Jack Kerouac
Hunter S. Thompson
William S. Burroughs
Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway.  I was one of those nerds in high school who loved reading books for class, either because they interested me or because I had read them already and had a leg up on the class.  My Junior year, we read For Whom The Bell Tolls and I wanted to jump off a bridge....it was so boring.  I couldn't sit through that book if I tried.  I almost failed the test on the book because I couldn't remember anything I'd read; I was that bored by it. 

George Orwell
Thomas Hardy
D H Lawrence
Josephine Cox
Helen Fielding

Jack Kerouac
Hunter S. Thompson
William S. Burroughs
Ernest Hemingway


oh well.. they are ones i like!

i guess the only thing i hate are romance novels.

Heh... I misread literary as urinary.

George Orwell
Thomas Hardy
D H Lawrence
Josephine Cox
Helen Fielding




I'm with you on all except Orwell.  I must have read 1984 50 or 60 times by now.

Jack Kerouac
Hunter S. Thompson
William S. Burroughs
Ernest Hemingway


I've never read Thompson and I'm not so hot on Hemingway. 

Kerouac on the other hand..... ::)

"Dickens can kindly, and in the most platonic of fashions, barring the intense feeling of disgust, and in disgust, the kind that emerges from the pit of one's stomach, the very bowels of the soul, pucker his lips in the shape most equated with kissing, and get down on his haunches, as if to smell the very flower presented before him, a disgusting flower that carries a stench opposite of the rose and with quite a foul a name to boot, and in his gentle, kindly bending, lean forward and peruse the hind-quarters exposed before his very eyes, of whatever shade and hue they are, and kiss, a very soft kind of kiss, my tender arse, because he is an overrated, like the overrated filth of James Cameron's Titanic, and long-winded, oh the long-windedness, like a winter wind that stings the face, idiot."

- Source unknown.

The only way I could read Dickens and stay awake was to keep reading in hopes of finding a sentence that was longer than an entire page.  The longest I remember finding was more than 3/4 of a page long, and I'd usually find at least one half-pager per chapter.  I've seen more intelligible prose in my spam.

George Orwell


I never much liked George Orwell either.  Though without him, there would be no 1984, which means no film version of 1984, which also means that song "Sexcrime" by Eurythmics wouldn't exist, and dang it I love that tune 8)

:D

"Dickens can kindly, and in the most platonic of fashions, barring the intense feeling of disgust, and in disgust, the kind that emerges from the pit of one's stomach, the very bowels of the soul, pucker his lips in the shape most equated with kissing, and get down on his haunches, as if to smell the very flower presented before him, a disgusting flower that carries a stench opposite of the rose and with quite a foul a name to boot, and in his gentle, kindly bending, lean forward and peruse the hind-quarters exposed before his very eyes, of whatever shade and hue they are, and kiss, a very soft kind of kiss, my tender arse, because he is an overrated, like the overrated filth of James Cameron's Titanic, and long-winded, oh the long-windedness, like a winter wind that stings the face, idiot."


I'd love to put my dislike of Dickens across so well.... but alas.. my intelligence is limited to incoherent ramblings and short, tart sentences (unlike Dickens) such as. 'What a twat' and 'What a load of bollocks'.

Oh dickens, you bore me, your unwitty prose and devastatingly dull ideas push me to the brink of suicide.
Much like an infomercial that just go's on and on.. and on. You make me want to change the channel.

I have read A Tale Of Two Cities five times.
It's great!  It's got everything...ok, except nudity..

Great Expectations, too!  Love 'em.


Now, I can live without Jane Austin....don't try to pidgeonhole me...

I have read A Tale Of Two Cities five times.
It's great!  It's got everything...ok, except nudity..

Great Expectations, too!  Love 'em.


Now, I can live without Jane Austin....don't try to pidgeonhole me...


I hate Jane Austin.. personally. It's personal.

I love Austin and Dickens, so there you go.

For me, the jury's out on Dickens. I have similar opinions on Safran Foer, Roth, Fitzgerald, Dreiser. They're authors that are all right, but I don't really like them either.

