Authors to investigate (further)

[Henk]

EDIT:

Mann
Dostojevski
Tolstoj
Mulisch
Vesaas
Soderberg
Gombrowicz
Kadare
Somerset Maugham
Alejo Carpentier
Vargos Llosa
Joao Guimaraes Rosa
Jose Lezema Lima
Roberto Bolano
Tsjechov
Philip Roth
Alfred Doblin
Flaubert
Balzac
Sterne
Rabelais
Musil
Stendhal
Cervantes
Broch
Laxness
Marai
Kertesz
Kundera
Scott
Joyce
Kafka
Diderot
Fielding
Ibsen
Zola
de Laclos
Svevo
Voltaire
Gogol
Goethe
Fuentes
Garcia Marquez
Rusdhie
Borges
McEwan
Nooteboom
Richard Powers
Boccaccio
Lermontov
Gontsjarow
Turgenev
Gogol
Biely
Mishima
Cortázar
Juan Carlos Onetti
Hugo Claus
Strindberg
Hemingway
Gide
Faulkner
Burgess
Pynchon
Canetti
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
Giorgio Bassani
F. de Roberto
Tobias Wolff
Fielding
Defoe
Joseph Conrad
Thomas Hardy
Hawthorne
Melville
Pascal Mercier
Heinrich von Kleist
John Milton
Shakespeare
Dante
Henry James
Jaroslaw Hasek
Naguib Mahfouz
Patrick Süskind
Marcel Pagnol
Camus
Sartre

Poetics:
Séféris
Baudelaire
Keats

Nice list imo. 

[Brian]

Dostojevski
Tolstoj
Garcia Marquez

The best there've ever been.

Diderot
Diderot

(you listed Denis twice   )

Stephen Wright

A stand-up comedian? Interesting.
EDIT: I'm sorry, didn't realize there was also a novelist of this name.

Tobias Wolff

A writer of excellent, brilliantly crafted, but very depressing short stories. Generally about the moments in people's lives in which they realize they have lost something (and I don't mean car keys!).

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Joao Guimaraes Rosa
Joyce
Biely
Strindberg
Baudelaire
Canetti

These are among my essential writers. Though I have great love for and/or interest in Lezama Lima, Gadda, Kafka, Gogol, Döblin, Musil, Ibsen, Goethe, Rimbaud and Pynchon.

[Henk]

These are among my essential writers. Though I have great love for and/or interest in Lezama Lima, Gadda, Kafka, Gogol, Döblin, Musil, Ibsen, Goethe, Rimbaud and Pynchon.

So all your favourite writers are in my list? Or are there that aren't?

[Henk]

The idea of this list is, as I did with my classical music list, to have an overview, so I can choose better which author to read, and to use it as a checklist (when I read particular books of the authors). Works very well for me.

[Scarpia]

No Conrad, Hardy, Hawthorne, or Melville?

Lord Jim, Return of the Native, House of the Seven Gables, Redburn.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

I've sometimes thought about investigating the "no-name Nobelists" as I've called them (authors who won the Nobel but have sunk into obscurity or remain unknown outside their native countries). Figures like Karlfeldt, Eucken, Martinson, Gjellerup, Spitteler, Pontoppidan, Sillanpää, Jimenez, etc. etc.

For some reason, the Swedish Academy saw fit to award them the prize while overlooking Tolstoy, Chekhov, Ibsen, Strindberg, Joyce, Nabokov, Borges, and so on. 

[Brünnhilde ewig]

Thomas Bernard
Elfriede Jelinek

Two Austrians well worth learning about, after all Elfriede got the Nobel in the literature category!
And Bernard has been mentioned in the list of possibles for a Nobel!

What happened to all the German writers? 

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

Thomas Bernard
Elfriede Jelinek

Two Austrians well worth learning about, after all Elfriede got the Nobel in the literature category!
And Bernard has been mentioned in the list of possibles for a Nobel!

I love Bernhard, but I get the impression that he wrote the same book over and over again. Unfortunately, he's no longer a "possible" for a Nobel, since he died in 1989. In any case he was too cynical for the Nobel committee.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

So all your favourite writers are in my list? Or are there that aren't?

There are a few missing - Heinrich von Kleist (whose novellas have recently been newly translated into Dutch, btw), Arno Schmidt, Gottfried Benn, John Milton, William Shakespeare, Henry James, J.R.R. Tolkien, Frank Herbert, Thomas Ligotti, and there most be some others I am forgetting...

[bwv 1080]

William T Vollmann
WG Sebald
Cormac McCarthy
Italo Calvino
Philip K Dick
Stanislaw Lem

[Brian]

William Shakespeare

Oh, that guy again ...  




(  )

[Harpo]

Quite a comprehensive list! Does this mean you have read them, haven't read them, or both? I have read approximately 15, maybe a couple more in my college French classes. I don't think I will live long enough to go through this list, assuming I want to take on the task.   
Were you talking about StrinDberg?

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Oh, that guy again ...  




(  )

Yes, I thought I'd slip him in...   

[Ten thumbs]

Have you anything specific against Dickens, the Brontë sisters and Arnold Bennett?

[CD]

I have a similar list, mostly 20th century writers. I'll post it here if I can ever be arsed to do it.

There are a few missing - Heinrich von Kleist (whose novellas have recently been newly translated into Dutch, btw)

Funnily enough I've been waiting for a volume of Kleist stories I ordered for the past week or so. I became intrigued after reading a blurb at the end of my copy of Berlin Alexanderplatz that called Kleist "a forerunner of Kafka". Interesting!

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

I have a similar list, mostly 20th century writers. I'll post it here if I can ever be arsed to do it.

Funnily enough I've been waiting for a volume of Kleist stories I ordered for the past week or so. I became intrigued after reading a blurb at the end of my copy of Berlin Alexanderplatz that called Kleist "a forerunner of Kafka". Interesting!

Kleist is hardly a forerunner of Kafka, but Kafka more of a successor! Kafka liked Kleist's immaculate and impassive prose style, and also his themes. Look out for, especially, Michael Kohlhaas. If you read that, you'll know why Kleist is one of the all-time greats. His plays, too, are wonderful, though too extreme for Goethe... My favourites - Penthesilea and The Prince of Homburg.

[CD]

Thanks, Johan!

[Harpo]

I have a similar list, mostly 20th century writers. I'll post it here if I can ever be arsed to do it.

I'd like to see more 20th century and more American writers. I was thinking of some American dramatists: Arthur Miller, August Wilson, Sam Shepard, David Mamet. I'll think of more later.

[CD]

I'd like to see more 20th century and more American writers. I was thinking of some American dramatists: Arthur Miller, August Wilson, Sam Shepard, David Mamet. I'll think of more later.

I think my list would disappoint you, Harpo.