Name a better American author

Based

Melville was the Dante of America and Faulkner the Shakespeare

Wrong

Start with something shorter like Bartelby, Billy Budd, Typee, etc.

Burroughs is better

No, you really just need to start reading and stop swooping dudes on here left and right faggot.

What's your favorite passage of Faulkner?

>That was when I learned that words are no good; that words don't ever fit even what they are trying to say at. When he was born I knew that motherhood was invented by someone who had to have a word for it because the ones that had the children didn't care whether there was a word for it or not. I knew that fear was invented by someone that had never had the fear; pride, who never had the pride.
>He had a word, too. Love, he called it. But I had been used to words for a long time. I knew that that word was like the others: just a shape to fill a lack; that when the right time came, you wouldn't need a word for that any more than for pride or fear....One day I was talking to Cora. She prayed for me because she believed I was blind to sin, wanting me to kneel and pray too, because people to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.

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probably the most common one you'll see posted but it's pre good so

>...I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire...I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all of your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.

This is such Girl, Interruped tier bullshit

I've only read As I Lay Dying but I really like the moment when Jewel arrives home on his horse for the first time. It's just the passage itself but also everything that led up to it.

>LeGuin
>Dos Passos
>better than William Faulkner

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*It's not just the passage itself

>Le Guin

Confirmed non reader

>Le Guin
>not part of the Western Canon
My pleb sirens are blaring.

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You silly billy

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he looks like an evil version of my grandpa wtf

nobody claimed otherwise. she's still not better than faulkner. I doubt you've read him.

>Cheever
>Updike
Snivelling gay Brooklynite detected

I doubt you've read a word of either, and I'm from Chicago.

cheever wrote many good short stories. updike is a mediocre novelist. both absolutely inferior to based Faulkner.

Updike's just one of the many great 20th century writers who have gone out of fashion (Bellow is another), but he's certainly not mediocre. Reading his collections of literary criticism deepened my appreciation for him. Easily one of the best American critics.

A CHALLENGER APPEARS!!

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Melville couldn't ever have mastered the short story like Faulkner did.

Obvious bait.

Henry James is a close second.

Bartleby is better than any of Faulkner's short stories.

>golden bowl
>ambassadors
>wings of the dove
>turn of the screw
>portrait of a lady
>beast in the jungle

Yeah, I'm thinking Henry James beats out Faulkner. If we're including poetry, then Wallace Stevens is up there.

You are so fucking wrong, it's pathetic. Read Uncle Willy, Dry September, The Tall Men, and the Centaur in Brass. And also eat shit.

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Hemingway.

this but unironically

I take it you're from the South and this is more about regional pride for you.

Not American.

ITT: people not thinking based Faulkner is the American GOAT

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dashielle hammett
unironical answer

Joyce, Proust, Milton, The Founding Fathers, Thoreau, Emerson, Poe, etc. Nice try user

don't like people who write long books
don't really want to read anything longer than 300 pages

Coates, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Cornel West, Alice Walker, Junot Diaz, Langston Hughes, WEB Dubois, Barack Obama, MLK, Malcolm X, Richard Wright (Uncle Tom though), Booker T Washington (Uncle Tom), and Ralph Ellison. You can't ignore the writings of the true builders of America. If you do that you are ignorant and naive. Who cares what some rich white men have to say in 2019? Jeez this board makes me sick

BURROUGHS

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>Joyce, Proust, Milton
>Americans
Nice try baitfag.
2/10 bait

>Joyce
>Proust
>Milton
uhh

Mark Twain desu

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He wasn't even the best of the Beats

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lol who was then?

he wasnt even a beat

Prose
>Melville
>Hathorne
>Hemingway
>James
>Kerouac
>Vonnegut
>Fitzgerald
>Pynchon
>DFW
>Dreiser
>Twain
>Wolfe
>Steinbeck

>Melville
Yes. The greatest American writer bar none.
>Hathorne
No.
>Hemingway
Absolutely not.
>James
No.
>Kerouac
Inferior in every way. A total meme.
>Vonnegut
Pfff
>Fitzgerald
Good, but still not quite superior.
>Pynchon
See above.
>DFW
No.
>Dreiser
No.
>Twain
Also great.
>Wolfe
No.
>Steinbeck

>Steinbeck
Same as Fitzgerald and Pynchon.

Kerouac
how was he not? he was best buds with Kerouac and Ginsburg and co-wrote shit with both of them
I can't imagine how anyone could think Vonnegut was a better writer than Faulkner on any level. Which Wolfe are you talking about. though?

