Writing that Blows You Away

Pic related, I am continually amazed at his sentences, how clear and evocative they are.

Shakespeare is an other example. Perfect.


tl;dr: ITT writers who WRITE exceptionally well.

Germany, 1940. It was Shlomo and Judith's wedding night. They were just about to consummate their marriage, when Hans burst into the room. "What are you doing?!" exclaimed Schlomo. "I'm here to claim your bride," replied Hans. "No! You can't!". "You know what will happen if you even think about stopping me." Schlomo dropped his head, there was nothing he could or wanted to do. Hans then looked over at Judith. She was hiding beneath the bedcover, which he promptly tore off. Hans whipped out his extra large German sausage that had been concealed beneath his effay military uniform. "Can you compete with this?" Hans asked Schlomo. Schlomo took out his sausage, but it was barely perceptible. Hans turned again to Judith. "You want my big Aryan sausage, don't you?" Judith looked up at Hans, her surprisingly beautiful face looked hungry. "No!" shouted Schlomo, as Judith reached forward to grab Hans' mighty offering. Judith sucked that sausage and Hans stuffed her tight young peach. By the time they were finished the sun was starting to rise. Shlomo just knelt in the corner, whimpering. Hans' satisfaction showed itself clearly all over Judith's face, who was tired and drenched with sweat. "Well, my good deed for today is done," said Hans. "I probably did you a favor, what with that inadequate equipment you were trying to use," he said to Shlomo. Hans put his clothes back on, then left through the window like a superhero. Judith rolled over and went to sleep, completely satisfied. Shlomo just lay there, all cried out. Everything he had seen that night flashed through his mind. He eventually fell into a reluctant sleep of nightmares, without so much as a kiss on the cheek. Germans are nothing, if not thorough.

How about an example?

Sunset found her squatting in the grass, groaning. Every stool was looser that the one before, and smelled fouler. By the time the moon came up she was shitting brown water.

It's great writing and you faggots know it.

Faulkner. Every time.

I'm amazed his short stories always get so glossed over. Easily one of the best short story writers of the 20th century, imo.

To expand, I have to say that besides Faulkner's lyrical prose, which always flows so organically and is never misplaced, his ability to adapt voice is astounding. I find that kind of talent absent in any other writer, besides, maybe, Barthelme. Even Alice Munro's stories all have a fairly consistent voice.

Here's an example which is quite simple, as it's narrated by a small-town teenage boy. Without being particularly beautifully written, or graceful at that, but in keeping to the boy's unique voice, this passage still manages to be so emotionally resonant that I don't think even Nabokov could have pulled it off:

"[...]and I would always think about April Fool's one year when Miss Callaghan called the roll and then stepped down from her desk and said, "Now I'm going to be a pupil today," and took a vacant seat and called out a name and made them go to her desk and hold the lessen and it would have been fun if you could have just quit remembering that tomorrow wouldn't be April Fool's and the day after that wouldn't be either."

Honestly, those who find only aesthetics to be of the highest importance and achievements in a work are prime pseuds and don't actually know how to read.

Just finished pic related, was my first Kafka and completely amazed. Prose wise it's ok, what blew me away was the story it self how relatable it was, I don't think I've ever connected with a book quite like that.

I've been trying to get into Faulkner next it seems like his short stories would be a good place to start, what would you guys recommend?

L'infinito

Sempre caro mi fu quest'ermo colle,
E questa siepe, che da tanta parte
Dell'ultimo orizzonte il guardo esclude.
Ma sedendo e mirando, interminati
Spazi di là da quella, e sovrumani
Silenzi, e profondissima quiete
Io nel pensier mi fingo; ove per poco
Il cor non si spaura. E come il vento
Odo stormir tra queste piante, io quello
Infinito silenzio a questa voce
Vo comparando: e mi sovvien l'eterno,
E le morte stagioni, e la presente
E viva, e il suon di lei. Così tra questa
Immensità s'annega il pensier mio:
E il naufragar m'è dolce in questo mare.

Translation

Always to me beloved was this lonely hillside
And the hedgerow creeping over and always hiding
The distances, the horizon's furthest reaches.
But as I sit and gaze, there is an endless
Space still beyond, there is a more than mortal
Silence spread out to the last depth of peace,
Which in my thought I shape until my heart
Scarcely can hide a fear. And as the wind
Comes through the copses sighing to my ears,
The infinite silence and the passing voice
I must compare: remembering the seasons,
Quiet in dead eternity, and the present,
Living and sounding still. And into this
Immensity my thought sinks ever drowning,
And it is sweet to shipwreck in such a sea.

The penultimate paragraph of Lolita is a dream.

Banardine's "Be absolute for death" from Measure for Measure and the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet.

