his glossolalia the greatest prose.
>probably due to his Irish inferiority complex
Projection.
>he’s a destroyer or prose and language
The opposite, actually. He takes great advantage of language and takes it to the extreme just for his literary game. He's a fertile creator.
>Making up words, hacking and sawing words, mixing words together, in a way that bears no relation to the language as it actually exists in human speech means it’s inert.
You're so boring.
This is like reading a fart sniffing high schooler's opinion on writing.
>honest prose
8 hour vidya essays lingo leaking into IQfy I see
James, without a doubt.
Yes, Melville is a contender. Joyce and Shakespeare (in the prose sections of his plays) are probably the main contenders, followed by Nabokov.
I would also add Emerson, but that might be a personal idiosyncrasy.
Have you read Hardy? Was gonna shit on your postbut decided to be constructive instead.
Agreed with Hardy. I like Hemingway as well.
About to start Ulysses as soon as I finish my current readings. Any prose excerpts to whet my appetite and adorn the thread? His other works are welcome too.
With?
Sinbad the Sailor and Tinbad the Tailor and Jinbad the Jailer and Whinbad the Whaler and Ninbad the Nailer and Finbad the Failer and Binbad the Bailer and Pinbad the Pailer and Minbad the Mailer and Hinbad the Hailer and Rinbad the Railer and Dinbad the Kailer and Vinbad the Quailer and Linbad the Yailer and Xinbad the Phthailer.
Anything but that...
Here's one I like from Moby Dick:
>Nor did wild rumors of all sorts fail to exaggerate, and still the more horrify the true histories of these deadly encounters. For not only do fabulous rumors naturally grow out of the very body of all surprising terrible events,—as the smitten tree gives birth to its fungi; but, in maritime life, far more than in that of terra firma, wild rumors abound, wherever there is any adequate reality for them to cling to. And as the sea surpasses the land in this matter, so the whale fishery surpasses every other sort of maritime life, in the wonderfulness and fearfulness of the rumors which sometimes circulate there. For not only are whalemen as a body unexempt from that ignorance and superstitiousness hereditary to all sailors; but of all sailors, they are by all odds the most directly brought into contact with whatever is appallingly astonishing in the sea; face to face they not only eye its greatest marvels, but, hand to jaw, give battle to them. Alone, in such remotest waters, that though you sailed a thousand miles, and passed a thousand shores, you would not come to any chiselled hearthstone, or aught hospitable beneath that part of the sun; in such latitudes and longitudes, pursuing too such a calling as he does, the whaleman is wrapped by influences all tending to make his fancy pregnant with many a mighty birth.
I was just messing with you anon. Although if your reading Ulysses for the first time, keep in mind what made Joyce renowned as an author was his experimentation, so expect more of his playfulness throughout Ulysses.
Anyways here's the concluding passages from The Dead.
>The air of the room chilled his shoulders. He stretched himself cautiously along under the
sheets and lay down beside his wife. One by one, they were all becoming shades. Better pass
boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with
age. He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that
image of her lover's eyes when he had told her that he did not wish to live.
>Generous tears filled Gabriel's eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any
woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes
and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a
dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast
hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering
existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself,
which these dead had one time reared and lived in, was dissolving and dwindling.
>A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again.
He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time
had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was
general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills,
falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous
Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where
Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the
spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow
falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all
the living and the dead.
I messed up the greentext I'm moronic.
>Anyways here's the concluding passages from The Dead.
Just read that yesterday fren. You have good taste.
Gimme something you like from Ulysses.
>Adverbs
This is good but do people really think this is better than Shakespeare?
did you miss the word prose
>Stuck on the pane two flies buzzed, stuck.
