Who's the greatest living author?

>>8876090
Beckett

Me, myself and what I see when I look in a mirror

B.E.E

J.M Coetzee

>>8876122
Go to bed ruggles.

>>8876090
John Lennon

although he hasn't written good shit in a while kenzaburo oe. nobel prize winner. his older material is amazing.

also another novel winner toni morrison would be contender.

both authors will still be read 100 years from now.

>>8876090
joseph mcelroy or william h gass or pynchon desu senpai

>>8876090
The LORD our God.

>>8877534

Uh, anon... Gott ist tot f / a / m.

Sam Hyde

Me, in a few years when I reveal my talent to the world I will be lauded as one of the best

>>8876121
>Beckett
Sorry to be the one bearing bad news but...

>>8877725
>Beckett
I still find it so hard the son of a bitch was alive during television and the tremendous growth of mass media and advertising in real life. 1906 to 1989. Goddamn. He was so private and removed from modern life it's heard to believe he was alive at the same time The Brady Bunch was on television.

Le Guin, duh.

>>8877495
Even Murakami (Haruki), who /lit/ shits on, is better than Oe: let's not even compare him to Kawabata or Akutagawa.

>>8876122
>>8877590
>>8877534
This.
I love how little Krasznahorkai is discussed on /lit/, and yet the word "pleb" is used so freely here.

>>8877607
Hello Sam

Vargas Llosa

>>8876090
Pynchon.
Fight me.

>>8879217
Nice taste. I like him more than GGM

>>8879213
>Numbering chapters according to the Fibonacci sequence
>Implying this isn't pure pretentiousness with no deeper meaning

>>8877754
b...b...but mu...mmu...muh LITURURY FUCKTON

>>8877495
>both authors will be read 100 years from now

Nigger people don't even read Toni Morrison now.

>>8877495
You'd have to go back nearly fifty years to find someone who actually deserved a Nobel for literature.

>>8877495
>Toni Morrison
She only wins awards because she's black and writes about muh black struggles. Her work is average at best, and she as a person is contemptuous.

>>8879192
funny that h. murakami has immense respect for oe even though murakami has a bigger readership. as I said...oe hasn't written a whole lot that's been amazing in a while. but if you his short story "prize stock (aka the catch)" or the silent cry then you know what's up.

you probably read one or two books and are acting like some know-it-all faggot saying shit you know nothing about. Kawabata deserved his win. suggesting akutagawa somehow is better than oe is a joke. akutagawa is an amazing writer, but your perspective is all jacked by idiocy.

>>8879294
she wins awards because she's a great writer. she's like a black flannery O'Connor in regards to a southern temperament with the tone of Dostoevsky's harsher characters.

I keep forgetting that most of you are either high school dickbeaters or early 20-something college knowitalls.

>>8879291
>You'd have to go back nearly fifty years to find someone who actually deserved a Nobel for literature.

to find someone accessible enough for the teenage and western idiots on 4chan maybe you're right.

>>8879233
GGM is shit
John Green tier

>>8880671
I would like him if his stuff wasn't so dry and overdone, anon. I've read Nip the Buds, The Silent Cry, and A Personal Matter and they were pretty dry, even for Japanese literature; his themes, on a fundamental level, are pretty run-of-the-mill for the most part (especially if you've read Latin American lit). But I guess that you do seem like the type of person that likes stuff that deals with the everyday lives of x group of people in y culture in a "raw, real" manner.

Are you obsessed with Oe or something? You get so defensive. Why is he better than Akutagawa?

>>8880997
oe is in my top three Japanese writers and I think writes about what it means to be human in a way that transcends Japanese culture more than the others thus he's my pick.

personally soseki is my hands down favorite Japanese author.

nip the buds was pretty cool. a solid book (even praised by mishima) and a personal matter is interesting in that it's a guy who is that process of discarding what he begins to consider "youthful fantasy" for what he gains through the book as a more mature reality. that is a pretty timeless and more mature process that your run of the mill coming of age book.

I'm kind of shocked you read the silent cry and have to ask why I think he's better than akutagawa. akutagawa is almost kafka-like in some stories but he's very inconsistent (as with oe) and although stories like roshomon are powerful statements about truth and it getting entangled in imperfect human interaction...the writing isn't nowhere near as carefully crafted. he's a great writer no doubt. but the message in silent cry (especially when you consider mishima's life) felt like it was a contemporary form of don Quixote if Quixote were violent and were interested in revolution instead of chivalry. I thought it was delivered in an extremely powerful way and it was no surprise that it was the book that probably catapulted him in the nobel spotlight. that message has been delivered but no in a literary tone as strong as oe's imo (see Herzog's Aguirre for a great film example).

pinchrunner, rouse up, the changeling...I could go on with boring books written by oe. but his best books are why he's always an important figurehead in the world of Japanese literature over there. I've read all of his books except death by water. I've also read everything by akutagawa available in English and almost everything by Kawabata available in English.

to discard oe for h. murakami (who I really enjoy too) is as ignorant as arguing the relevancy of huck finn to American literature. it's dense.

David Sedaris

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Not bragging but

>>8880677

Toni Morrison is just not a good writer.

>>8881710
Yeah she's just recommended reading by writing professors, won numerous awards including a nobel for literature, is read by many outside of this forum...yet somehow I should take your opinion seriously. Hmm let me think about it.

>>8881776
>won numerous awards including a nobel for literature
The Nobel is a political award. Toni won it because she a black, leftist, female writer.
Likewise, none of what your saying actually points to how Toni's a good writer, only that other people have said so.

If DFW hadn't offed himself and released the full version (and well received) version of The Pale King, would he be right now?

>>8881815
Writing becomes objectively good when enough important people say it's subjectively good.

>>8881823
You're a funny guy.

>>8881819
no

>>8881837
Haha yeah but prove me wrong though

james ellroy

>>8881823

Would Harry Potter suddenly become good if professors praised it?

Also many professors are fucking hacks, being a professor is not indicative of having good judgment.

And especially when it comes to this kind of writer in this kind of cultural context.

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>>8876090
I'm gonna get shat on

>>8881964
I would say that proportionally we have more hacks on /lit/ than in college classrooms. You'd see that if your head wasn't up your ass.