Who is the greatest living author Veeky Forums? Is it him?

I really like Ishiguro.

cormac mccarthy or pinecone desu

living or dead

>or maybe Vargas Llosa

/thread

Krasznahorkai is the only answer, Murakami fags can fuck off.

>not liking both

Only idiots like Murakami who think they are past the YA stage yet they read the same shit in every Murakami book.

keep your chin up bucko.

Pic related. Vision trumps stylistic gimmicks.

The answer is easy. Bridget Jones

I'll bite. How is his stuff YA? Not even Norwegian Wood can be considered YA.

Murakami is actually underrated. Few people understand what he's trying to do.

What is he trying to do?

Not hard to understand when literally all of his books are the same, uses the same tropes, characters etc. You read 1 book you read all of them.

McCarthy, Pynchon, or Roth.

Murakami is a legitimately important author but I wouldn't put him in the 'GLA' tier. Definitely worth reading.

Agreed on Roth, but could you elaborate on why you think Murakami deserves such praise? I really don't get the hype. I read 1Q84 and disliked it.

Firstly, about Murakami being "important," it's because he's revitalized the modern Japanese novel and repopularized it in a lot of other countries. He kind of became the first modern Japanese author to make it big overseas (particularly in America) and in so doing has opened the doors for foreign lit.

As far as his actual quality I think it's really easy to mock him since he tends to follow patterns or have recurring elements. (Hence posts like "dude Beatles lmao" and "Murakami bingo") I really like him, though, because of his quirky ways of looking at the modern world and bringing a hint of mystery to its ennui. Often I feel like I can read him in a sort of semi-dream space where you can feel that things "just make sense" even though you might not be able to justify it consciously. I'm sure this sounds kind of all over the place but like I said I don't approach him in a positivist-rationalist sort of way. At the same time it feels like that's just the way he thinks and he's not writing like that just to provoke the reader or make a statement about narratives or something. He seems like a very genuine and not mean-spirited guy who wants to see what the world looks like when you crack the lens just a bit.

I actually haven't read "IQ84" but if you want to give him another shot maybe check out "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" or "Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World".

Happy reading!

this is a pretty good essay electronicbookreview.com/thread/internetnation/bungaku

here's a reply lol

This guy is right desu, the intensity of Laszlo's works is matched only by Thomas Bernhard.

Have you read The Melancholy of the Resistance, my man? I've been meaning to get a copy. Translated, unfortunately. I cannot even imagine Krasznahorkai in Hungarian.

Charles Portis

An honest and informed post on Veeky Forums? Strange.

I can't imagine him in hungarian,because I can't find any of his books at the store.

...

His work either isn't yet known or it isn't yet written.

Of established writers of English-language fiction, William H. Gass.

Does nobody talk about Delilo anymore?

He wrote one good book - Libra.

He has a great array of great to amazing literature, yet doesn't fumble over pretentiousness or divert himself to over-experimentalism. Him along with Pinecone will probably be raised as the best of the late 19th to early 20th century. Although I have to agree both authors can get real fucking tedious.

I just wish there were more authors of this day and age from a younger generation that could match up. Maybe those born from 94-2001 can conjure up something great.

Cormac McCarthy. Yes, he's still writing books.

Really inclined to agree with you

this meme gets me every time.

You can find all his works here:
pim.hu/hu/dia/dia-tagjai/krasznahorkai-laszlo#

Libra isn't a very good book, and definitely not his best. Though he's not a very good writer in general. Mao II was good but there's so much better writing out there.

Im a frequent Laszlo poster and I'm always happy to see people mention him on here. He's much better than Gass-- or just about anyone writing right now. There have been books of equal caliber to his, but no writer produces works as masterfully and as consistently as Krasznahorkai.

I'm not the guy you were replying to, but I own Melancholy of Resistance. It was the first one I started with, and immediately went and bought Satantango within 2 days of finishing it-- if even that. I bought Melancholy because I was bored and the selection of books in the city I was in were slim. When I bought Satantango I could feel the book burning in my hand I was so excited to read something else by him.

