Greatest Living Author?

[Pennglock]

I thought I'd pose this question to SF, one of the few forums I frequent with semi-literate membership. Which living author has put out the best stuff? Philip Roth, Don DeLillo, and Thomas Pynchon are at the top of my list, but I'd choose Cormac McCarthy if I had to pick one person. When I get more time, I'll write why...

Your choices?

 

[rnoldh]

Manton.

 

[Jsoftz]

Originally Posted by Pennglock

I thought I'd pose this question to SF, one of the few forums I frequent with semi-literate membership. Which living author has put out the best stuff? Philip Roth, Don DeLillo, and Thomas Pynchon are at the top of my list, but I'd choose Cormac McCarthy if I had to pick one person. When I get more time, I'll write why...

Your choices?

I had a professor who very, very fervently believed Cormac McCarthy was the greatest living author. It was a political theory class, and we had to read Blood Meridian in conjunction with Leviathan. Of course, we read lots of books in that class, but the only one by a living author was Blood Meridian.

 

[leftover_salmon]

Pynchon or Gabriel Garcia Marquez (he's still alive, right?) for me. I got turned off Delillo after Cosmopolis.

Edit: I really like Tom Wolfe, too, but Pynchon and Marquez have more depth to their writing.

 

[dusty]

To echo Harold Bloom: 1) McCarthy and 2) Delillo.

 

[quevola]

Isabel Allende

 

[aarghh]

Jose Saramago

 

[Saucemaster]

Originally Posted by leftover_salmon

Gabriel Garcia Marquez (he's still alive, right?)

Yeah, he's still alive, and he'd be on my short list, too.

 

[odoreater]

What makes someone a great author?

 

[thepataphysician]

J.D Salinger or Cormac McCarthy or Solzhenitsyn

 

[Maharlika]

Vikram Seth. Brilliant writer, poet, author. He wrote the longest novel in the English language called: "A Suitable Boy". The best novel I've read by a living author to date.

 

[Connemara]

john Banville.

 

[Britalian]

Originally Posted by leftover_salmon

I got turned off Delillo after Cosmopolis.

So Cosmopolis and Falling Man turned you off him because...? Is the subject matter not Delilloesque enough? I thought the former was ok for a novella. I'm looking forward to the latter in pb.

The cognoscenti frequently murmur Rushdie's name, too.

 

[wiru]

the public prefer dead poets and they are right. a poet who isn't dead is an anachronism. -- jean cocteau

 

[Journeyman]

I can take or leave DeLillo - I enjoyed "White Noise" and "Underworld", but haven't really been too enamoured of his other works.

Pynchon affects me similarly - I loved "Vineland" and "The Crying of Lot 49", but found some of his other works to be more effort than enjoyment.

I don't know if they deserve the "greatest living" title, but a couple of authors whose works I really do thoroughly enjoy are Haruki Murakami and Thomas Keneally. Keneally is an Australian author - I'm not sure how well-known he is in the wider world, although he did write "Schindler's Ark", later made into a film by Spielberg (although "Ark" was changed to "List" in the film).

If Vonnegut wasn't dead, he'd make it into my list, too.