Your Top 5 Authors of all time

[Dr. Mabuse]

William S. Burroughs
Dostoevsky
Lovecraft
Faulkner
Cormac McCarthy

 

[MetroStyles]

Originally Posted by socialdtk

Three of my favorites as well. I'd have to substitute Martin Amis and Murakami for Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson only because they initially sparked my interest in Miller, Bukowski, and Dostoevsky. I feel bad about leaving William S. Burroughs and Kurt Vonnegut of my list...

I liek you because you liek the same authors that I do.

I really liked Kerouac when I was younger (although I only read OTR and Dharma Bums). However after reading the blog On the Bro'd I have developed a deep insecurity that my love of Kerouac was juvenile. I'll have to reread to find out for sure.

Thompson is brilliant. Plain and simple.

Vonnegut I really hate to admit is the one "respected" author I just didn't get. I like the idea of Vonnegut, but books like Cats Cradle I just couldn't really get despite reading twice. I really liked his collection of nonfiction essays (Man without a Country).

 

[Manton]

Xenophon
Machiavelli
Austen
Melville
Twain

Hon. Mention: Tom Wolfe

 

[MetroStyles]

Originally Posted by Manton

Xenophon
Machiavelli
Austen
Melville
Twain

Hon. Mention: Tom Wolfe

That list is so you.

 

[tagutcow]

Ugh, I haven't read a novel or short story in forever. Here's my own dilettante list:

Fyodor Dostoevsky
Lawrence Sterne
Franz Kafka
Andre Gide
Jorge Luis Borges

I also seem to recall liking Thomas Hardy, Thomas de Quincey, and Dante Alighieri, but that was omg soooooo long ago.

 

[socialdtk]

Originally Posted by MetroStyles

Thompson is brilliant. Plain and simple.


Have you ever read Big Sur: The Tropic of Henry Miller? It's typical Thompson talkin about Big Sur, the California wilderness that he and Miller once called home. Also, "the same lonely desert" that Kerouac traveled to in hopes of ditching his drinking habit only to consume "a galaxy of" vision producing drugs that would drive him back to drinkin.

http://totallygonzo.org/gonzowriting/rare-articles/

 

[Miles Gloriosus]

Originally Posted by Dr. Mabuse

Lovecraft

I gotta ask you about this. Lovecraft is really terrible and I've wondered what the appeal is.

Originally Posted by MetroStyles

I really liked Kerouac when I was younger (although I only read OTR and Dharma Bums). However after reading the blog On the Bro'd I have developed a deep insecurity that my love of Kerouac was juvenile. I'll have to reread to find out for sure.

I think some of the Beats are genuinely artistic, but I really don't like Kerouac at all. I'm not totally sure why there's a huge backlash against the Beats among aging readers. I think they might have never gotten it in the first place.

Ralph Ellison
Allen Ginsberg
Mark Twain
I'm going to have to think about the other two. Five is a really small number.

 

[DocHolliday]

Originally Posted by Manton

Xenophon
Machiavelli
Austen
Melville
Twain

Hon. Mention: Tom Wolfe

Great choice.

Twain eludes me a bit. I feel like I ought to like him more than I do.

In terms of pure reading enjoyment, Wilde is up there.

I like Bill Bryson's stuff too, for fun.

I was cold on "On the Road." There was one great line, and I'd have been better off reading that and skipping the rest.

 

[Connemara]

Flannery O'Connor
Robert Caro
Turgenev
George Orwell
Evelyn Waugh

This is hard. I also am young and have not read as many of the "classics" as I need to.

 

[dragon8]

John Grisham
JD Salinger

 

[socialdtk]

Originally Posted by Miles Gloriosus

Allen Ginsberg
I reordered Allen Ginsberg - Collected Poems 1947-1997 today. My ex-girlfriend took my first copy with her after we broke-up, along with a revised version of Ginsberg's epic poem America I had written on a piece of notebook paper folded inside. A few weeks ago I found it published under her name in Creative Loafing Charlotte, NC.

 

[Miles Gloriosus]

Have you read any of his journals? It can be compelling stuff when he isn't tripping balls talking about a rock.

 

[JohnnyLaw]

I can't make a definitive list or anything, but 5 authors that I have at some point or other been very into are:

David Foster Wallace
T.C. Boyle
Louis-Ferdinand CÃ

line
Kurt Vonnegut
John Kennedy Toole

 

[ArteEtLabore14]

Originally Posted by Connemara

Flannery O'Connor
Robert Caro
Turgenev
George Orwell
Evelyn Waugh

This is hard. I also am young and have not read as many of the "classics" as I need to.

Do you know what the definition of a classic is? A book that people want to have read but don't want to read. According to Mark Twain at least.

 

[tagutcow]

Originally Posted by socialdtk

I reordered Allen Ginsberg - Collected Poems 1947-1997 today. My ex-girlfriend took my first copy with her after we broke-up, along with a revised version of Ginsberg's epic poem America I had written on a piece of notebook paper folded inside. A few weeks ago I found it published under her name in Creative Loafing Charlotte, NC.

When I was in high school, I was browsing through some of the books that my English teacher kept in her classroom. I saw a book of poetry by Allen Ginsberg, and so idle curiosity compelled me to pick it off the shelf and see what was the big deal about this guy. I flipped to a random page, and the first line that popped out at me was something like, "Oh master, I worship before your massive cock." Yeah, that book pretty much automatically slammed itself back shut.