>Glowing wine on his palate lingered swallowed. Crushing in the winepress grapes of Burgundy. Sun’s heat it is. Seems to a secret touch telling me memory. Touched his sense moistened remembered. Hidden under wild ferns on Howth. Below us bay sleeping sky. No sound. The sky. The bay purple by the Lion’s head. Green by Drumleck. Yellowgreen towards Sutton. Fields of undersea, the lines faint brown in grass, buried cities. Pillowed on my coat she had her hair, earwigs in the heather scrub my hand under her nape, you’ll toss me all. O wonder! Coolsoft with ointments her hand touched me, caressed: her eyes upon me did not turn away. Ravished over her I lay, full lips full open, kissed her mouth. Yum. Softly she gave me in my mouth the seedcake warm and chewed. Mawkish pulp her mouth had mumbled sweet and sour with spittle. Joy: I ate it: joy. Young life, her lips that gave me pouting. Soft, warm, sticky gumjelly lips. Flowers her eyes were, take me, willing eyes. Pebbles fell. She lay still. A goat. No-one. High on Ben Howth rhododendrons a nannygoat walking surefooted, dropping currants. Screened under ferns she laughed warmfolded. Wildly I lay on her, kissed her; eyes, her lips, her stretched neck, beating, woman’s breasts full in her blouse of nun’s veiling, fat nipples upright. Hot I tongued her. She kissed me. I was kissed. All yielding she tossed my hair. Kissed, she kissed me.
>Me. And me now.
>Stuck, the flies buzzed.
I don't like the short sentences. There are too many breaks and not enough progression. It reads like a list of things that is happening without any particular order instead of seeing one action flowing into another. This kind of structure is more amenable to chaos, like describing a battlefield. The language is flowery but the flow is too aggregated.
It's a middle aged man suddenly remembering something that happened to him over fifteen years ago. Joyce is using the short sentences to imitate the very music of memory itself. When you remember things long ago, do they come as one smooth flow, or do they come in short, intense bursts?
>Lead, kindly fowl! They always did: ask the ages. What bird has done yesterday man may do next year, be it fly, be it moult, be it hatch, be it agreement in the nest. For her socioscientific sense is sound as a bell, sir, her volucrine automutativeness right on normalcy: she knows, she just feels she was kind of born to lay and love eggs (trust her to propagate the species and hoosh her fluffballs safe through din and danger!); lastly but mostly, in her genesic field it is all game and no gammon; she is ladylike in everything she does and plays the gentleman's part every time. Let us auspice it! Yes, before all this has time to end the golden age must return with its vengeance. Man will become dirigible, Ague will be rejuvenated, woman with her ridiculous white burden will reach by one step sublime incubation, the manewanting human lioness with her dishorned discipular manram will lie down together publicly flank upon fleece. No, assuredly, they are not justified, those gloompourers who grouse that letters have never been quite their old selves again since that weird weekday in bleak Janiveer (yet how palmy date in a waste's oasis!) when to the shock of both, Biddy Doran looked at literature.
>His soul had arisen from the grave of boyhood, spurning her graveclothes. Yes! Yes! Yes! He would create proudly out of the freedom and power of his soul, as the great artificer whose name he bore, a living thing, new and soaring and beautiful, impalpable, imperishable.
>He started up nervously from the stoneblock for he could no longer quench the flame in his blood. He felt his cheeks aflame and his throat throbbing with song. There was a lust of wandering in his feet that burned to set out for the ends of the earth. On! On! his heart seemed to cry. Evening would deepen above the sea, night fall upon the plains, dawn glimmer before the wanderer and show him strange fields and hills and faces. Where?
A warm human plumpness settled down on his brain. His brain yielded. Perfume of embraces all him assailed. With hungered flesh obscurely, he mutely craved to adore.
>ahem
bait
Thomas Browne
Joseph Addison (only his satire)
James Joyce
Cormac McCarthy
Herman Melville
I like Guy Davenport as well.
Nice, the only other person in the thread who name dropped authors not on Reddit's High School Top 100 list
Are you a moron?
GOATspeare
>b-but that's not prose
don't care
I am currently reading moby dick and I’ve never read anything quite like this. It would be no exaggeration to say that melville understood the extent of the english language better than anyone else.
