Who makes the best literature?

[Guest Ringy Loves TGChit]

Just wondering what EWB thinks.

Discuss

[NobBe Nobbs]

Shakespeare.

Topic over.

[ROC]

America. >_>

But seriously, Ray Bradbury, Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost, Edgar Allan Poe...the list goes on.

Edited October 6, 2006 by RCOC

[Rashid]

Akira Toriyama.

He owns all.

[Mr. X]

I say William Faulkner.

[ONO]

JK Rowling.

>_>

[Steeb]

Shakespeare.

Topic over.

[Quom]

For a single piece of work by someone under twenty Miles Franklin's 'My Brilliant Career' > *

As for nations France has pumped out a couple of goodies.

[NobBe Nobbs]

Shakespeare.

Topic over.

lololol.

[Guest Ringy Loves TGChit]

As for nations France has pumped out a couple of goodies.

[NobBe Nobbs]

I don't know about the Flaubert hate, and definitely disagree with the Hugo hate (sadly, liking Les Miserables puts me in the same category as Javert for something. It makes me feel dirty) but I do agree that Camus has to be mentioned at least once. Also - something TEOL will undoubtedly agree with me on - Dostoyevsky has to be a contender, if not for Crime and Punishment then definitely for the Brothers Karamazov. Also, Solzhenitsyn's One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich is a masterpiece, and I rank it as my third favourite book of all time (behind Orwell's 1984 and Macbeth.)

[Fitzy]

John Steinbeck deserves a mention.

[Guest Ringy Loves TGChit]

The thing with Hugo, is that having read his works in English, they're fun, but in original French, they're completely horrible. He uses long never ending sentences and makes me want to stab myself. I'll agree with Doestoevsky though. But I love Idiot and Notes from the Underground more than the Karamazovs. And as much as I like "One Day In the Life of Ivan Denisovich", I still say Bulgakov's "The Master and Marguerita" is the best Russian book I've ever read. It's just so fucking cool.

[Ananas]

The Americans win for Steinbeck and Kerouac, although I don't know why the people who wanted to fag out on Brit writers didn't mention Orwell. Oh, and Hugo is great. Even if I only read the English translation. >_>

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

I will only mention writers whose books I've read.

Hard to say.

Britain has the classics but also has Huxley, More and Orwell as well as men like Chaucer.

America has Don DeLillo.

Germany has Franz Kafka.

Russia has Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.

Greece has Homer and Plato.

My favourite author is Haruki Murakami cos his way with words, description and the bizarre and beautiful is beyond anything else I have written.

Overall it HAS to go to Britain and that's without looking at the playwrites like Shakespeare and Ben Jonson.

Though my favourite novel of all time is probably either Huxley's "Brave New World" or Murakami's "Hard Boiled Wonderland And The End Of The World".

[Quom]

I like me some Balzac.

[NobBe Nobbs]

I like me some Balzac.

[TEOL]

Sartre is god.

That is all.

[Skummy]

No mention of Oscar Wilde makes Skummy a sad little dandy. Grouped in with Brendan Behan, and it makes Ireland pretty damn great in the whole literary ass-kicking stakes.

Poe was damn good, though.

Neil Gaiman is the greatest contemporary fantasy writer in the world. Bar none.

Hunter S. Thompson is the greatest journalist/non-fiction writer that ever lived, followed at quite some distance by Jack Kerouac.

The classics like Orwell and Huxley can't go un-noticed, though. Other than Shakespeare (who I'm excluding as his work doesn't come across well purely as literature, as he was a playwrite, after all), I can't think of any one fiction writer who's had more of their ideas and concepts so intrinsically tied into the world's conscience that they don't even think about it any more.

[DMN in the House]

America and Mark Twain for the win.

Britain is a close, close second.