Forget characters, plot and so on for a minute - which novels have you read with beautiful, poetic prose?
Books with beautiful prose
Parker Barnes
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Blake Foster
Of Time and the River by Thomas Wolfe
Josiah Moore
I was hoping someone would make a new thread about this topic. I have been searching warosu.org looking for threads about good prose.
Here's a similar thread:
warosu.org
In case you can't view it, the books mentioned are:
Lolita
Tropic of Cancer
Moby Dick
Molloy
Julien Gracq (the author; user did not name a specific book)
The Book of the New Sun
Seiobo There Below
Othello
Correction
Fifty Shades of Grey (haha)
The Great Gatsby
Titus Groan
Gormenghast
Jack Vance (the author)
Sebastian Edwards
Suttree and The Orchard Keeper
Thomas Campbell
I was going to name Julien Gracq
Elijah Stewart
Le rivage des syrtes - the opposing shore for his most famous work
Caleb Bailey
>C'était une sorte d'iceberg rocheux, rongé de toutes parts et coupé en grands pans effondrés avivés par les vagues. Le rocher jaillissait à pic de la mer, presque irréel dans l'étincellement de sa cuirasse blanche, léger sur l'horizon comme un voilier sous ses tours de toile, n'eût été la mince lisière gazonnée qui couvrait la plate-forme, et coulait çà et là dans l'étroite coupure zigzagante des ravins. La réflexion neigeuse de ses falaises blanches tantôt l'argentait, tantôt le dissolvait dans la gaze légère du brouillard de beau temps, et nous voguâmes longtemps encore avant de ne plus voir se lever, sur la mer calme, qu'une sorte de donjon ébréché et ébouleux, d'un gris sale, qui portait ses corniches sourcilleuses au-dessus des vagues à une énorme hauteur.
Is it always like that...?
Luis Foster
Yes, every line is pure pottery
Adrian Richardson
I really don't like it. Over-adjectivized, bland rhythm, no music whatsoever...
It's not for me I guess.
Brayden Lee
I can understand the over-adjectivized part but you really to read the whole book to get the feeling, it didn't bother me at all and I did find it enjoyable once I was fully into it. It's is easier and most known work, others like un balcon en forêt and au chateau d'argol are also beautifully written.
He was a geographer and you can feel it too
Christian Scott
I'll give it a look then.
Jack Sanders
Gracq is legit trash
Mason Cook
Siddhartha and thus spoke zarathustra.
Jose Nelson
Snow Country by Kawabata, only read the Edward G. seidensticker translation though, would recommend, fucking achingly beautiful
Bentley Clark
Previous list with authors:
Vladimir Nabokov - Lolita
Henry Miller - Tropic of Cancer
Herman Melville - Moby Dick
Samuel Beckett - Molloy - Malone Dies - The Unnamable
Julien Gracq - various works
Gene Wolfe - The Book of the New Sun
László Krasznahorkai - Seiobo There Below
William Shakespeare - Othello
Thomas Bernhard - Correction
F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby
Mervyn Peake - Titus Groan - Gormenghast
Jack Vance - various works
Another thread:
warosu.org
Gottfried Benn - Romanzo Del Fenotipo
Aldous Huxley - The Island - The Doors of Perception
Samuel Beckett - Molloy - Malone Dies - The Unnamable
John Updike - Rabbit, Run - Rabbit Redux - Rabbit Is Rich - Rabbit at Rest
Vladimir Nabokov - Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle
Cormac McCarthy - Suttree
John Gardner - Grendel
André Malraux - La Condition Humaine (Man's Fate)
Herman Melville - Moby Dick
Benjamin Brooks
Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peak
Mostly anything by Jack Vance.
Henry Walker
"[The Gods Wait] isn’t a quick read, by any means, but it isn’t meant to be, as the prose and plot both benefit from slow consideration. An engrossing, character-driven literary work, it’s a book for thinkers, fighters, and people who enjoy genuinely good prose."
Jonathan Johnson
Chimera, Lost in the Fun House - Barth
James James
warosu.org
Oscar Wilde - various works
Norman Maclean - A River Runs Through It
Thomas De Quincey - The English Mail Coach - collected works
William Cobbett - Rural Rides
Herman Melville - various works
Marcel Proust - In Search of Lost Time
Vladimir Nabokov - The Gift
Virginia Woolf - The Waves - To the Lighthouse
Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness
warosu.org
Edgar Allan Poe - The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
Virginia Woolf - The Waves
Thomas Pynchon - Mason & Dixon
James Joyce - Dubliners - Ulysses
Herman Melville - Moby Dick
Julien Gracq - Au Chateau d'Argol (The Castle of Argol) - The Opposing Shore (Le Rivage des Syrtes)
Oscar Wilde - various works
Yukio Mishima - The Sea of Fertility
Nicholas Roberts
>Henry Miller - Tropic of Cancer
How is this?
Juan King
>Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peak
This. Well, the first two. The third one he never finished.
Also, for me at least, Jonathan Strange and Dr. Norrell.