Unbelievable
It would be no exaggeration to say that melville understood the extent of the english language better than anyone else.
There is another…
tell me yoda
he's probably talking about hawthorne or mccarthy
I'm 99% sure he's talking about Joyce. Joyce is one of the only authors who fully believed everything could be put into words
I think it's Washington Irving, and it's not particularly close. Depends on what you mean by "greatest" though.
Unironically Tolkien
Even his 'weaker' text the Silmarillion reads like a streamlined version of Macarthy or GRRM but with more substance. Lotr feels like a video game whilst reading like poetry. True genius overshadowed by his own legendarium.
Frick off.
Don't scoff. Anyone can write good prose if they try hard enough, but many authors mentioned in this thread place the experience of the reader second to the technical flex. 'look how many clauses I can fit in one sentence' or 'look how many adjectives can I use to describe this' is impressive to a degree, but too often becomes word-masturbation. It's a lot harder to write impeccable prose, whilst also captivating the reader in a tactile universe. I can enjoy the experience of reading James Joyce, but I can only 'care' so much, and I'm unlikely to be inspired. It's the same reason people reject zach snyder's superman, but a single frame of classic supes lifting a car to save the girl is always iconic. Complex sentences, allegory and allusion are in my opinion some of the weakest language features because they alone don't move people. A true genius weaves life into their writing, whilst crafting a narrative that makes the reader feel more alive. It's obviously subjective, but when you read Tolkien you really feel like he achieves more with his words than others. Every sentence builds upon the last into an impossibly large narrative pyramid, yet when you pluck an excerpt from the climax it is perfectly understandable without any context.
>All about the hills the hosts of Mordor raged. The Captains of the West were foundering in a gathering sea. The sun gleamed red, and under the wings of the Nazgul the shadows of death fell dark upon the earth. Aragorn stood beneath his banner, silent and stern, as one lost in thought of things long past or far away; but his eyes gleamed like stars that shine the brighter as the night deepens. Upon the hill-top stood Gandalf, and he was white and cold and no shadow fell on him. The onslaught of Mordor broke like a wave on the beleaguered hills, voices roaring like a tide amid the wreck and crash of arms.
And with the context of having read the story thus far, every sentence, character, simile etc. has the weight of the world behind it, because an entire world was meticulously crafted for this very moment. To discuss 'prose' as if it exists in isolation from narrative is more akin to a discussion of poetry, which would actually be more appropriate for some of the suggestions here (like shakespeare). Those saying Melville and Nabokov are much more on the right track, even if they are still pandering to IQfy opinion, in my opinion.
>I can enjoy the experience of reading James Joyce, but I can only 'care' so much, and I'm unlikely to be inspired.
You don't know shit about Joyce until you've read Finnegans Wake
You make some very interesting points anon. But I can't expect than you actually believe Tolkien is the pinnacle of story telling?
It's a pseud mess of a book that serves no purpose but for its own masturbatory and its followers. Is it universal? Will people understand its depth for all time? Or is it more a modern game of the current zeitgeist?
>It's a pseud mess of a book that serves no purpose but for its own masturbatory and its followers.
No
>Is it universal?
Yes
>Will people understand its depth for all time?
Yes
>Or is it more a modern game of the current zeitgeist
No
sorry autist but breaking down points into paragraphs and giving yes or no answers doesn't make you right. I understand you have a condition, but you have to understand you are moronic to functioning people.
>hurr durr you're a moron lol
Don't get mad at me because you were filtered by Finnegans Wake
you can be an obsessed autist over your autism book all you want but you have yet to give a good reason to appreciate it
>a good reason to appreciate it
It's very funny.
I'm coming out with new movie.
