Now that I am traveling more and have more time to read, I’d like to sample some fine writing. From the outset, I’ll concede “great writing” is highly subjective. I’m not interested right now in reading works by best-selling storytellers like Stephen King, Nora Roberts, Grisham, Baldacci, but instead prefer works are beautifully written or have artful wordplay or just exhibit a great deal of artistry. I mean writers whose mastery makes people exclaim, “Wow, this is a great writer.” I’m open to old classics that are really great reads, not just because they’re on a lot of must-read lists. My apologies if I haven’t expressed myself clearly enough, but I think most of you get what I’m saying.
You have your James Joyce, Thomas Pynchon, Vladimir Nabokov, William Shakespeare…
My favorite SF writer is Ursula Le Guin. She’s not the best worldbuilder (though she’s quite good), she’s not trying to be a technological or sociopolitical seer, or any of the stuff you get from more conventional authors in the genre.
What she is, is a phenomenal writer, in the sense that every one of her sentences is just a perfectly polished gem. The ideas she’s expressing and the philosophical questions she’s exploring are interesting and provocative and compelling to be sure, but even aside from that, her work is genuinely a pleasure to read simply for the craft of it.
I recommend Catherynne M. Valente. Her stories are exactly what you describe if I take your meaning correctly.
I haven’t read all her works, but of those I have, Palimpsest and Comfort me With Apples are both beautifully written. If you prefer short stories, The Future is Blue is an excellent collection.
Charles Bukowski
James Baldwin
Shakespeare would certainly say he told stories:) Telling stories well is an essential part of great writing. Agree with Pynchon, and James Joyce, and I’ll add Toni Morrison, Gustave Flaubert (Madame Bovary), Anton Chekhov (short stories), Franz Kafka, William Faulkner, Melville, George Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, Jane Austen, Kurt Vonnegut, Flannery O’Connor, Virginia Woolf, Truman Capote, Charles Dickens, and Raymond Carver. In SF, Ray Bradbury and Gene Wolfe are known for their writing styles. I could go on, but I’ll leave it at these. Stephen King, by the way, is a highly skilled writer.
PG Wodehouse
Bradbury was the first one I thought of. I do think he overdid the whole “stylistic writing thing” just a bit on occasion, but overall, a very solid choice.
I’ll add Richard Brautigan. I reread his books every so often because they’re so incredibly distinctive in style and just flat-out quirky in pretty much every conceivable way. There are times when I desperately wish he’d had a copyeditor (or maybe a better one), and maybe there’s a “cringe moment” here and there, but on the whole, good stuff if you’re a bit adventurous.
Dave Barry
Comedy is very tough to convey in writing, one mis-step and it ain’t funny, folks. Dave is a master at funny.
That being said, his column about seeing his dying father one last time was simply beautiful.
EB White’s collected essays are masterpieces. The guy literally wrote the book on style
When I re-read Charlotte’s Web as an adult, it struck me how well-written it is.
For beautiful non-fiction prose its hard to do better than Loren Eiseley or John McPhee.
One oldie that remains a fave because of the quality of its writing and sense of wonderment, which McPhee and Eiseley also share is Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle. I think knowing the consequences of the voyage to Darwin’s ideas only makes it an even better read.
Shakespeare was a fabulous storyteller and a brilliant literary stylist. And that’s my question: Who scores high on both? Jane Austen’s opening lines in Pride and Prejudice were indeed artfully penned. I like the incusion of Faulkner, O’Connor, and Woolf. I would add Fitzgerald.
Cormac McCarthy would be a contemporary choice. Like him or not, he definitely has a distinctive writing style that’s all his own.
Agreed. Also Larry McMurtry and Nathaniel Philbrick. I’ve also read all of Kate Atkinson’s books. She has a very sly sense of humor; I highly recommend her Jackson Brodie series. Oh, and Bill Bryson for humorous non-fiction.
I see that I kinda missed the “master stylist” condition. Ah well, the above are good books, nonetheless.
The nature writer and philosopher Robert MacFarlane - try Holloway or The Old Ways
I was coming in to say that.
Here’s what Robertson Davies had to say about Wodehouse in an article in the Washington Post:
Guy Gavriel Kay, an incredibly wonderful fantasy/alternative history author. But do not start with the Fionavar trilogy. Many of his novels are set in a parallel Europe and Mediterranean civilization; for those, start with Sailing to Sarantium, then Lord of Emperors. There are others set in that world as well. He’s set two novels in an ancient China analog, starting with Under Heaven and followed as a semi sequel by River of Stars.
It’s no coincidence that he’s also published a book of poetry.
He’s not too bad himself.