Top 5 authors

funnily enough i've read neither of those two, but i would consider atrocity exhibition and the ticket that exploded my favorites from ballard and burroughs respectively.

nothing is wrong with them bros--i'm just wondering if you'll eventually have another as your favorite. I used to have Dosto as one of mine.

Do they wear off... eventually lose their magic?

oh, definitely not. Well, not yet, anyway. I'm only 22. Read them forever man! That's what I'll be doing. It's just hard to imagine that if you keep reading the greats, or the goods, that one of those new ones won't come to be a replacing favorite. I don't want to get into objectivity or anything because I don't know nearly enough, but that's what I think.

I'm 24.
The only fiction writings, prose even, that really gets my rocks of is Joyce, Gaddis, and Melville. I used to love anything by Pynchon but something inside of me died

Thanks for the insight man. Best luck in the future.

delillo
pynchon
salinger
the other two are hard to pick

26

Horrible

(top 5 favorite NOT top 5 most notable)

Joyce
Steinbeck
Hesse
Dosto
Faulkner

21

Faulkner
Melville
McCarthy
Hemingway
Steinbeck

Céline, Joyce, Camus, Woolf, Tolstoy

>Salinger past the age of 22
just joshin' ya

...

...

haha nice beat me to it

>Joyce
>Nabakov
>Salinger
>Bolano
>Cervantes

>A day over 25

>this thread again

Veeky Forums sure does love attention

Haruki Murakami
Chuck Pahlaniuk
Bret Easton Ellis
Franz Kafka
Albert Camus

20

> Calvino
> DFW
> Nabokov (try reading something other than Lolita you fucking plebs)
> Marquez
> Shakespeare

> 21

...

Absolute fucking pleb. Once you read a bit more literature you'll realise how trite Murakami really is. Kafka is the only decent author on that list.
Camus is a very evocative writer but his philosophical texts are much better than his actual literature

in no order:
>Conrad
>Faulkner
>Pynchon
>Dumas
>Eliot

19

>26
>Woolf
>Faulkner
>Baldwin
>Gass
>Turgenev

>the most famous contemporary italian author of all time
>the most famous american author from the last 30 years
>the most famous contemporary russian author
>the most famous south american author, on oprah's book list
>the most famous writer of all time
who's the pleb again

Happy b-day, user!

Hans Fallada
Richard Yates
David Foster Wallace
Marquez
Houellebecq

21

>22
>Don Delillo
>Don Delillo
>Don Delillo
>Don Delillo
>Don Delillo

Tolstoy
Dostoevsky
Solzhenitsyn
Chekhov
Turgenev

Pynchon
Plath
Joyce
Dostoevsky
Mishima

>20

Nice. It's good to see someone who enjoys Salinger. Was it Catcher that started it, or what?

>24

>Stephen King
>Joseph Conrad
>Charles Bukowski
>Samuel Beckett
>Moliére

>Bulgakov
I read The Master and Margarita when I was 17 and I was so lost. Maybe I'll give it another go this summer.

I had to read The Names for a class and it really bothered me. Felt like an indie movie.

Not that guy, but really? I just recently read it and while I enjoyed it greatly, it seemed very modern/fantastic, like outside of the weird ass Russian naming conventions I felt it was almost a high school novel.

Note I'm not trying to disparage it or you, just I'm fresh off it. I would recommend a second attempt.

>21

>Kierkegaard
>Gaddis
>Joyce
>John Williams
>Spinoza

>Wolfe
>Borges
>Dostoyevsky
>PKD
>Tolkien

(Fiction only)

Forgot

>29

Your post is embarrassing desu.

Mishima Yukio
Friedrich Nietzsche
Franz Kafka
Fyodor Dostoyevski
Thomas Mann

23

Nabokov
Pynchon
Mishima
Bely
Dostoevsky

20

HP Lovecraft
Thomas Ligotti
Junji Ito
Ryu Murakami
Tom Clancy

HP Lovecraft
Thomas Ligotti
Junji Ito
Ryu Murakami
Tom Clancy

29

If we have to do these taste threads then in the future can we at least blacklist all five of the options this guy chose? It's such a waste of time, it's as generic as saying you'd invite Jesus, Buddha, and Hitler to your ideal dinner party.