The imagery of that passage borders on kitsch. You’re better off with Tennyson‘s Idylls of the King if you’re looking for the same vibe. Tolkien is great for the ages 9-14, after that you should learn to appreciate literature that concerns itself with life as it is and not some lukewarm allegories and merely entertaining plot. And yes, in every paragraph of Joyce there is life interwoven in it and life and language become inextricable. Tolkien was one who merely used language as a medium to tell an epic story, therefore his prose cannot even remotely qualify as one of the best that the English language has.
>Don't read Tolkein. Thats fantasy nonsense with nonbearing on real life.
>Goes on to read a bunch of made up soup kitchen dramas that never happened.
Midwit post anon. The only saving grace was the Tennyson recommendation.
Carlyle. One of the biggest influences on Melville.
Mervyn Peake.
>He no longer wanted to kill his foe in darkness and in silence. His lust was to
stand naked upon the moonlit stage, with his arms stretched high, and his fingers
spread, and with the warm fresh blood that soaked them sliding down his wrists,
spiralling his arms and steaming in the cold night air – to suddenly drop his hands
like talons to his breast and tear it open to expose a heart like a black vegetable – and
then, upon the crest of self-exposure, and the sweet glory of wickedness, to create
some gesture of supreme defiance, lewd and rare; and then with the towers of
Gormenghast about him, cheat the castle of its jealous right and die of his own evil
in the moonbeams.
Gormenghast
holy cringe
lol
But in all seriousness, that's worth a read.
he tore his heart out, that's bad ass
These are terrible. If it's not about density then it's about elegance, which both of them lacked.
Got that from your high school lit teacher? Good prose is determined by the intensity of the images or sensations it produces in the reader.
Did you get that from 20 year old Burke? homosexual
I can understand getting filtered by Mervyn Peake, but imagine being so low IQ that you got filtered by Tolkien. lol.
Peake writes dogshit prose. You are a pleb.
Your inability to comprehend a sentence with three syllable words is a failure on your end. Not the writers.
Go to some YA thread.
Peake is one step above YA. Frick off.
Enough with the copeing. Literally every writer and literary scholar whose read Peake thinks he's one of the most original prose stylists of the post war era.
Bloom, Lewis, Borges, Greene, Burgess, and the list goes on and on.
Go read some YA trash or a shitty light novel. That's more up your alley.
>copeing
Lol. Trash like Peake serves you right. The audacity to mention him in a thread like this. He isn't even better than Gene Wolfe lol.
>He isn't even better than Gene Wolfe
lol. Here i thought you were being serious. Good troll anon.
Nothing trollish about it redditspacer. Gene Wolfe is the only genre writer with literary merit. Glorifying Peake is like glorifying Dunsany because both died a 100 years ago.
Bait used to be believable.
>Wolfe is the only genre writer with literary merit
This role your playing of the literary critic that will only read novels about a lesbian being forced to be a house wife in the 50s and her decision to abort the baby she had with the milkman, all told from the POV of the down syndrome sister, is out of date. Everyone knows people like you are just faking it.
lmao
ikr
Samegay mad I say the truth
>criticizes others for their prose
>writes in ebonics
That way your chimp brain will be able to understand.
Says the Black person filtered by Peake.
Nah. Your just outnumbered because your takes are sub 70 IQ.
Samegay butthurt moron
Nah. Your just outnumbered because your takes are sub 70 IQ.
cope
remind me what prose means first??
Thomas Browne
Shakespeare
Melville
Joyce
I'd honestly consider Pynchon on the list, for Mason & Dixon. Some might put Conrad and Nabokov there, but I feel they try a bit too hard, they lack the fluidity of e.g. Melville.
>Thomas Browne
>
>Hardy
Hawthorne.
where do I start with them?
I recommend Jude the Obscure
Not him, but Urn Burial is Browne's most famous essay -- about 50 pages, an excellent piece of Christian Renaissance scholarship and pious meditation. I also enjoyed Letter to a Friend, which is something like 20 (27?) pages and was written on the occasion of Browne and the recipient's mutual friend's death, which is less famous but also very good. Not an expert on him, but he's fantastic.