Safran Foer: Everything is Illuminated was an excelllent book, albeit stylistically a bit of a maximalist overkill, and I related to the idea of an assimilated American Jew wanting to go back to see the remnants of the destroyed Yiddish culture of Europe. The second one, I heard, was like letting a five-year old run amok in a candy store. I tried to read it once, and...ugh.
Dreiser: An American Tragedy was our required summer reading for 9th Grade Honors English. It was excellently written and I was the better for reading it, and I even got into it, but it could have been cut in half and been just as good. Lots of extraneous, superfluous fat that needed to be trimmed.

The only way I could read Dickens and stay awake was to keep reading in hopes of finding a sentence that was longer than an entire page.  The longest I remember finding was more than 3/4 of a page long, and I'd usually find at least one half-pager per chapter.  I've seen more intelligible prose in my spam.


Okay, so the man got paid by the word.  But I easily admit that I absolutely LOVE Dickens -- his stories and characters -- I've read much of what he's written (and willingly -- not even for a college course or something  ;) )

I have read A Tale Of Two Cities five times.
It's great!  It's got everything...ok, except nudity..

Great Expectations, too!  Love 'em.

Now, I can live without Jane Austin....don't try to pidgeonhole me...


Agreed on all points.

Agreed on all points.


and note- we have never discussed this before!
that's funny- con.

and note- we have never discussed this before!
that's funny- con.


Yep.  More in common than we knew!  ;)

Danielle Steele, Tom Clancy, Edith Wharton they all bore me something aweful. http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/15/sleepy4.gif

Yep.  More in common than we knew!  ;)


I know how it began..I swiped your copy of Coney Island Of The Mind...and then there was no turning back.

Tom Clancy


Oh man, I love Tom Clany. Although I don't know if I'd consider him a Literary writer..

There aren't too many writers, who have written alot, that I can give a blanket statement to, but

J D Salinger.  Please, all that prep school angst    :P

William Burroughs is just awful. 

I love "A Christmas Carol" and "A Tale of Two Cities" but find the rest of Dickens unreadable.

Hemingway?  I will never understand the hubbub behind all that.  I like "The Old Man and the Sea" but the rest is absolutely narcotic.

Kerouac should have stopped with "On the Road". 

Oh, hearing all this anti-Hemingway stuff just hurts my heart. I love the man.

Truthfully however, I didn't make it through "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and "Old Man and the Sea" doesn't even make it into my top 20. My favourite Hemingway novels (so far) are "The Sun Also Rises" and "A Farewell to Arms", which are both exquisite. I honestly finished "Farewell..." and for the next three days it was all I could think about. If you haven't read either of these novels, I encourage you to do so before giving up on one of America's greatest literary contributors. 

Oh, hearing all this anti-Hemingway stuff just hurts my heart. I love the man.

Truthfully however, I didn't make it through "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and "Old Man and the Sea" doesn't even make it into my top 20. My favourite Hemingway novels (so far) are "The Sun Also Rises" and "A Farewell to Arms", which are both exquisite. I honestly finished "Farewell..." and for the next three days it was all I could think about. If you haven't read either of these novels, I encourage you to do so before giving up on one of America's greatest literary contributors. 


I grabbed a book of short stories from the library, I'll try him one more time but if this doesn't work I'm done.  Hemingway was considered an innovator because he got rid of all the florid writing of the past, cut his writings to the quick.  I can appreciate his contribution, but the adulation that goes along with it, I believe, is more due to his persona.  Manly men now figured they could read a book by someone considered a manly man.  I myself always thought the macho thing was a cover up.  Always thought he maybe had more than a few "secret thougths"

Hawk, the Slayers Top 10 Authors Who Have Got To Go!

10. James Herriott
9. Danielle Steele (*gakk!*)
8. Jack London ("The Call Of The Wild" always cured my sleeping problems!)
7. Anne Rice (Does she know anything other than vampires?)
6. Baroness de Orczy (She wrote "The Scarlet Pimpernel". Good idea, bad form!)
5. Ric Flair (a.k.a. Richard Morgan Flehr- decent wrestler, but his writing stank like Howard's fart.)
4. e.e. cummings (This poet's writing is purely twisted...too much for my taste.)
3. Barbra Streisand (Babs- when you open your mouth to speak, you certainly remove all doubt.)
2. Eddie Arcaro (If you want a good account of being a horse jockey, avoid his story.)
AND! Hawk's All-Time Tomato Catcher, In Books:
1. Lillian Jackson Braun (I have two words for The Cat Who: Nero Wolfe!)

