sum1

You need a place to move to.

a new hope

PhoenixRising

Well... I may already have that. Moving is the tough part.

a new hope

sum1

Don't throw out too many things.

a new hope

sum1

Some thoughts on older American literature:

Ernest Hemingway was a fraud. William Faulkner accused him of writing in a cowardly way and I agree. Hemingway hadn't the guts to face up to a real emotion. He was a poser. Faulkner was a far superior writer.

Henry James was a poser and a lightweight, the most overrated novelist of all time. He was great with dialogue, but wouldn't have known a deep emotion if it came up and punched him in the face. He was plenty enthusiastic about describing people's feelings, but actually putting strong feeling into his books was beyond him.

Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables is probably the best American novel of the 19th century. Real resonance.

Billy Budd is vastly inferior to Melville's other famous book, Moby Dick. Moby Dick had substance, Billy Budd had woffle. I know Billy Budd was posthumous and all, but it really needed a editor.

Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is powerful stuff.

F Scott Fitzgerald is fun, but has more depth than is at first apparent.

In her short life, Flannery O'Connor managed more literary quality than most writers manage in a full lifetime.

Poe was the greatest American writer of the 19th century. Clark Ashton Smith ranks as the greatest of the 20th. The fact that the latter view would be greeted with incredulity and derision by the critical consensus just goes to show how low the standard of criticism really is, not to mention how stupid the reading public is. Smith is passed off as popular fiction, but his writing was peculiar and esoteric and anything but aimed at the popular taste. Dickens and Tolstoy are more "popular" in that sense than Smith. Smith was also never all that popular in the other sense, because not enough people appreciated him. Hence the conclusion that the reading public is stupid. Smith did things with imagination and emotion that most writers could never dream of, and he powerfully challenges the reader's complacent confidence in the nature of reality as we know it.

a new hope

I love Poe

PhoenixRising

Well, I thought The Turn of the Screw was good, sum1. But I'm usually a fan of one or two of a writer's work. I rarely like the entire canon.

I kind of agree with you on Hemingway, although I did like The Sun Also Rises. I loved Hawthorne's The Scarlett Letter. Oh, and totally agree with you on Moby Dick.

No thoughts on the Bronte sisters?

I liked Poe as well. How about H.P. Lovecraft?

a new hope

Love

sum1

I found the Turn of the Screw very disappointing.

I was discussing American literature. Surely you don't plan to claim them for America? I like the Bronte sisters, most notably Wuthering Heights. Their father was Irish and their mother Cornish.

Lovecraft is great, though not as great as his friend Clark Ashton Smith.

a new hope

sum1

James Baldwin is another great American writer. He was a gay black writer, which is not an easy position in society.

Bernard Malamud is great. Pensive chap.

William Faulkner was an amazing writer. I dare anybody to read this story and not be impressed:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Barn_Burning

PhoenixRising

Oh, right. I forgot you specified American literature.

Did Clark Ashton Smith expand on the Cthulhu mythos, or was that someone else?


Hi, Tar! Hope you had a good weekend.

a new hope

It was good yeah!