best current stylist

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

Who's the finest active prose stylist? Whether a fiction writer, a journalist, or essayist, who's putting together, sentence after sentence, the most exquisite contemporary writing. After reading Henry Miller's On Writing, I'm curious, and I don't look at nearly enough current stuff to have an opinion to offer.

― otto, Friday, 9 January 2004 22:54 (twenty-two years ago)

Donald Rumsfeld. Hands down.

― Matthew K (mtk), Friday, 9 January 2004 23:02 (twenty-two years ago)

that's a damn tough question. something tells me it'd have to be an essayist, though. if you asked me for the last 30 years i'd probably start with joan didion or gore vidal or norman mailer. currently i don't know. one to mull over for the weekend.

― vahid (vahid), Friday, 9 January 2004 23:14 (twenty-two years ago)

Surely this is Rummy's best poem ~

The Unknown

As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.

But we're aiming for prose here, not poesy (though best contemporary poetry would make an interesting thread. Hmmm. . . .)

Vahid, don that thinking cap!

― otto, Friday, 9 January 2004 23:37 (twenty-two years ago)

it's probably someone i never read, like Ian McEwan or Vikram Seth.(though i doubt it) Unfortunately, i can't say Sebald anymore.

― scott seward (scott seward), Friday, 9 January 2004 23:47 (twenty-two years ago)

can i at least say that alice munro has some of the finest story STRUCTURES of anyone that i currently read? i believe i will say that. i gotta stop pimping for alice munro on ILB though. i don't want to be known as "that alice munro guy". i'd like to give a shout-out to muriel spark and john leonard while i'm at it. they are both fine by me. i dunno about "exquisite" though.

― scott seward (scott seward), Friday, 9 January 2004 23:51 (twenty-two years ago)

Scott, can you pimp her once last time? I haven't read anything by her--what's a good starter story?

― otto, Friday, 9 January 2004 23:53 (twenty-two years ago)

she has 10 short story collections so take your pick! her last was entitled, Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage and the title story of that collection is one of them there tour de forces. And don't be fooled into thinking that her books are the sort that your granny uses to nod off to sleep. she's deep, son!

― scott seward (scott seward), Friday, 9 January 2004 23:59 (twenty-two years ago)

The sequence of that title intrigues me, and those words--hateship, loveship. Many thanks.

― otto, Saturday, 10 January 2004 00:04 (twenty-two years ago)

actually otto, your granny or anybody's granny might enjoy her stories as well, come to think of it. she's a great storyteller. it's the way that she fucks with time and space and thought and memory that blows me away.she really does remind me at times of those crazy russians.

― scott seward (scott seward), Saturday, 10 January 2004 00:06 (twenty-two years ago)

DeLillo *ducks* or Gary Indiana or Jim Dodge.

― jed_ (jed), Saturday, 10 January 2004 00:27 (twenty-two years ago)

I read Julian Barnes's essays about cooking, in the Guardian. I believe they're going to be a book. I thought that the prose in them was a treat, and the punctuation ambitious. Julian's only problem is that he hasn't got anything to say.

― R the V (Jake Proudlock), Saturday, 10 January 2004 01:39 (twenty-two years ago)

good news for this months bookclub!

― jed_ (jed), Saturday, 10 January 2004 01:42 (twenty-two years ago)

i don't really have any of the critical apparatus commonly used to determine whether someone is a good stylist or not,but i'm reading
lights out for the territory by iain sinclair at the moment and he certainly seems to my untrained eye to have an incredible writing style...

― robin (robin), Saturday, 10 January 2004 10:02 (twenty-two years ago)

I'll do my usual stumping for Alasdair Gray. Everything he writes is full of delight, even if the subject matter is the nastiest porn you've ever seen. His writing is just so musical and sweet, it's really deceptive.

[Enter usual plea for everyone to buy Lanark and let it change your life.]

― Jessa (Jessa), Sunday, 11 January 2004 15:54 (twenty-two years ago)

Writing from the United States, I would have to go with John Updike, for his precision, his vocabulary, and his descriptions of both inner states and sensory experience. In that same vein, early Nicholson Baker. His book about his obsession with Updike, and his comparisons of himself to Updike, is one of the most pleasurable books I've ever read. Third, anything by Jonathan Franzen.

― Janet Gurn-Soosy, Sunday, 11 January 2004 17:49 (twenty-two years ago)

I love U&I so so much Janet.

― jed_ (jed), Sunday, 11 January 2004 18:07 (twenty-two years ago)

i've only read one mcewan book (atonement), but if his others are at the same level then he's definitely a contender. i was extremely impressed. for the same kind of precision and understated beauty i also really like william trevor.

― lauren (laurenp), Sunday, 11 January 2004 21:30 (twenty-two years ago)

I think Munro's finest achievement is The Beggar Maid -- a series of autonomous short stories (about the same characters) linked together to form something like a novel. A truly gripping study of an "ordinary" person, and very deep, as noted.

― charles hanson (whynotsneeze), Monday, 12 January 2004 19:02 (twenty-two years ago)

Martin Amis, especially the non-fiction, although Money contains the funniest and most breathtaking sentences I've ever read.

