Who had the best prose style of all time? I nominate this man,

Does haiku post count?
Jettison'd wisdom upon
This brink of ever.

Samuel Johnson

>>9381168
Joyce with Ulysses

>>9381168
Chihuahua looking nigga

>>9381168
Browne for the English tongue indeed.

La Bruyère or Retz for French.

>>9381219
Wow. STB and the Cardinal. Every once in a while /lit/ surprises. In a good way.

I'll choose Hazlitt for the English, the Duc de St. Simon for the French.

Vladimir Nabokov. English wasn't even his first language and dude still had lovely prose.

>>9381168
Too bad he was a wackjob who believed in witches

>>9381333
I still feel Retz has a better prose than Saint-Simon though. Saint-Simon "écrivait à la diable pour l'éternité" ; here and there, Saint-Simon does sleep.

>>9381168
Cervantes with Don Quixote.

>>9381481
That's fair, but it's also Versailles. The Cardinal's memoirs do move, by contrast. Ever read Fenelon? In English, Fuller's Worthies or Robert Burton? The Anatomy also tends to fall asleep, but parts of it are just wonderful. Some English sermonizers have wonderful styles-- Donne (of course) but Andrewes and especially Jeremy Taylor. In American English I love the way Richard Henry Dana presents Two Years Before the Mast.

>>9381580
>Ever read Fenelon?
Only his dialogues, his famous letter, and some things here and there. His French is rigid, his sentence often too large for his idea. He lived and wrote beyond his intellectual means.

As to religious questions discussed by Fénelon, every minute spent reading this, is a minute not spent reading Bossuet.


>In English, Fuller's Worthies or Robert Burton
No, should I?

>Some English sermonizers have wonderful styles-- Donne (of course) but Andrewes and especially Jeremy Taylor.
I've only read Donne. If I were to read one of the two, which one should I pick?

>>9381370
Did it ever occur to you how all these absolutely brilliant genius poly maths had esoteric beliefs and you call them brlliant BUT also had whack job beliefs. Maybe you're the whack job for not understanding.

>>9381636
T.S. Eliot liked the former, I the latter-- but I'm a softer stylist. Here's what I'll recommend-- DeQuincey's short piece The English Mail Coach, John Aubrey's quaint Brief Lives, and Izaak Walton's (4) Lives.

someone from the american southeast
and definitely not thomas wolfe
tonight i'm feeling faulkner

Pynchon, unironically.

>>9381168
tell me a little about browne. his subject matters and world views.

>>9382328
you can read religio medici in 2 hours, its free online

Stinky stinky

>>9381343
>English wasn't his first language

Untrue. He learned English concurrently while growing up. He wrote Lolita in English before translating it back into Russian. Nabokov is chiefly an American author.

A better example of an author who spoke English as a second language would be Joseph Conrad. He was an adult by the time he learned English.