Have there been any great novelists or poets who were originally

>>9770856
King meme himself, OP.

>>9770856
Vonnegut worked in a machine shop
Faulkner worked at a plant
McCarthy was a mechanic
Pynchon I think was an engineer for the Navy or some shit

Gene Wolfe invented the Pringles can or something.

Sabato
Asimov

>>9770856
Dostoyevsky, Pynchon, and Saunders, to start. Wittgenstein comes to mind first among philosophers and I'm sure there's just a ton of those.

JG Ballard and Primo Levy come immediately to mind, but that's kind of arbitrary. Could probably find some others. I think Celine was a doctor. Wasn't Chekhov also a doctor or am I wrong about that? The Academy supposedly had a sign outside of it that said that no one could enter who didn't know geometry.

I'd bet that there are a lot more writers who were M than STE because M requires a certain amount of interaction with other human beings/thinking about what makes human beings healthy or frail.

>>9770892
>Faulkner worked at a plant
Didn't he barely manage a job at a post office, because he just drank and read all day? Not sure this really qualifies him for any sort of STEM credential.

>>9770902
Wait, I'm stupid, the M in STEM stands for "mathematics" and not for "medicine."

William Carlos Williams was a pediatric surgeon.

>>9770900
i haven't read dostoyevsky in the original russian but his translated prose reads like an autistic STEM major, so you're right. but "great novelist?" naw he's a novel novelist at best

>>9770897
Now I know who to hate when I can't get to the bottom half of the goddamn pringles without spilling a bunch of crumbs all over my shit

>>9770913
Fuck you. Dosto is the absolute model of a great novelist

>>9770892
What does being a mechanic or plant worker have anything to do with STEM? Also wasn't Pynchon a STEM drop out?
>>9770900
Like I said I think Pynch was a STEM dropout and Saunders isn't the kind of writer I'm considering. Dosto counts
>>9770898
Ok we'll accept these I guess. But I did say "great"

>>9770909
not a surgeon but a pediatrician. Probably the best artist mentioned so far though

>>9770913
I'm also right because he studied engineering and attended a technical school.

That's a little trick we learn in STEMS - you can tell you were right if you gave a fact that was accurate.

Also, Goethe wrote a technical book on botany Thomas Mann went to TUM as the culmination of an early education in technical-oriented schools, although he apparently studied journalism in Munich.

>>9770972
It's kinda like well-rounded minds in the past were meant to know many different things instead of autistically focusing on one.

>>9770984
If you're commenting that it's unfair to go so far back, I agree with you, actually.

If this is a dig, I want to point out that it's hard to accuse someone of being a single-minded STEM autist on a forum devoted to literature.

Also I just noticed there should obviously be an "and" before Thomas Mann in the last line, apologies for the typo.

>>9770924
Hey there, Mr. Jeff Mangum Died For Your Sins. You're an old /mu/ veteran, aren't you? And I didn't even learn this from your name. What are your favorite novelists? Did NMH's lyrics influence your literary tastes any?

>>9770913
>naw he's a novel novelist at best
Wew lad

>>9770925
>Ok we'll accept these I guess. But I did say "great"
???
how are they not great?

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>>9771000
I did mean it as a dig, but not at you. More at how education works in the Anglo world these days. Though you might want to look into what constitutes "accuracy" and if scientific knowledge tells us anything about the world itself or if it just tells us more about science.

>>9771003
Dostoevsky, Nabokov, Bolaño, Huysmans, Proust, Houellebecq. And no, not really. My love for NMH is mostly sentimental and nostalgic at this point. I associate it with everything that happened to me in my teens.

>>9770856
Sorry m8, you can't be a great writer if you go for engineering expecting job security and do lit as a hobby. Commit to your dreams, don't be a pleb.

>>9771058
Stop reading Proust and read Musil (who is the final boss of STEMfag-turned-literati)

>>9770856
Lots of science-fiction authors were STEMfaggots, some of them are even quite good. Gene Wolfe, Rafael Lafferty and Isaac Asimov immediately come to mind.