Many authors named are just as "bland". Stop trying so hard.

It's the combination of them, though. An interesting grouping of very different writers would be worth seeing, but throwing the five big ""canon"" geniuses out is worthless.

They are not the five big canon geniuses. If your education extended past Veeky Forums, you'd know that Joyce is seen much more critically. Montaigne could be replaced with Pascal, Plato with Aristotle, Tolstoi with Dostoyevski and you could still argue the same thing. Would Homer, Dante, Goethe, Proust not be equally "bland"?

I really appreciate you taking time out of your professorial schedule to school me, but you should try a bit harder to understand the reply I made to you. The combination of Homer, Dante, Goethe, Proust is dull and pointless, but to intersperse them with lesser-known or more personalised choices would make it a list worth reading. Shakespeare, as a choice, is fine but to group him with Plato or Tolstoy is not worth mentioning, everyone has seen those names juxtaposed with one another before and so we gain nothing.

Glad you are eager to learn, you seem to have moved beyond your point that it's dull because the named writers were THE five big canon geniuses.

Let me school you a little bit more: This thread has asked people to post their top 5 authors. I think such a choice is per se personalised, so a more personalised choice is a bit silly no? Also you apparently didn't understand what top 5 authors means, and assumed, wrongly, that this was a recommendation thread for lesser-known authors. It's not.

Glad i could clear that up for you.

> Raymond Carver
> Franz Kafka
> Vladimir Nabokov
> John Williams
> Steven Millhauser

24

In my original post I said the five "options", not names so I haven't changed my position. Its the option to bring those five together, not the names themselves.

>didn't understand what top 5 authors means, and assumed, wrongly, that this was a recommendation thread

You do realise that Veeky Forums is anonymous? I don't really care who any of these people's favourite writers are, I am, like most probably, looking to see interesting names being brought together, not just names that are mentioned constantly in the same breath as one another. That's what these threads are really about, aside from the silly taste tournament aspect.

>such a choice is per se personalised, so a more personalised choice is a bit silly

Not really, as giving such a combination suggests you haven't read past the big names. Its not a combination that's really personal to anyone, and so is just not really worth sharing in a thread.

>Glad i could clear that up for you

I know you're feeling a bit insecure about your own "Bloom-approved" taste, but using too much sarcasm makes you look too immature to be the professor I know you truly are.

>Nabokov
>Camus
>Lermontov
>Pushkin
>Aristophanes
19

Céline
Dostoevsky
Rimbaud
Baudrillard
Baudelaire

Pretty good

>aside from the silly taste tournament aspect.
in which you participate
>Not really, as giving such a combination suggests you haven't read past the big names.
See?

It's a silly suggestion, just in line with your generally silly generalizations. All of the writers i have written in my own list are very well known, yet i can say with assurance that i have ventured far beyond the big names that are generally discussed on Veeky Forums. It's an old argument, but the big names are big names for a reason. It's unlikely you will find a philosopher with both the explosive power and lyrical quality of Nietzsche's writing and so on.

>I know you're feeling a bit insecure about your own "Bloom-approved" taste

I'm not american, i don't care or really know about Bloom. Your instinctual assumption of there being insecurity on my side, when you are relatively on edge for people not naming enough obscure authors, is a bit telling, i think.

>Carver, Kafka, Nabokov

Nice. These 3 were very close to making it onto my own list

Nietzsche
Baudelaire
Goethe
Merimée
Sterne

>Vonnegut
>Poe
>Camus
>Faulkner
>Lovecraft

23

After 60 posts, I will make the tentative observation that Veeky Forums is collectively quite fond of Dostoyevsky and Kafka.

This does somewhat make sense, this being Veeky Forums

Yeah, Notes from the Underground is practically the 4channer's autobiography.

>in which you participate

I have absolutely no qualms about what literature people enjoy or engage with, but to share them is another thing. What is the point of offering up such a well-known list of names on a public thread? Keep it to yourself.

>the big names are big names for a reason

I enjoyed singing along with the words in this point you made, as I knew it so well. Again, enjoy whatever works you want but why share that list? We all know Plato and Shakespeare are worthwhile.