>Wolfe
Gene Wolfe I suppose. The walrus-looking meme.

Thomas Wolfe

Hey63.

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Kerouac is shit. Burroughs was the only beat worth anything.

>people hating on Kerouac

One of the greatest writers coming out of the US and people hate on him because of hippies and orgies.

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>[Kerouac's] of the greatest writers coming out of the US
This is why the world mocks you.

Ew, fuck no. I hate the the South and I hate Southerners.
>m-muh rolltide

2/10 bait. Shows your ignorance whitey

lmfao too bad you’re an irredeemable philistine, must suck
better luck next incarnation

Not even white, sweatie. Try again. All of them are inferior to Faulkner.

Whitman and Plath are two of the most philistine "poets" ever published

lmfao do you hear an avalanche when you turn your head

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excited for my copies of sound and the fury, light in august and as I lay dying to arrive, been meaning to read him for a while

Fpbp

I really never understood the appeal of Bartleby. People tout it as a great short story, but I don't see it.

I'm sorry for you - you know, for being such a pleb and having such shit taste. Steinbeck and Pynchon tower over Faulkner like he was an ant.

this, without a hint of irony.

Shame he's more often consigned to the 'regional author' designation like Stegner and Percy when he was as good as every 20th century American, and better than most.

Not really.

>Steinbeck
Now here's one that should be reduced to regional writer.

Steinbeck is a writer's writer. You find no fat in his prose, no extra words more than those needed to convey what he wants.

His prose may seem without artificies, but the elegance and strenght of his stories and characters are undeniable. The man was a great writer.

bump

>Le Guin
I like you.

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"William Faulkner is the first novelist of our time." - Jorge Luis Borges

Steinbeck

Judith Butler

Chapter 5 of Absalom Absalom!

I cannot fucking stand posts like this. Just naming as many famous authors as you can. Fitzgerald cannot even compete with Faulkner, Dickinson and Frost are trash and everyone knows it but the school system convinces people they're good because they're easy to teach and talk about. McCarthy, London, and Nabakov are all good, they all have exceptional novels, but Faulkner trumps them all. None of them rival the consistently impressive prose of Faulkner in every single one of his novels. I still remember reading the first page of A Fable and being absolutely blown away by the writing. It is patrician as fuck. People talk about the first page of Lolita being art but it is laced with cringe. A lot of people will be like "that's the point" but Faulkner had higher ideals. Faulkner's novels are what all novels should strive to be.

please no, corn father

>I cannot fucking stand posts like this. Just naming as many famous authors as you can.
Lmao?? Not at all. You really think I can’t name more? If I were a pseud I could even just google “American authors” and make a tower of a list. I named less than ten people. You’re just a triggered fan boy.
>McCarthy, London, and Nabakov are all good, they all have exceptional novels, but Faulkner trumps them all
Hilarious

>conjecture, projection and seething

>McCarthy, London, and Nabakov are all good, they all have exceptional novels, but Faulkner trumps them all.
This. Someone who has truly delved into Faulkner can see he's the superior writer. He's the true heir of Shakespeare in our times.

I really can't.

I like him but he basically wrote the same thing over and over. The diversity of structure, style, and mood in Faulker's writing is one of his best points.

this thread's been on since fucking sunday, just let it die already. faulkner is the burger goat, not even memeing.

>B-but I like these authors more!!
>waaahhhhh

He was a joyce wannabe at worst, a decent american author at best

How are Mosquitoes and Soldiers Pay? I like to read authors chronologically

You named the most cliche American authors that make up high school level course material. Your post was hardly even a thought, you reached for whats on the posters at Barnes and Noble. It doesnt even sound like you enjoy any of the authors you cited, it just sounds like you hate Faulkner so much for no apparent reason.

start with Flags in the Dust

Whitman, but I am with Miller in that Whitman is almost impossible to sincerely interpret since industrialization.

Wahh you dont like my underground authors like FAULKNER. Ffs

not him but Faulkner's kinda underrated these days

The fuck? Hes taught all over schools. Hes posted on this board weekly. Hes heralded as one of the best american voices. What the fuck and where the fuck are you getting that idea

Is that Gomez Addams?

you can't. I've been reading Faulkner for a year and I anticipate I will be rereading and studying him for years to come.

this. Even his overlooked works like Pylon are worth reading

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I think the identification of Faulkner as a southern writer ultimately does more harm than good. Sure, he IS a great southern writer, probably the best, but I think pigeon holing him into a regional category suggests to some people that he has less to say about the American experience as a whole.

but the south is the essence of Faulkner. His perspective is uniquely southern. If you want a more universal American author try Steinbeck

>If you want a more universal American author try Steinbeck
This is bait, right? If Faulkner is regional, Steinbeck is municipal. None of this is wrong by the way, since sometimes the Universal is found within the regional (e.g. One Hundred Years of Solitude).

