Favourite Writers
1. James Joyce (1882 - 1941) Dubliners (1914), A Portrait of The Artist As A Young Man (1916), Ulysses (1922), Finnegans Wake (1939)
2. T.S. Eliot (1888 - 1965) The Waste Land (1922), The Hollow Men (1925), The Four Quartets (1945)
3. William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616) Julius Caesar (1599), Hamlet (1600), Othello (1603) The Tempest (1610)
4. Ernest Hemingway (1899 - 1961) Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises (1921), A Farewall To Arms (1929), For Whom The Bell Tolls (1940), The Old Man And The Sea (1952)
Yet to be ordered:
Ezra Pound
Ernest Hemingway
Henrik Ibsen
Franz Kafka
Dante Alighieri
William Wordsworth
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Alred, Lord Tennyson
Lord Byron
Vladimir Nabokov
Anton Chekhov
Leo Tolstoy
Fyodor Dostoevsky
John Milton
Raymond Carver
William-Butler Yeats
Johann-Wolfgang Von Goethe
Oscar Wilde
Proust
John Steinbeck
et cetera
Listed works aren't all or necessarily the 'greatest', merely my favourites.
Descriptions to come soon, and further ordering
Are you a Henry James fan? He looks like he'd be right up your alley. The Sacred Fount is sublime, although I'd be damned if I actually understood the thing.
Never read anything by him! I shall rectify that as soon as I can.
Have you ever read Blake's Book of Thel
No, I'll look into it, looks quite interesting. Have you? What's great about it?
Eternal, ungraspable imagery. A virgin contemplates mortality. Seeking solitude, she converses with nature. The clouds and lillies complain not of their impending nullification; and in death she finds meaning. It ends with her looking into a mirror of sorts & being frightened. It reminds me of Astral Weeks by Van Morrison.
One of the greatest poems I've read:
http://www.melodylane.net/ianwhitcomb/twainpoem.html
God, Hemingway did so much with such a sparse style.
I used to like Hemingway a lot, but he's kind of overrated to me. His legend definitely overshadows the actual quality of his work. His novels haven't aged particularly well, although he did write a handful of great short stories. I particularly like the Nick Adams ones.
I definitely regard someone like CS Lewis as a superior contemporary.
Depends on how much you care about technical brilliance in literature (Hemingway is near flawless), because if you do it has a greater emotional impact.
I hate CS Lewis and his godamn Chrisitan allegories, attitudes and his general face.
I don't mean to come off as hostile, but that's the first time I've seen CS Lewis and Hemingway compared. I don't think they're even playing the same sport.
Do you like Hardy?
I still need to read Henry James' stuff, and I will, time allowing.
I started The Sacred Fount and enjoyed the charming honesty and wit. It's amazing how realistic the pacing is, how the thoughts unfold in the main character. Some of his descriptions are painfully beautiful, ex: "It was of course familiar enough that when people were so deeply in love they rubbed off on each other - that a great pressure of soul to soul usually left on either side a sufficient show of tell-tale traces. But for Long [a character] to be so stamped as I found him, how the pliant wax must have been prepared and the seal of passion applied!" The book kind of reminds me of The Rules of the Game. Anyways, it's kind of challanging reading imo, and I wasn't sufficiently interested in the story to make it past Chapter 4.
But isn't what's being said also important, in addition to how it's being said? I will give you that he was precise as hell, although in the long run that might be where some of my issues with him stem from. He gets kind of redundant, certainly not flawless. There's a sameness to his work that I take issue with. I still think he's a very good writer, but in my mind that should be attributed to his short stories. A great novelist? I'm not convinced, and I've read a fair amount of his work.
I don't think Lewis and Hemingway were similar writers (either stylistically or thematically), I just mentioned him because he's someone from that same generation who I prefer. I really loved his Till We Have Faces, beautiful stuff.
I'm not too familiar with Hardy, a couple short stories under my belt, that's about it. I've been meaning to give his poetry a look. Any favorites?
And I can't believe I still haven't thoroughly checked out Proust. I've read a small sample, and if it's any indication of the quality of all his work, then I'd say that he's a peerless draftsman.
