Who is Your Current Favorite Writer?

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Shortwave

Lurker
Sep 25, 2022
29
55
Title edited for uppercase letters; Rule 9.

These days I've been reading Jack McDevitt. If you're a fan of science fiction, give his work a read.
 
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anotherbob

Lifer
Mar 30, 2019
15,676
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In the semi-rural NorthEastern USA
Frankly James Joyce. And it's all about Finnegans Wake. Not only do I enjoy the way trying to read that monstrosity makes my brain feel stretched out in a both joyous and painful manner, but it also killed my pathetic attempts at experimental writing. Things have been much better on that front for me since then, though my poetry has gotten a lot worse. I should probably just go back to experimenting there while going straight with the stories.
I could also have gone with Kurt Vonnegut for the other side of the coin. That man has a way of sounding like you're just hearing an old man tell a basic simple easy to digest story while still bringing up bigger issues philosophically and sociologically. Like the dude has a way to make bigger mental meals go down without the heartburn ;)
 

Andriko

Can't Leave
Nov 8, 2021
379
939
London
I'd say John Kennedy Toole, but he only wrote the one book. Otherwise there is Plato, whom I am not more or less comprehending in Ancient Greek. Brilliant philosophy combined with wonderful humour and a very well paced read, mostly (just don't start with the Parmenides).

Also, Flan O'Brien/Myles na Gopaleen as the unsung genius of early-mid 20th Cenutry Irish writers. I've never looked at a bicycle the same way since.
 

warren99

Lifer
Aug 16, 2010
1,943
23,278
California
Frankly James Joyce. And it's all about Finnegans Wake. Not only do I enjoy the way trying to read that monstrosity makes my brain feel stretched out in a both joyous and painful manner, but it also killed my pathetic attempts at experimental writing. Things have been much better on that front for me since then, though my poetry has gotten a lot worse. I should probably just go back to experimenting there while going straight with the stories.
I could also have gone with Kurt Vonnegut for the other side of the coin. That man has a way of sounding like you're just hearing an old man tell a basic simple easy to digest story while still bringing up bigger issues philosophically and sociologically. Like the dude has a way to make bigger mental meals go down without the heartburn ;)
Finnegan’s Wake, you say? I’m impressed. Never could quite get into much beyond A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners.
 
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K.E. Powell

Can't Leave
Aug 20, 2022
493
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West Virginia
Do you mean writers currently active now, or just my favorite writer of all time? And are we talking fiction or non-fiction? Ah, too many choices!

In terms of contemporary fiction writers, it is hard to keep up, because I devote roughly a third of reading to fiction and the other two-thirds to non-fiction, which means I'm constantly playing a game of catchup when it comes to fiction. Kazuo Ishiguro is an obvious choice, but few others spring to mind. It's not because there aren't other great authors, but the immense literary output of the 21st century and my own inability to keep up makes it hard to stay up on current trends. I have been impressed by what little I have read by Jeff VanderMeer and Brian Evenson, but as I said, it has been little; I only read the first book of the former's Southern Reach trilogy.

If we're talking all-time fiction greats, Ishiguro reaches this list as well, as does Cormac McCarthy and Neil Gaiman. For essay-style non-fiction writing, Christopher Hitchens, Barbara Ehrenreich, James Baldwin, and George Orwell are tops (and the latter two's fiction is also excellent). For history, Theodore Draper, Gordon S. Wood, Jonathan Israel, and David Harvey (okay, technically an anthropologist, but it would feel remiss not including him).