GREAT ESSAYISTS

RECOMMEND GREAT ESSAYISTS.

I heard George Orwell was good at this thing you just mentioned.

Seneca, Hazlitt, Schopenhauer, Wilde
Mencken, C. Hitchens

Burke, de Maistre, Schopenhauer, Chesterton, Ludovici, Dalrymple, Sloterdijk,

t. Conservative

Zizek

Montaigne (obv), Plutarch, William Hazlitt, Thomas Browne, Francis Bacon, Charles Lamb, Guy Davenport, John Ruskin, Cyril Connolly, Marguerite Yourcenar

Being called a great essayist as a writer is like being called a great frycook as a chef

Montaigne

Wanna know how I know that you're new and posturing?

BORGES was a strong conservative who valued traditionalism and supported [[ourguy]] PINOCHET. Borges was also a great essayist.
Get his non-fictions.

Even though it's published by a virulent and parasitic barnacle (Weinberger), Borges' conservatism remains packed with strength and vitality.

Bunp

Nietzsche

Eco and Calvino are both incredibly talented writers who really shine in their essays - which are not just informative but both witty and well written.

Read Plutarch once. Long time ago.
Which Plutarch essay/bio do you recommend?

t. Busy guy

EB White

Christopher Hitchens is actually a good essayist despite him being something of a meme intellectual.

Plutarch is awesome.
I got the book about debts as a present. It destroyed me.
>Tfw Greek.

Bump

david
foster
wallace

not even memeing.

lobsters, crusing, lynch, television are all essential texts that lay the foundation for understanding our current era

Thoreau...

Virgnia Woolf, Mark Greif.

Peirce

Emerson is seriously life-changing. He has some quote where he talks about the books he would want to read beside a stream in Paradise for a thousand years, and I think he pics Plato and Goethe or something? But I think Emerson himself is a worthy choice for that.

Something about reading him is like taking a walk out in the woods. Every little thing can be stooped over and appreciated individually, or you can just let yourself go with it.

Not just his Essays collections either. His Representative Men is amazing.

There was something magical about the Transcendentalists.

>DFW is a good/entertaining writer
this is the Veeky Forums meme that needs to die the most

Where to start w/ Emerson?

"Nature" or "Self-reliance"

Pnp

Anthony Burgess
Simon Leys
Lin Yutang

>Lin Yutang

I agree. Essays can be beautiful and interesting but for me they've never had the depth of novel, of a much longer and organized philosophical tract, or even of a short story

He is though. His essays are great.

Juan Donoso Cortés

>hitchens

hahahahahahhah

His essay on Stieg Larsson alone makes him worthy

Walter Benjamin, Gore Vidal, Susan Sontag, Norman Mailer, James Baldwin, Schopenhauer, Camus.

Umberto Eco

This in spades. Also, Loren Eisley, M.F.K. Fisher, and Cynthia Ozick.

no

>Hazlitt
I never understood the appeal, he's one of the most boring literary critics. Hazlitt is really only worth reading if you want to get a clear picture of the most common tastes and prejudices of the Romantic age.

Bertrand Russel anyone ?

Montaigne and Browne wrote some of the greatest literature of all time you pseud

Any reasoning?

You are just not a good reader.

That opinion doesn't even make sense to me. The writer tells you what they're thinking, in a novel or something they trick you into thinking you thought of it yourself.

Chesterton's nice. Did Burke ever do anything besides shit his pants about Frenchmen?

He wrote some sublime stuff but I can't remember what it was

Has a shmancy style but youre right (i believe) he's thin of substance. His meannesses to Coleridge at his most vulnerable have always bothered me.

fuck off

Sontag
Carver
Wilde

underrated

Zero of those people are underrated.

High trips confirm. Emerson is cozy af.

wendell berry

D I D I O N
I
D
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Yes lots.

Camus
Emerson
Thoreau
De Quincey
Montaigne
Weil
Burton
Browne
me, natch.

Is there a good collection you'd rec

Slouching Towards Bethlehem and White Noise

i meant as essayists user

Still applicable.

How is Sontag an underrated essayist?

GOOD post

up

Bump

Recommend me some good modern essayists.

Different user. Her younger book-obsessed self is though a little naive, scholarly and fair. Under the Sign of Saturn is actually a helpful collection. And the essay on kitsch and the long one on her trip to North Vietnam should be read if only for the influence they've exercised. If nothing else, they entertain.
I first learned of Artaud through her so pethaps I feel a little indebted.