>you are relatively on edge for people not naming enough obscure authors

How am I on edge? I'm tired of seeing pointlessly familiar lists and combinations on these threads, as I'm sure a fair few other people are. Your final point can summed up as "I know you are but what am I", so I'm struggling see why you'd find it so "telling."

One of the few patricians ITT

>Kawabata
>Camus
>Hemingway
>Kafka
>Tolstoy

20

Exactly. I felt a strong connection to that when I read it, my first taste of "classic" Russian lit, when I was a teenager

Thanks
Yeah I read it when I was 17, which I assume is the best and worst time to read it, and loved it. Then I read the rest of his oeuvre a few years later and it blew me away. I just wish there was more published, because I don't plan on living to 2080 or whenever the rest of his work will be released.

>What is the point of offering up such a well-known list of names on a public thread? Keep it to yourself.
I have failed as a teacher....

Nothing to be gained in this. We simply differ in what we perceive to be the purpose of this thread and what our intentions are. You are looking for new authors, or atleast unique combinations. I'm interested to see what the people on Veeky Forums like and maybe even try to figure out what kind of person they are. I can do that with The Top Five Geniuses of the World, as well as with people who read Tolkien or Steinbeck. If you wish to avoid pointlessly familiar lists, then try to avoid these threads. There are many better ways to stumble upon interesting new authors, though for people who have ventured beyond the canon it shouldn't be an issue to seek new authors.

I'd be interested to see what you can gauge about a person who chooses The Top Five Geniuses, but let's just agree to disagree. Have a nice day.

>joyce
>dante
>melville
>homer
>machado de assis

21
Dosto
Beckett
Pynchon
Kafka
Lovecraft
21

Will probably get shit for that list.

19
Bruno Schulz
Dosto
Kafka
McCarthy
Knausgard

Marx
Engels
Lenin
Stalin
Mao

oh and im 19 btw hehe

Baudelaire
Beckett
Deleuze
Marx
Goethe

23

Bland/garbage
Clancy? What the fuck is wrong with you?
Nice
Bait but out of those only Stalin was a bad writer/thinker desu

Kafka
Hesse
Mann
Kleist
Dostoevsky

22

>Wallace
>Barth
>Faulkner
>Gaddis
>Pynchon
I realize I'm about to get bullied, but I'm not interested in knocking down a favorite to put someone I like less in there, just to impress you fags

I'd drink all night with you
26
>Bolaño
>PKD
>Nabokov
>O'Brien
>Crane

>James Patterson
>E.L. James
>Stephanie Meyers
>Dan Brown
>Danielle Steele

29

Good list. Dickens is one of the greatest of novelists - why would you get hate for including him?

In no order
>Faulkner
>Fitzgerald
>Pushkin
>Pynchon
>Updike

21

>Borges
>Dostoevsky
>Joyce
>Cortázar
>Bukowski
25

In no particular order:

>McCarthy
>Steinbeck
>Boyle
>Hemingway
>King

26

We'd get along.

>Nabokov
>Pushkin
>Pynchon
>Poe
>Fitzgerald

зa дopoвьe тoвapищ

In no particular order...

>Crichton
>King
>Lovecraft
>Howard
>Tie - Doyle or Chandler

>31

You guys probably think I'm uncultured, but oh well. Doesn't hurt my feelings any.

>i
>suck
>fat
>fucking
>cock

>Joyce
>Melville
>Faulkner
>McCarthy
>Toss up between Dostoevsky and Nabokov

>22

In no particular order:

>Solzhenitsyn
>Iain Banks
>Steinbeck
>Richard Adams
>Tolkien

>26

>Joyce
>Pinecone
>Tolkien
>Lovecraft
>Orwell
19

>McCarthy
>Calvino
>Joyce
>Steinbeck
>Borges

24

>Borges
>Bolaño
>César Vallejo
>Kafka
>Dostoievsky
19

Look at you there now; sitting there. Ya big eejit

Hesse
Calvino
Burgess
Welsh
Huxley
hiya countryman

>Joyce
>Rushdie
>Nietzsche
>Melville (purely for Moby-Dick)
>Lydia Davis