― Scissorkicks for breakfast, Tuesday, 13 January 2004 14:14 (twenty-two years ago)

Martin Amis seems to have dropped out of fashion in the UK. I love the scene in Money where John Self turns up for the party smashed out of his head not realizing he'd already been kicked out of the party earlier.

Hmm, I think he relates it better than I just have.

― MikeyG (MikeyG), Tuesday, 13 January 2004 14:16 (twenty-two years ago)

He's well out of favo(u)r, but Martin Amis can write a fucking sentence like no one else.

― mookieproof (mookieproof), Wednesday, 14 January 2004 01:02 (twenty-two years ago)

Give us an example. I've never read him, but I like good sentences.

― R the V (Jake Proudlock), Wednesday, 14 January 2004 02:46 (twenty-two years ago)

I personally think most of the best stylists are dead (Robertson Davies was excellent), but let's see...

Hunter Thompson is excellent because he's distinctive and flows so easily. Likewise Leon Rooke. Michael Ondaatje has impressed me as a prose stylist, but he's left me pretty cold in every other way. I'm currently enamored of Julian Barnes' prose, and the recently deceased Carol Shields always impressed me as well.

But I can't belive someone mentioned John Updike! Bloated and pretentious are perhaps the nicest things I can say about his prose.

― August (August), Wednesday, 14 January 2004 03:40 (twenty-two years ago)

Ah yes, I forgot.

George Elliot Clarke, the poet, and Sheila Heti, who writes short fiction.

― August (August), Wednesday, 14 January 2004 03:43 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm not sure I particularly like his books, but I would have to say Ben Marcus, in the sense that he's cobbled together (from Lutz, Barthelme and Stein) a very distinctive style and made it his own.

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Wednesday, 14 January 2004 07:37 (twenty-two years ago)

Can't think of an example of Amis's writing off the top of my head - anyone else? Just about any sentence he's written though, amazing stuff. MickeyG - I remember that scene well with John Self. He turns up a day later doesn't he?! One of the most memorable characters I've come across (wrenching his belly from side to side in front of the mirror).

― Scissorkicks for Breakfast, Wednesday, 14 January 2004 10:00 (twenty-two years ago)

This dead horse died too young.

I don't know if he's the best current stylist, because I haven't read enough to feel comfortable answering that question, but: Guy Davenport. Possibly the best essayist too.

― Phil Christman, Wednesday, 21 January 2004 19:43 (twenty-two years ago)

I’d have to go with Edmund White; his prose are prolific. Here’s an example from A Boy’s Own Story --

People say young love or love of the moment isn't real, but I think the only love is the first. Later we hear its fleeting recapitulations throughout our lives, brief echoes of the original theme in a work that increasingly becomes all development, the mechanical elaboration of a crab cannon with too many parts.

But it's especially hilarious when you take into account that it follows --

I turned my back to Kevin and I could hear him spitting on his hand. I didn't particularly like getting cornholed.

Other that that, I’d have to say Will
Self, Tom Wolfe, Quentin Crisp, Jim Crace and Stephen Fry.

― Charles Hatcher (musenheddo), Sunday, 25 January 2004 04:23 (twenty-two years ago)

Wow. That quote from White convinced me to add him to the eternal must-read list. That's hilarious. Guy Davenport of course likes to write that same scene, except it's always between two pubescent Danish male soccer players, and they like it, and it ends with some obscure prose-cubist reference to Kafka or the cave paintings at Lascaux.

― Phil Christman, Tuesday, 27 January 2004 05:08 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm voting for Beryl Bainbridge. She writes so economically that she manages to create a fully-fleshed out book and characters in a very short time. Her books are short but enormously satisfying. "According to Queenie" and "Master Georgie" are sumptuous period pieces that would have taken anyone else 600 pages to put together, and "The Birthday Boys" pretty much sums up the South Pole fever and the relationships between the men who undertook those journeys.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Tuesday, 27 January 2004 11:31 (twenty-two years ago)

A shout for Bruce Chatwin here. Descriptions that border on the baroque. Did I just say baroque? Yeah, sorry about that.

I like him more than any living writer.

― MikeyG (MikeyG), Tuesday, 27 January 2004 12:40 (twenty-two years ago)

three weeks pass...

At risk of mentioning him again, I'll say William Gass. His essays seem like a natural progression from prose and poetry.

DeLillo would like to think he's the greatest living stylist, and I guess he is, for writing DeLillo-prose.

Houellebecq, anyone?

It's a relief to find people who like N Baker's U&I. Must get his Box of Matches (?) when it comes out in paperback in Aus.

― David Joyner (David Joyner), Tuesday, 17 February 2004 04:36 (twenty-two years ago)

John Updike

James Salter

Ian McEwan

Tim Winton

John Banville

― David Nolan (David N.), Thursday, 19 February 2004 01:12 (twenty-two years ago)

What about Paul Auster?!

― linn d., Thursday, 19 February 2004 05:36 (twenty-two years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.