I grabbed a book of short stories from the library, I'll try him one more time but if this doesn't work I'm done.  Hemingway was considered an innovator because he got rid of all the florid writing of the past, cut his writings to the quick.  I can appreciate his contribution, but the adulation that goes along with it, I believe, is more due to his persona.  Manly men now figured they could read a book by someone considered a manly man.  I myself always thought the macho thing was a cover up.  Always thought he maybe had more than a few "secret thougths"


I think I know what you're getting at, and I might agree. There are some situations in "Sun Also Rises" that sort of allude to this.

Anne Rice (Does she know anything other than vampires?)



I'm with you!  I did see somehting about her over the summer.  She has left New Orleans and found God(of all things) and her next book will be an absolute adoration of Jesus and Christianity.

/www.annerice.com/

Isn't her book about Jesus' childhood? or what she thinks was his childhood.

I'm with you!  I did see somehting about her over the summer.  She has left New Orleans and found God(of all things) and her next book will be an absolute adoration of Jesus and Christianity.

/www.annerice.com/



Now I've never been an Anne Rice fan, so I don't know a ton about her work, but come on!  How does that happen?

http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/04/eek7.gif

I grabbed a book of short stories from the library, I'll try him one more time but if this doesn't work I'm done.  Hemingway was considered an innovator because he got rid of all the florid writing of the past, cut his writings to the quick.  I can appreciate his contribution, but the adulation that goes along with it, I believe, is more due to his persona.  Manly men now figured they could read a book by someone considered a manly man.  I myself always thought the macho thing was a cover up.  Always thought he maybe had more than a few "secret thougths"



I agree with you. I have only read one Hemmingway, The Sun Also Rises, I will admit that he is a very descriptive writer, I just didn't care for the story.



Cat

I remember I had a really hard time getting through Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" . It took me forever to get through that book. I found it boring.

Hawk, the Slayers Top 10 Authors Who Have Got To Go!

10. James Herriott
9. Danielle Steele (*gakk!*)
8. Jack London ("The Call Of The Wild" always cured my sleeping problems!)
7. Anne Rice (Does she know anything other than vampires?)
6. Baroness de Orczy (She wrote "The Scarlet Pimpernel". Good idea, bad form!)
5. Ric Flair (a.k.a. Richard Morgan Flehr- decent wrestler, but his writing stank like Howard's fart.)
4. e.e. cummings (This poet's writing is purely twisted...too much for my taste.)
3. Barbra Streisand (Babs- when you open your mouth to speak, you certainly remove all doubt.)
2. Eddie Arcaro (If you want a good account of being a horse jockey, avoid his story.)
AND! Hawk's All-Time Tomato Catcher, In Books:
1. Lillian Jackson Braun (I have two words for The Cat Who: Nero Wolfe!)


:O I loved "Call of the Wild" and "White Fang." They rank on my top ten list of favorite books. Ever.

I can't stand James Fenimore Cooper. Period. "Deerslayer" nearly slayed me, I skipped to a certain part because a friend said it was a cool action sequence.

I can't stand James Fenimore Cooper. Period. "Deerslayer" nearly slayed me, I skipped to a certain part because a friend said it was a cool action sequence.



Mark Twain was so adverse to James Fenimore Cooper he wrote a diatribe, with which I, and probably you, wholeheartedly agree

users.telerama.com/~joseph/cooper/cooper.html

I remember I had a really hard time getting through Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" . It took me forever to get through that book. I found it boring.



I tried reading that but couldn't get through the first chapter so I know what you are talking about.




Cat

I tried reading that but couldn't get through the first chapter so I know what you are talking about.




Cat


Melodaramatic, but if you go to Kings Chapel burial ground in Boston you can see the grave of Elizabeth Pain and the the remnants of an A.  The story is based on her.

I tried reading that but couldn't get through the first chapter so I know what you are talking about.