He will be around long after he's dead, it truly is zeitgeist literature.

Get it. It has some of the most powerful imagery I've ever seen in a book and it's just as intense as Satantango. The more "surrealistic" parts are, IMO, some of the best stuff he has ever written.

It bothers me how underread and underrated he is, and how popular guys like Murakami are (not that I dislike Murakami, he's probably the best guy around after Laszlo and arguably Vargas Llosa and Gass).

Also, watch the film adaptations of his works if you haven't already - they're just as good as the source material.

He isn't really underrated based on his awards and his name came up numerous times for the Nobel as well in the press.

Yeah, maybe not underrated, but he definitely is underread. The Bela Tarr films are far more popular than his books.

Gerald Murnane DESU
B
H

What is his best book other than The Plains?

>When I bought Satantango I could feel the book burning in my hand I was so excited to read something else by him.

If you haven't read 'War & War' yet then you're in for a treat. It's his best work imo.

Shout out to all the Laszlo bros on Veeky Forums. You guys are the real MVPs.

Thanks homie, I haven't-- I did Melancholy of Resistance and Satantango in a row and with very little human contact, and I needed a break from the gallow's humor, which has now ended, and War and War was going to be my next.

I'll order it later this week.

I also wanted to check out pic related. I heard many comparisons of Melancholy to it.

Hey user, no fair, what makes '94 the cutoff?

I just wish at least Hungary would know about Krasznahorkai since we barely have anything to be proud of nowadays and here's this man who might be the greatest living author and most of the country's population have never even heard of him.

Dude looks like a wizard or some End of Level boss shit.

But you guys are selling it to me. I'll pick him up.

He's the End Boss of 20th century literature. He took all the encyclopedic and macro fiction the 1900s had exploded with and ended it on a note of despicable peasants and suburbanites in loose political systems and decaying bland environments. He was truly the last and most powerfully original author of then, and all those great works (and the ones being published in this millennium) are being translated now, as in the last 10 years.

Vision and style are always the same, schmuck.

And yeah he is good but not the best.

Did you read it? It's not. He complained no one understood Murakami's purpose and then proceeded to explain the barely-surface Murakami everyone does understand.

Murakami's not bad, he just isn't that new and he doesn't operate as unconsciously as other writers. He's better than David Foster Wallace and on-par with Don Delillo. He's good. He's not great and definitely not the greatest, and may be "literary fiction" now but will never be a classic.

Apparently Krasznahorkai's new novel 'The Homecoming of Baron Wenckheim' is going to be translated by Ottilie Mulzet again through New Directions.

Beyond hype.

Not sure of the date for this one though. Early '18 maybe?

Wait just saw that is said '17 through his site:

krasznahorkai.hu/book_list_comingsoon.html

Best book of the year on the way, lads. You heard it here first.

Does he have enough money to get a dietician, cook, and PT now and lose some weight?

this japanese dude

Is The Instructions really that good that you put Levin in with McElroy and Gass?

not that user but i seriously doubt it

I think you didn't follow this thread correctly, friend. A poster at the top said Murakami was misunderstood and no one got him. I made a separate post about McCarthy et al. and said basically the same thing about Murakami as you did. That is, he is important and quite good but probably isn't the best living author.

You and I are mostly in agreement but I think you mistook another post for mine.

>he doesn't operate as unconsciously as other writers.

The fuck does that even mean?

Wolfe's still alive, guys.

>
This is the correct answer. It's hard to imagine another writer who will be looked at as positively as Coetzee will say, 100 years from now.

Houellebecq

Knausgård

not that guy. but murakami tends to write in this way where he's not that good at hiding at veiling the intention of the prose organically. it's always this sudden weird thing happening and i'm supposed to react to it or something. was good in the first 2 books then it just got old.