>>9770897
>>9770923
He didn't do the can, his input was the machine that cooks the chips. The objectively best part of the pringles experience is how they taste, that's Wolfe's genius at work.

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>>9770856
idk

>>9770856
>>9771251
please stop using this kind of pics, this is /lit

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>>9771253
Even in a shitty, throw away thread like this?

>>9770856
Dostoyevsky, Pascal, Asimov, Plato and many more. Stupid question.

i gotta big stem right here buddy for ya

>>9770856
Stephen Hillenburg, marine biologist and creator of motherfuckin spongebob

Max Frisch was an architect.

>>9771263
pascal and plato aren't poets or novelists. stupid reply

>>9770856
Raymond Queneau, H.G. Wells, C.P. Snow. With them, it did influence their writings.

Stirner was a classically-trained pianist

>>9770856
Who is this god mess

>>9770903
You're thinking of Bukowski

>>9770972
Goethe also wrote a work on optics I recall.
>>9771087
kek
>English major spotted

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>>9770902
>I'd bet that there are a lot more writers who were M than STE because M requires a certain amount of interaction with other human beings/thinking about what makes human beings healthy or frail.
>>9770906
>Wait, I'm stupid, the M in STEM stands for "mathematics" and not for "medicine."
The former is still correct, but not for the reasons you mentioned. Depending on the problem at hand, it often takes more computational complexity to solve a problem than to validate the solution. That is why a brainlet like you are still able to enjoy the genius of others.

>>9771255
For some reason the cross makes it much better.

Micheal crichton was a doctor but he hated how people wpuldn't take responsibility for their own health

>>9770856
Peter Thiel cofounded PayPal before writing Zero to One

Bulgakov was a doctor

Holy fucking shit, I can't believe only one person so far cited Pascal, one of the greatest mathematicians and french writers of all times.

>>9772991
Why would anyone cite someone that's already been mentioned?

Are you stupid?

>>9773022
It took several answers until someone wrote his name and it wasn't even the focus but in a group of other lesser names, you fucking piece of shit.

>>9772991
>One of the greatest mathematicians
Top kek!
>and french writers of all times.
And what does that tell you about the French?
Pascal is often contradicting himself.

>>9773181
Pascal almost invented the calculus alone, I think Leibniz alluded to that. Pascal was also forbidden to study mathematics during his childhood, but he loved it, so what did he do? He started recreating the entire geometry with almost no knowledge of mathematics and never reading Euclid, then his father saw all that and decided to let him study mathematics. Pascal was among the greatests, no doubt.

In Literature, his prose was beautiful and his books became classics. French literature is one of the best or are you trying to say that Hugo, Balzac, Stendhal, Proust, Baudelaire etc were shit?

>>9770931
Keats went STEM, a licensed apothecary training to be a surgeon.

>>9770856
Chekhov and Céline were doctors.

>>9773219
balzac is a second-rate dickens

>>9774311
Nigga what. It is the other way around

>>9771174
Musil doesn't get mentioned here very often, but I'm currently reading the man without qualities and it is great.

>>9772134
Philosophy is poetry, brainlet.

>>9770897
He also ran an engineering journal

>>9774382
philosophers can be poets but philosophy isn't poetry. Stop reading Rorty or Nietzsche or whomever you're stealing from

>>9772848
It really does.

>>9773219
He contributed to physics too.

>>9772619
Some Colombian model who lured two guys into a kidnapping

Wallace Stevens was an actuary.
David Foster Wallace did his an undergrad thesis in mathematical logic.

Don't know of any, but Edwin Hubble was originally a lawyer and just became an astronomer when his father died.

>>9770856
Chekhov was an actual working medical doctor while writing. I didn't fully understand it until one day when I was in an ER, and there is so much emotion and intensity working in an ER, it's really /lit/

Nicanor Parra studied Physics and became specialized in relativity and Indeterminism.