Cat


I thought it was a good story, and it is one of two Hawthorne novels I've read. The problem with Hawthorne IMO is the same problem I have with a lot of older writers... they're too verbose. I remember in "House of the Seven Gables" he would go on for three pages about how a specific room looked.

"Young Goodman Brown" is a pretty good story by Hawthorne though. It's about a puritan who thinks he saw his whole town participating in a black mass. Pretty creepy, which is right up my alley.

"Young Goodman Brown" is a pretty good story by Hawthorne though. It's about a puritan who thinks he saw his whole town participating in a black mass. Pretty creepy, which is right up my alley.



Ever read "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson.  It is a short story and only takes a few minutes.  You'll like this one.

www.classicshorts.com/stories/lotry.html

I remember I had a really hard time getting through Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" . It took me forever to get through that book. I found it boring.



I had to read that my junior year of HS for American Studies.  I wasn't fond of it either. 

Ever read "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson.  It is a short story and only takes a few minutes.  You'll like this one.

www.classicshorts.com/stories/lotry.html



I had to read that way back in the dark ages. Pretty heavy stuff.




Cat

Ever read "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson.  It is a short story and only takes a few minutes.  You'll like this one.

www.classicshorts.com/stories/lotry.html


I have absolutely read it. It's fantastic and probably my favourite short story. I have also read "The Haunting of Hill House" by Jackson, and I own copies of two of her other books which I plan on reading in the future. She was a very interesting woman who led a life of sadness unfortunately.

Does Rush Limbaugh count as a literary writer?  The man should not write books. :P

Does Rush Limbaugh count as a literary writer?  The man should not write books. :P

I doubt that he'd be considered "literary"; I never cared for the guy. ::) You're write though, he should not right. (Oops! Freudian slip.)

I don't know Jeff, there are some misguided souls that take Rush as the Gospel truth.  :)

There aren't too many writers, who have written alot, that I can give a blanket statement to, but

J D Salinger.  Please, all that prep school angst    :P

Yay! Someone else who agrees with me!

now I know there are lots of Tolkien fans out there, but to be honest, I have never been able to finish the books. I've tried several times. It's just too detailed, and it puts me right to sleep. I LOVED the trilogy movies though.

Does Rush Limbaugh count as a literary writer?  The man should not write books. :P



He is up there with Anne Coulter. Two of the worse fiction writers.  ::)





Cat

I've got a funny story about a Rush Limbaugh book...
My cousins happen to be 100% confederate flag waving, Bush Backing Rushheads... (They say you can't choose your family..that's an understatement).  Well back in 1995... right after I was first married, Rush had come out with his first book, and we were at my cousin's house for Christmas. The beers got to flowin, the tongues got to waggin, and my husband and my cousin's husband got into a heavy debate about Rush Limbaugh. My cousin's husband had just received the book as a gift for Christmas, and he had it 'proudly?' displayed on the back of his toilet,  (how ironic is that? actually it would have been better off displayed IN the toilet, but we don't always get what we want...) anyways, back to the story... so Bob and Glenn are arguing about Rush's stance on welfare and single mothers, and it got quite heated... and I pulled Bob aside to try and settle him down.. He marched off to the bathroom muttering to himself.. I thought he was just going to relieve himself.. and he had been in there for quite sometime, when I went to check on him.. Well here Bob had taken Glenn's precious Rush Limbaugh book and had ripped several pages out of the book!  He was muttering, "This is what I think of Rush Fu..king Limbo!!" Now my husband is not a big man, all of 5'7" 180lbs.. and Glenn stands about 6'3" 260 lbs... so I was in fear of Bob's life... I called my cousin to the bathroom and I said, "Kim, he was mad, he wasn't thinking, I'm sorry, I'll replace the book.. just please don't let Glenn know..."  well she thought it was funny.... and laughed.. the next day we all had a good laugh about it and Glenn even admitted that he most likely wouldn't have read the book anyway...  (I guess this is ironic also.. since how many conservatives actually read about the topics they rant about...)

I thought it was a good story, and it is one of two Hawthorne novels I've read. The problem with Hawthorne IMO is the same problem I have with a lot of older writers... they're too verbose. I remember in "House of the Seven Gables" he would go on for three pages about how a specific room looked.