>The Founding Father's
Fucking Americans are a joke kek

Faulkner chart when?? You faggots have a Neil Gayman chart but not a Faulkner chart, how the fuck is that possible?

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Have you not read The Federalist Papers or the Constitution

Faulkner was so much better at prose than most people give him credit for

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Just go ahead and admit the only Faulkner you've actually read is his wikipedia page

John Updike fucking sucks

from what I've read of him, this is how I would handle it. But i'm a lazy pleb.

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Pynchon

My guess is yankcucks might find Faulkner a bit alien since he's so southern. Steinbeck's prose is pretty simple making his work much more accessible. East of Eden had settings on both coasts, almost all of Faulkner's work is set in Y county or states nearby

All his short stories, the sound and the fury, and as I lay dying. I'm no expert, but sheesh man, you're tripping balls

Henry James, Herman Mellvile, William Gaddis, Alexander Theroux, Gjertrud Schnackenberg, Mary McCarthy, and yes, even Robert Frost

Faulkner has the failed poet disease, the other McCarthy and later Hemingway have that as well. They think it's awfully poetic to string together assonant words in a certain rhythm, not realizing they more often that not come off as Dr. Seuss but in paragraphs.

Pretty gay and pseudy desu

Typee is always a safe recommendation because guaranteed nobody here’s ever read it, or ever will. It’s not a very good book, and neither is Omoo — both were the airport fiction of their day and both count as big strikes against the notion that Melville is America’s greatest author.

It’s spelled Dashiell Hammet, user, But you’re correct, he’s definitely better than Faulkner. And so is Raymond Chandler.

>Every evening the girls of the house gathered about me on the mats, and after chasing away Kory-Kory from my side—who nevertheless, retired only to a little distance and watched their proceedings with the most jealous attention—would anoint my whole body with a fragrant oil, squeezed from a yellow root, previously pounded between a couple of stones, and which in their language is denominated ‘aka’. And most refreshing and agreeable are the juices of the ‘aka’, when applied to one’s limbs by the soft palms of sweet nymphs, whose bright eyes are beaming upon you with kindness; and I used to hail with delight the daily recurrence of this luxurious operation, in which I forgot all my troubles, and buried for the time every feeling of sorrow.
Noble savage wank wank wank

>It's all now you see. Yesterday won't be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago. For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two o'clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it's all in the balance, it hasn't happened yet, it hasn't even begun yet, it not only hasn't begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave yet it's going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn't need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose than all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago; or to anyone who ever sailed a skiff under a quilt sail, the moment in 1492 when somebody thought This is it: the absolute edge of no return, to turn back now and make home or sail irrevocably on and either find land or plunge over the world's roaring rim.

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paradoxically keeping this thread alive to say I agree

he's been revered to the point of inanity. No one cares to read his stuff as it is, I bet he's the most sparknotes'd author in unis. I remember in my uni course on american lit, only about 3 people in a class of twenty actually read Absalom, Absalom! It's those sparknotes people that are so averse to calling him great.

>Alexander Theroux, Gjertrud Schnackenberg, Mary McCarthy, and yes, even Robert Frost
How delusional do you have to be to believe these are superior to Faulkner? lmao

Especially Alexander Theroux, LOL. His brother is a much better writer.

Faulkner's complete body of work is underrated. It's the meme quadrilogy that everyone thinks is overrated

Exceptional

lmao no

>No one cares to read his stuff as it is,

If three people in your specific class in college read him, and theres probably more than one section of that class, and there are thousands of colleges just in the US with american lit courses, how mane people just in college read his stuff thoroughly? Compared to what other authors numbers?

Does the quadrilogy include Light in August or Sanctuary?

Collected Stories, Wild Palms, The Unvanquished, and Go Down, Moses are underrated these days.

>The Sound and the Fury
>As I Lay Dying
>Absalom, Absalom!
>Light in August

haven't read collected stories, I like the other three though

lmao yes. Paul Theroux is the better writer.

Yeah, I was sure about the first three but not about the last one.

he really isn't. he's alright. to call him one the American goats, let alone, the goat, is delusional. you must be his relative.

Who called him a GOAT? Not me, and not anybody ITT, so stop strawmanning. I merely pointed out that he’s a superior writer to his brother.