Who are some writers who are consistently good or great?

OP said consistently good or great, which Shakespeare is.
Some plays are good and some are great.
I agree they aren't all consistently as great as Hamlet or Lear, but they are all good.

There is no one secret. Dostoevsky maintained and improved his strengths, writing in a similar way about different philosophical problems or events. While Eliot almost completely changed his style a few times.

He only wrote 2 books and most people have only read 1

David Foster Wallace

Ezra Pound

also, Ted Hughes

Bolaño

Woah

John Updike. Don DeLillo.

Bret Easton Ellis. Not kidding.

The Sound and The Fury is unreadable

Lazlo Krasznahorkai
Claudio Magris
Yoko Tawada

Chester Himes
Langston Hughes
Clarence Major
James Baldwin
Clarence Cooper Jr
Iceberg Slim
Toni Morrison
Claudia Rankine
Thomas Bernhard
Dambudzo Marechera
Terrance Hayes
William S. Burroughs
Douglas Kearney
Richard Brautigan
Dennis Cooper
Ishmael Reed (to some extent)
Nathaniel Mackey
Percival Everett
Amiri Baraka
Joy Williams
Samuel R Delany
Zora Neale Hurston

>secret to consistency
For Hubbard, his secret was "rough draft = final draft"

Sticking with it?

>two actual instances of poets who fucked better poets than themselves

For you. Those of us that are not brainlets absolutely love it.

Are you an African American studies? Not trolling, I just don't see Everett on anyone's list outside MFA programs.

Great list though. No one on lit acknowledges Morrison too

Hamsun
Flaubert

Yukio Mishima
August Wilson
Ray Bradbury
Mark Twain
Jericho Brown
Samuel Delaney
Roberto Bolano
John Berryman
And of course Pynchon, I love his stoner comedies

MNM-DR

I can't imagine the neon bible is particularly good seeing as he was just 16 when he wrote it. Anyone know if it is worth reading out of anything other than curiosity?

Gaddis

This

Faulkner and Gaddis are consistently great.

I'm 2.5 books into a Bernhard binge and he's been consistent so far.

Possibly the worst answer.
I severely doubt you've ever read Proust, something he's famous for is having 10 or so pages of angelic clarity and then 100 pages of mud.

Seriously, there are some points in Lost Time that go on for more than ~120 pages where absolutely nothing happens in the plot and he's just describing random shit around him. Which are agonizing to read btw.

William Gass is consistently William Gass

John Updike became absolutely shit around the end of his life

Would agree with Nabokov, Faulkner, Dostoevsky and also add Rilke

>they are all good
no theyre not.

kek

that makes me happy, i read the loser quite a while ago, and it made an impression on me, it's one of the few books i can remember from that period in my life. which ones have you read?

William S. Burroughs, with the exception of Dead Fingers Talk.
Thomas Ligotti
Georges Bataille
Richard Brautigan
Kafka
Nabokov
Joyce, who just got better and better
Harlan Ellison
Eça De Queiros
Ballard
Hemmingway

who did Pound fuck? H.D.?

What about Rimbaud fucking Verlaine

"There is no method but to be very intelligent." – T.S. Eliot

>Ezra Pound
>consistent
Fucking wew

Pynchon's quality varies really fucking hard tho.
GR is great, Crying of Lot 49 is shit, and those two are in sequence.

The Crying of Lot 49 is his worst novel (besides, maybe, Bleeding Edge) and psueds who couldn't get through his masterpieces try to talk about it as if it's perfect, because they were forced to read it in school. It's the only Pynchon most people were able to finish, so it gets talked about far too often.

Nabokov and Eliot are bad. Especially Eliot.

Nietzsche
Flaubert
Goethe
Balzac
Tennyson

Alain-Fournier

Good post.

>crying of lot 49 is shit
What in the fuck are you two smoking

>Updike
I admire him but have you really read all his books? Poetry, criticism and all that. I've only read 8 or 9 of his novels and some of them were pretty weak

I said it's his worst novel. Worst Pynchon is better than most shit out there, but basically every other book he wrote is much better. Are you one of those short book only pussies?

Lol

Goethe, Tolstoy. Born on the same day as well.

You're completely right, CL49 is great.

Further proving the point that most people stop reading Pynchon after they finish his shortest book.

Excellent contribution

My nigga Lawrence Durrell.
Everything I've read is great including his travelling books

I read that, Gravity's Rainbow, and Mason and Dixon.

...

this dude is unironically jerking off to tome memes in front of everyone

Nope, I just think that's his worst novel. Inherent Vice was better.

Kurt Vonnegut

This qt3.14

this isn't even funny as a joke

Goonan