Greatest living author today?
contemporarywriters.com/auth … 1712634910
The best two that I know about. Mitchell more than Houellebecq is an influence on my own work, but Houellebecq is the more emotive writer. He’s like Sartre with a sense of humour.
thanks for posting this. I’m most def be checking them out.
Has anybody read A Confederacy of Dunces? IF so, Can you tell me if it’s any good?
Knowing your disposition and writing style, I’d predict that you’ll prefer Houllebecq to Mitchell. He firmly sits in the French existentialist tradition (the literary one, rather than the philosophical one), whereas Mitchell sits in the British utopian/dystopian tradition. Mitchell is like Aldous Huxley but with a sense of humour.
awesome, cant wait to check em out. It’s so hard to find good fiction these days, but once you do, it makes the search so worth while.
I really, really, REALLY wouldn’t call Chuck Palahniuk the greatest living author…
He’s good, and his voice is definitely interesting at first… but I don’t think there’s all that much to his work once you get passed his sarcastic neurotic insecure-homosexual bitter shit-talking negativity.
After awhile it loses its charm and just gets annoying.
I think his view of the world is too narrow to be considered a great writer.
I’ve enjoyed his work, but I know I’m just as good as he is myself, so he definitely isn’t the greatest living writer.
You’ve hit on something there hatter.
I’ve read Choke and Fight Club, and browsed some of his other titles. I came to the conclusion that he’s a bourgeois neurotic. The man basically writes books about checking out of society while he is deeply wrapped up in a major industry. That’s the bourgeois part, while the neurotic part is his tough guy image. He has the unmanly job of writing and making up stories and I’m sure he feels it.
He doesn’t strike me as genuine.
I’ve never wanted to say anything negative about this guy, because I’ve enjoyed his work so much, I must be neurotic myself, but to be fair I heard him talking in an interview once, gloating about how fight club enhanced his bank account. The book was critical of the consumer culture, and yet he seems, well, contradictory.
Then I think of how often I contradict myself, and think give the guy an honest break, he tells really interesting tales.
I got some enjoyment from the books mentioned.
What you said means a lot to me though. His books are comments on life that he only sort of believes, or what? How does he justify that.
I feel like I’m getting tricked when I read such stuff. He’s not getting any more cash from me.