I’m looking to try some new authors, can you comment on the general “tone” and style of these authors? And maybe what you like or dislike about their style?
Kurt Vonnegut
Tom Robbins
John Steinbeck
Franz Kafka
Margaret Atwood
Ernest Hemingway
Thanks All!
Vonnegut likes to beat you upside the head with a Message.
Atwood basically plays The Sims with her characters–sets up totally cardboard personalities and then presses the Go button.
Kafka is well worth reading but can be very frustrating (deliberately on his part, of course).
Hemingway is a great writer but has been copied so much that his style can sound cliched to someone reading him for the first time.
Tom Robbins is hard to describe, but that’s a good thing. He’s not quite like anybody else. Of all the authors on your list, I find Robbins to be the most consistently entertaining, with Vonnegut a close second. I’m speaking apart from literary and academic qualities, just of pure entertainment value.
I am a HUGE fan of Margaret Atwood, so I can’t claim to be unbiased when I say that she is one of the best writers of this era. Her books have a wabi-sabi simplicity to them, which makes them relatively easy to digest; but you always get the feeling that something more is lurking beneath the surface, waiting to be uncovered. She’s great at provoking thought if you recognize that many assumptions you make about her characters are your own projections; I often use her books as a jumping-off point for examining my attitudes about things like gender politics, religion, and family.
Her subjects are relatively eclectic. She has written speculative fiction, historical fiction, regular fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and a re-interpretation of the myth of Odysseus from the perspective of his wife, Penelope (which she then turned into a stage play). Anyway, the point of this is: everyone has at least ONE Atwood book that will not suit them. Do not be discouraged if the first one you pick up is not to your liking. If you don’t like Alias Grace, you might like The Robber Bride. If you don’t like The Handmaid’s Tale, you might like Cat’s Eye or The Blind Assassin. Atwood isn’t like Maeve Binchy in that all of her novels take place in the same milieu. My “unreadable Atwood” is Oryx And Crake. It scared the crap out of me, and what with the “piggies” and universal privatization and child porn, I just couldn’t go on.
Kurt Vonnegut is terrific. He’s nominally a science fiction writer, but he’s an irreverent and humorous chronicler of the foibles of human nature. You have to appreciate a certain silly sense of humor to like him. I recommend Sirens of Titan, Cats Cradle, and Slaughterhouse 5 to start out with. I think his earlier stuff was better, but I’ve read most of his stuff. If you liked those 3, move on to Mother Night, Player Piano, and Breakfast of Champions.
Tom Robbins writes absurdist humorous fiction. He’s kind of a 60’s hippy. I really liked Another Roadside Attraction and Even Cowgirls get the Blues. His later stuff was less entertaining for me, but I still read most of it.
John Steinbeck is a terrific storyteller specializing in the less fortunate characters populating the early part of the 20th century. I think Grapes of Wrath is one of the greatest novels of all time, but also one of the most depressing. Tortilla Flats and Cannery Row are entertaining studies of colorful characters living in Salinas(?) and Monterrey. Read those 3 and you’ll get a good feel for the author. I like almost everything he’s written.
Franz Kafka. I’ve only read Metamorphosis, and had to as a high school reading assignment. It’s dense and full of metaphor, but I can’t say that I found it all that entertaining. Kafkaesque is a term well suited to the surreal and strange.
Margaret Atwood. I’ve only read A Handmaiden’s Tale. This book is really good. It’s a frightening look at a future dystopia and ranks up there with 1984 and Brave New World. I should read more of her.
Ernest Hemingway is known as one of the great American authors, but his style is extremely distinctive. I’ve read quite a few of his books and short stories. Start out with the Sun Also Rises. If you like that, continue on, if not, well you may as well quit. His literary style is widely parodied, but myself and a lot of other people find it pretty compelling.
I read some Atwood while I was in Korea without much reading material. Her books aren’t really the sort of thing I generally tend to read, but what I really noticed was the way her style got into my brain and kind of imposed itself on my internal dialog. That doesn’t happen to me with too many authors, but it happened with Atwood. Maybe I ought to try her again one of these days and see if it happens again.
Skip Hemingway and read Hammett instead. He’s better. Start with Red Harvest.
If you have to read Hemingway, go for *The Sun Also Rises * and “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.” Then you should stop.