"Anna Livia Plurabelle" from Finnegan's Wake

The opening section of Ulysses and "Oxen in the Sun"

The third section of Yeats's "Vacillation"

The Wife of Bath's prologue and the Pardoner's Tale

For Faulkner's shorts, anywhere is good. I recommend just getting the Collected Stories and start from the start.

Being is that parasitism of the brain that I have begun by daylight in order to rid myself of god and his sbirros: the diseases, the night.

Funeral scene in Ulysses (near the beginning). Quite a bit of Shakespeare. Some passages in Lolita (though these mostly just for the pure quality of the prose). Some Yeats. There are a couple paragraphs or long sentences in Blood Meridian that are astounding too. (As for philosophers, some passages in Wittgenstein).

D'une premeditation de non-etre,
d'une criminelle incitation de peut-etre
est venue la realite,
comme du hasard qui la forniquait.

>Joyce
>Nabokov
>>>/reddit/

he can write a run on sentence big fucking whoop

Boy, this is either b8 or you one massive retard. Keep reading your vapid purple prose because it's pretty or else read some ugly YA to get your kicks, you toilet.

To be fair, it does look poorly written.

I literally explained that in the post. It's not a simple excuse, he adapts his language according to the narrator. Compare with passages in Dry September and even Addie's chapter in As I Lay Dying. Hell, read all four sections in TSatF, and you'll find how vastly different they all are.

In the example I posted, Faulkner is able to use very poor structure and bland style and manage to inject such delicate psychology. It's simple, but it's almost heartbreaking.

Honestly, Veeky Forums cannot read worth a shit. I try to be hopeful and have an actual discussion, but you idiots can't read anything past aesthetics, and that is just embarrassing.

you're a pseud m8

Such a good argument.

I fucking hate this board. It's almost worse than Goodreads.

you hate it because you're a pseud favvot who's here for self validation and you're upset no one is slobbering over your cuck for how smart you are
sorry no one is impressed cause you took an undergrad course on Faulkner once
try r/books

You've clearly never read Faulkner and you have no idea what you're talking about. I don't want validation, I want discussion. If you have a contrary opinion about the author and his works, please, come up with a decent argument. But you can't even do that. You belong on /b/.

Literally kill yourself.

>/b/
found the newfag

My girl Emily knows what's up. It's a real shame she only wrote one book before consumption took her.

"He drank the spirits and impatiently bade us go, terminating his command with a sequel of horrid imprecations, too bad to repeat or remember. 'It's a pity he cannot kill himself with drink," observed Heathcliff, muttering an echo of curses back when the door was shut. "He's doing his very utmost; but his constitution defies him. Mr. Kenneth says he would wager his mare that he'll outlive any man on this side of Gimmerton, and go to the grave a hoary sinner, unless some happy chance out of the common course befall him."

The diction is dated but that's part of the charm.

"Cathy and I escaped from the wash house to have a ramble at liberty, and getting a glimpse of the Grange lights, we thought we would just go and see whether the Lintons passed their Sunday evenings shivering in corners, while their father and mother sat eating and drinking, and singing and laughing, and burning their eyes out before the fire. Do you think they do?"

It's not particularly ostentatious but it's emotionally effective writing.

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yeah Veeky Forumserates only tell people to fuck off to /pol/

Astounding.

Don't know why I posted this in reply to Anyway here's another passage.

"In vapid listlessness I leant my head against the window, and continued spelling over Catherine Earnshaw--Healthcliff--Linton, till my eyes closed; but they had not rested five minutes when a glare of white letters started from the dark, as vivid as specters-- the air swarmed with Catherines; and rousing myself to dispel the obtrusive name, I discovered my candle wick reclining on one of the antique volumes, and perfuming the place with an odour of roasted calf skin

"I snuffed it off, and, very ill at easy under the influence of cold and lingering nausea, sat up and spread open the injured tome on my knee. It was a Testament... I shut it, and took up another, and another, till I had examined all. Catherine's library was select, and its state of dilapidation proved it to have been well used, though not altogether for a legitimate purpose; scarcely one chapter had escaped pen-and-ink commentary-- at least, the appearance of one-- covering every morsel of blank that the printer had left.

"Some were detached sentences; other parts took the form of a regular diary, scrawled out in unformed, childish hand... An immediate interest kindled within me for the unknown Catherine, and I began, forthwith, to decipher her faded hieroglyphics."

Don't get mad over him. It's not worth it

Tennis scene in lolita is nutso. It's my opinion that Nabokov is too superficial, though. I mean what was really going on, underneath the surface in lolita? Was it really that much? Seemed like a pretty realistic story, just told in a very flowery way...

goddamn, tfw

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

Amazing, isn't it? I was also going to post Montale's "Spesso il male di vivere ho incontrato" but I can't find a decent English translation.

kek'd
faulkner btfo

God how pedantic

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