If he's actually alive I second this.

>From North a Hill, from South a Lake, from West Roads, from East a River
this is what I'm desparate to read, plus it's being translated by Szirtes (who I like slightly more than Mulzet)

yeah and nice parroting, faggot

kys

John Green or George RR Martin.

My fuckin niggas. I've only read Seiobo There Below and The Last Wolf & Herman. With regards to Seiobo There Below, I knew I was reading something important after the first chapter. I know his other works are more apocalyptic. This one is more about art and the creation of art, beauty, the sacred with relation to art, disintegration, and restoration. It's fucking phenomenal. It's very dark and hopeless yet unbelievably beautiful (as a novel about beauty should be). I'm not sure how his other books are structured (other than his rejection of the paragraph break). This one is generally page long sentences making up sections of chapters. In some cases entire chapters are single sentences (there's one chapter that's about 45 pages and a single sentence, when one finally reaches the end they are left breathless and crushed).

The Last Wolf and Herman are definitely less important Krasznahorkai works but both are great. The Last Wolf is the lesser of the two, I think. Herman is one of my favorite short stories. Published by New Directions, of course. Easily my favorite publishing house.

Not related to Krasznahorkai, but I urge all of you to check out WG Sebald if you haven't yet. I've only read Rings of Saturn by him but will be reading The Emigrants after I finish up Bernhard's Gargoyles.

>He's better than David Foster Wallace and on-par with Don Delillo.

I don't understand why you would even make these comparisons.

Murakami fan here. I also noticed this, but it seems to be a problem with most writers I know. I could only really enjoy fiction 100% when I was a kid. As I grew up I started seeing more and more the author behind the story, and be annoyed by it. I even imagine him thinking "heh heh, this will get them. I'm so smart".

Murakami seems to handle this relatively well, but if you know someone who is even better at hiding his hand (especially someone who does the same kind of oniric/melancholic magical realism Murakami does) please tell me.

...

Barley Patch

I've wasted my time on 2 of his books and read summaries of others, how much more time should I waste on him to be a Murakami connoisseur?

What the fuck are you reading summaries of books for?

To be sure that that hack actually used the same tropes in every single book that I haven't read.

Sounds interesting. Thanks m8.

i dont want to read anything from someone born after 94 lol

They're not.

"My friend, please be advised, yon bolder is about to crush your kin" is stylistically different from "watch out nigga that rock's gonna kill yo kids" but the message is of equal value when communicated to you.

Cormac McCarthy.

But maybe Knausgaard eventually.

Why is it so important? The cat, the unexplained situation, the coming of age person... they are only surface elements that tell nothing. One could write infinite stories with the same few pieces.

If anything, you could consider it an exercise of style.

>ctrl-f martin amis
>0 results

Plague upon this fucking board. Money and London Fields will still remain his best work, but even his last novel "The Zone of Interest" I thought was a minor masterpiece.

Murakami is pretty comfy-tier, and anyone who says otherwise has no soul, so I guess most of Veeky Forums.

Martin Amis is a bloated midget who relies on petty stylistic tricks to make normies think he's some sort of casual genius. He's cancer. Not funny. Not clever. Not interesting.

Where is DeLillo, you philistine?

Can you explain why Never Let Me Go is good? I want to understand why people like it, but I can't get past thinking that it reads like a YA novel and that the writing is awful.

Fredric Jameson. Truly a gift to language.

>the same shit in every Murakami book.

bad meme

I only read Koba the Dread and I hurled across the room wishing Kingsley had drowned him in a sack and spared me his printed whining.

Every time I see his face I die a little inside knowing people want him jailed for his work.

Absolutely correct desu, I've read all his books that were translated in english, and my hungarian friend has been reading me some of the stories from Relations of Grace
My friend is a little clumsy so I'm super hype for a real translation but even with a bad translation, his work is immensely enjoyable

myself.

good post desu