I agree, Hemingway's short stories are his best feature, my personal favourite by him is either A Clean, Well Lighted Place, The End of Something or The Old Man & The Sea (which is technically a novella but I see it as more of an extended short story). I think he has some very emotionally and socially poignent things to say, personally.
I may give Lewis another chance at a later date, I just remember reading Narnia and this other book he did and thinking they sucked. A lot.
Hardy is probably the person I'm going to put 5th on this list; he is a genius of the macarbre, of the natural and of the emotional. His Wessex Tales & Wessex Poems are good examples of a lot of his best stuff. Tess of The d'Urbervilles and The Mayor Of Casterbridge are both fantastic. His best poems are The Convergence of The Twain (which is one of the best of all time) and The Photograph
Proust is one of the good guys.
Do you like Frank O'Connor?
I like Flannery O'Connor... but nah, never read him. I haven't read nearly as much I'd have like to. I need to get back into literature somehow; time is as always an issue though. There's a lot of writers on the pantheon that I've never seen a word from.
In due time.
You have the gift of understatement, calling Proust a "good guy". I'm roughly seventy pages deep into Swann's Way and he just might be the greatest writer I've ever encountered. How far into In Search of Lost Time did you get?
Are you into Joseph Conrad, Rabindranath Tagore or Graham Greene?
Oh, and lastly, manage to find the time for Henry James?
The Mayor of Casterbridge is FAN-FUCKING-TASTIC.
Proust is good. I'm sort of reading Swann's Way right now, and it's one of the most beautiful books I've ever read.
Go and get an instant messenger for the love of God, Listology is so much effort to talk through!
What is an instant messenger pray tell?
Like MSN messenger, means you can talk in real time. So much easier.
Alright, what's your email? Mines elstonhardy@hotmail.co.uk
I've added you and am online. Tell me if something doesn't work.
Interesting to note that while Joyce liked Hemingway, he had mixed feelings on T.S Eliot and actively disliked Hardy's work!
Joyce: we already talked about Finnegan's Wake...but i do enjoy Joyce a lot.
Eliot: i think is overrated in the sense that people can think TMR or VU&Nico are overrated: because they are rated so high. but, no Prufrock, even for a favorite? i don't enjoy The Waste Land, but Quartets is shaping up nicely - no it is really a great poem, right behind Prufrock among the best of all time. and i have his Works, so i will check out Hollow Man and the rest.
Shak-es-peare: i haven't read the plays you have listed, and the plays i have read are overrated compared to Marlowe's Dr. Faustus - the only GREAT play i have READ. when you list those plays do you consider only the literature aspect or have you seen them performed and that is why you like them? also, what about his sonnets? those are what make me want to read Hamlet (especially "the soliloquy") - #'s 2,3,6,17,18,20,26-31,66,71-93 (73),121,124,129,130,138,146 (some more "Dark Lady" need to be rep'd).
Hemingway: HATED Farewell to Arms - bored me to sleep over and over again; it took me 3 days to finish it because i could not stay awake to read more than a handful of pages at a time...but again, i rediscovered him through his short stories/Old Man and the Sea and love those. so, i will give For Whom The Bell Tolls and Sun Also Rises a go.
Hate: Pound, Milton (Paradise Lost - i will read his other poems before i write him off)
Coming around to the Russians: didn't like War & Peace so i stopped reading at page 40, but that man knew how to put words together. and my Russian friend said that Dostoevsky is considered a joke to "true" Russian literature (i don't understand that statement even if i imagined the word "true" of the statement); Notes From Underground is amazing. no Nabokov for me yet.
Love: Chekhov, Kafka, and what Proust i have read. i really love the wild prose "green tea visions" of Kerouac, and the wild Donne! i am sure i left someone out...Stein....
oh yeah, i await your fleshy list of your favorite works by these writers.
What do you love so much about Finnegan's Wake? I just don't get it. It's pure language. Does the formalism deeply speak to you, are you able to discern anything concrete from it? It's way beyond me. I like Ulysses a lot, but didn't get very far into Finnegan's Wake at all; was wondering if you can shed some light, or something to such an effect.
I do, however, really like this.