Thanks, brother.
I'll try Urn Burial.
Pynchon is the biggest tryhard of them all.
Early Pynchon I'll concede, but M&D has some sublime parts
It's the same but more pretentious because of the pastiche. It's the most tryhard book of a tryhard writer.
its gripping but sublime is the wrong word. That shit is for our own degenerate era. Nobody would find it beautiful in such an ugly ironic tone in any other period of history.
>Pynchon
Mason & Dixon or V.? What should I read?
>Conrad
>try a bit too hard
Read anything other than Heart of Darkness, c**t. Lord Jim runs circles around whatever homosexual books you like.
The Secret Agent
Iunno anons they just look like long-winded word diaherra to me
Hilary Mantel
Has to be Nabokov.
Edgar Alan Poe
His vocabulary can be tough to overcome. Eureka filtered me tbh.
He purposefully used shit that was already considered old in his own time when the language of even his journalist pieces would filter out 95% of native English speakers today. The game was rigged from the start.
Any answer other than Shakespeare is absurd.
The Bard, of course.
Nabokov.
I know how to do it perfectly. My art is always this kind of masterwork...
It’s Milton. All other writers mentioned in this thread peaked too early.
Any modern-ish authors that are like Melville? Just finished the Dick and it was beautiful.
China Mieville is spelled similarly.
Cliched answer/comparison, but McCarthy at his best also has that same epic grandeur Melville achieves and splendiferous, somewhat archaic, grandiloquent and poetic prose style.
Mason & Dixon might also somewhat scratch that same itch of a lovelily written, big novel that’s deeply American and has a broadly overarching quest/adventure narrative (Mason and Dixon traveling and becoming acquainted with the Americas).
If you want to go in another direction and back to the past, Conrad is another great one, with some of the same nautical settings.
Melville’s best other works are also well-worth reading, even if they never redo the grandeur of Moby Dick. Like: Bartleby, Billy Budd, and (weird choice of mine, but I truly think this is a truly great and underrated novel by Melville) The Confidence Man.
>Conrad is another great one
I am about two thirds through Heart of Darkness and I have to admit the influences on McCarthy that I have noticed are rather rare, maybe three passages in total and none really had the epic style of Melville or McCarthy. Will it become more apparent once Kurtz shows up? And of course I haven't even finished one of his works so I will not make a judgement before I have. Are his other perhaps more similar to Melville's or McCarthy's styles?
His influence is more visible on Faulkner than McCarthy. He doesn't have a super Grand style either tbh. At his best, it is the right kind of elegance with mild density.
Read Nostromo and The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale.
Lancelot Andrewes
Thomas Carlyle
Runners-up:
Nabokov
John Updike
Thomas De Quincey
Edward Dahlberg
G. B. Shaw
You guys are all wrong and I'm not going to share with you who is the best. I will have the best author for myself so you freaks don't hoard the world's supply of their books. If only you knew...oh well all for me.
didn't ask
Stay mad.
Nobody is mad or even cares about you
Clearly you are and you do.
P.G. Wodehouse
Nice!
He ain't the GOAT, but I think Truman Capote wrote (at least some) good prose.
Either James Joyce or Oscar Wilde
Tolkien. The greatest prose to grace the English language couldn't be achieved by anyone other than an Englishman.
Are you 13?
Hart Crane is the richest English I know. I comprehend probably 5% of his meaning, but I read him again and again just for the music of his words.
That is Shakespeare, although I see him as the intermediary between middle english and the current modern variation which peaked with Irish writer James Joyce
What do we think of Melville's poetry? Like Clarel.
it's very abstract and contextual, at least Clarel is. as opposed to his prose, his poetry feels very constricted.
Read Chapter 35 of Moby Dick. Big kino
>all these joycegays and melvillechuds
is IQfy, dare I say it, back?
after reading Typee i've decided to move to Nuku Hiva and become a Polynesian.