Luis Torres
Most of the posts in this thread just listed authors.
warosu.org
Marcel Proust
William Shakespeare - too many to list
Vladimir Nabokov - The Gift
C. K. Scott Moncrieff (translator)
Lydia Davis (translator)
Herman Melville - Moby Dick
Joseph Conrad
Chinua Achebe
Thomas Browne - Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial - Religio Medici
James Joyce - The Dead (Dubliners) - Ulysses - Finnegans Wake
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Jean-Paul Sartre
Aldous Huxley
Jorge Luis Borges
Emil Cioran
William Gaddis - The Recognitions
George Orwell
Yukio Mishima
Jeremy Taylor
Thomas De Quincey - The English Mail Coach
Walter Pater
John Ruskin
William Cobbett
Sidney Smith
Samuel Beckett - Molloy - Malone Dies - The Unnamable
John Bunyan - The Pilgrim's Progress
Robert Burton - The Anatomy of Melancholy
François-René de Chateaubriand
Gustave Flaubert
Louis-Ferdinand Céline
John Updike
Juan Butler
Asuka > Rei
Josiah Jackson
It's so good I borrowed it from the library and I didn't return it for a couple of decades.
Easton Wilson
warosu.org
Thomas Pynchon - Gravity's Rainbow
Saul Bellow
David Foster Wallace
Thomas Pynchon
William Gaddis
John Barth
Joseph McElroy
William H. Gass
John Hawkes
Thomas Ligotti - The Conspiracy against the Human Race
Raymond Chandler
James Ellroy
Hermann Broch
Antonin Artaud
J. Rodolfo Wilcock - Temple of Iconoclasts (exert) -> harpers.org
Giorgio Manganelli - Hilarotragedia
Alberto Savinio - Achille Innamorato
Emil Cioran
William T. Vollmann
Herman Melville
William Faulkner
Tom McCarthy
James Joyce
Vladimir Nabokov
Virginia Woolf - The Waves
Thomas Browne - Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial
Rainer Maria Rilke - The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
Marcel Proust
John Banville - The Sea
Henry Miller - Tropic of Cancer
William Gaddis - The Recognitions
Gustave Flaubert
Knut Hamsun
Marilynne Robinson
Don DeLillo
William Keepers Maxwell Jr.
Cormac McCarthy
Ernest Hemingway
John Steinbeck
John Edward Williams
Thomas Bernhard
W. G. Sebald
László Krasznahorkai
John Updike - Roger's Version
Malcolm Gladwell
John Grisham
Dean Koontz
Nathaniel Hawthorne
She's a big girl.
Jacob Myers
The kingdom of this world by Alejo Carpentier has the best prose I’ve ever read,
Parker Phillips
DFW (especially Pale King)
William Gaddis- The Recognitions (the bulk of his work is in the form of dialogues which, while absolutely amazing, can't really be called beautiful)
Luis Thomas
Good posts.
Carter Sanchez
warosu.org
Jorge Luis Borges
Tom McCarthy
Gene Wolfe - The Book of the New Sun
James Joyce - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - Dubliners - Ulysses
Virginia Woolf - The Waves
William Faulkner - The Sound and the Fury - As I Lay Dying - Absalom, Absalom!
Henry James
Herman Melville - Moby Dick
William H. Gass
Sherwood Anderson
J. D. Salinger
Frank Herbert
Hilda "H.D." Doolittle
Mervyn Peake - Gormenghast
Louis-Ferdinand Céline - Journey to the End of the Night
Julien Gracq
Samuel Beckett
Thomas Ligotti
Thomas Babington Macaulay
F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby
John Updike
Julio Cortázar
Edgar Allan Poe - Assignation - The Oval
Vladimir Nabokov - Lolita
J. R. R. Tolkien
Thomas Mann
Thomas Pynchon
Lewis Grassic Gibbon
Don DeLillo
Vladimir Nabokov
Ray Bradbury
Laurence Sterne
Robert A. Burton
Thomas Browne
John Ruskin - The Seven Lamps of Architecture
Thomas Carlyle
Miguel Ángel Asturias - Men of Maize - Mulata de tal
Gabriel García Márquez - The General in His Labyrinth
William Shakespeare - Hamlet
Alejo Carpentier
John Barth
William Gaddis
Joseph McElroy
Yukio Mishima
Machado de Assis
Raduan Nassar
Samuel Johnson
Jonathan Swift
Jane Austen
Charles Dickens
Joseph Conrad
Raymond Chandler
Ross Macdonald - The Way Some People Die
Gustave Flaubert
Knut Hamsun
José Lezama Lima
Charles Bukowski
Ernest Hemingway
Alright, I'm done. There are certainly older threads that could be dug through but I noticed that these lists were getting repetitive; I think I got everything within the last six months. Someone else can bump the thread for awhile, I'm taking off.
Lastly, If you were going to recommend an author but did not because you saw them in one of these lists; recommend them anyway, preferably with a specific work of theirs and/or excerpt. I do not want to kill any potential discussion with these archive dumps.
I just noticed that I misspelled 'excerpt' in that last list; oh well.
Thank you user, it's nice to know that someone appreciates this.
Ryder Cook
Many of us appreciate it ;)
I'm just too lazy to solve the captcha
Alexander Ramirez
Avatarfagging is against the rules, m8
Jayden Turner
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Asher Turner
>Gene Wolfe
what a joke. what a falsely inflated author he is.
Carter Kelly
What makes you say that? (I haven't read him)