"Young Goodman Brown" is a pretty good story by Hawthorne though. It's about a puritan who thinks he saw his whole town participating in a black mass. Pretty creepy, which is right up my alley.

I remember I had a really hard time getting through Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" . It took me forever to get through that book. I found it boring.
THANK YOU!!!!  I think I'm the ONLY person in either of my English classes who doesn't care for Hawthorne (but, like McDonald, I did like "Young Goodman Brown".  I have to admit, I'm not real big on Shakespeare, either (I know, sacrilege, ESPECIALLY for someone who wants to teach English).  I LOVE Hemingway, though.  For those of you who don't, try Men Without Women.....it's an anthology of short stories.  "Hills Like White Elephants" is pretty good.  Right now, we're reading Heart of Darkness and I just CANNOT seem to get into it. :-\\

Anything by Sylvia Plath.

Anything by Sylvia Plath.


Luckily for you, she wasn't very prolific before committing suicide.

My opinions:

Nathaniel Hawthorne-I think he was a writer hobbled by the verbose style of that period. We read The Scarlet Letter in American Lit Honors 10 last year. It was more fun analyzing it than actually reading it, except for some select passages, like the very opening and the meeting scene in the woods.
J.D. Salinger-Loved the short stories that I've read ("A Perfect Day for Bananafish"), Franny and Zooey, Catcher in the Rye. I tried to read these when I was around 13, but I don't think I could have related to them so much before I was 16, when I started reading Salinger. I identify with some of the ideas and feelings expressed in them alot...
Sylvia Plath-As corny and upper middle-class angsty as this sounds, The Bell Jar is one of my favorite books. And I'm enchanted by her poetry.
Edith Wharton-She's a great writer. We read Ethan Frome in 9th grade, and I've since read Age of Innocence and House of Mirth.
Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs-More overrated than bad sex.

Anything by Sylvia Plath.

Why?  Beautiful Smith girls have problems too, you know.
:P

He is up there with Anne Coulter. Two of the worse fiction writers.  ::)



George Will and William F. Buckley write their own books.  Coulter, Limbaugh, and Hannity do not.

J D Salinger.  Please, all that prep school angst    :P


I remember last year in the ninth grade, I loved "Catcher In The Rye", but much like "The Da Vinci Code", it wasn't until some time after reading it that I realized there was something I didn't like about it.  In the case of J.D. Salinger, it was the repetetive first-person prose that kept rambling on with sentences like "Sometimes I imagine..." or "One time...".  In Dan Brown's case, it was just the utter kookiness and steep drop into self-importance by the middle of the book.

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/J.D._Salinger

I remember last year in the ninth grade, I loved "Catcher In The Rye", but much like "The Da Vinci Code", it wasn't until some time after reading it that I realized there was something I didn't like about it.  In the case of J.D. Salinger, it was the repetetive first-person prose that kept rambling on with sentences like "Sometimes I imagine..." or "One time...".  In Dan Brown's case, it was just the utter kookiness and steep drop into self-importance by the middle of the book.

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/J.D._Salinger


Yeah, the diction in alot of Salinger seems forcedly "realistic" and outdated, though in the mid-20th century it might have been a realistic way of speech.

Hawk, the Slayers Top 10 Authors Who Have Got To Go!

10. James Herriott
9. Danielle Steele (*gakk!*)
8. Jack London ("The Call Of The Wild" always cured my sleeping problems!)
7. Anne Rice (Does she know anything other than vampires?)
6. Baroness de Orczy (She wrote "The Scarlet Pimpernel". Good idea, bad form!)
5. Ric Flair (a.k.a. Richard Morgan Flehr- decent wrestler, but his writing stank like Howard's fart.)
4. e.e. cummings (This poet's writing is purely twisted...too much for my taste.)
3. Barbra Streisand (Babs- when you open your mouth to speak, you certainly remove all doubt.)
2. Eddie Arcaro (If you want a good account of being a horse jockey, avoid his story.)
AND! Hawk's All-Time Tomato Catcher, In Books:
1. Lillian Jackson Braun (I have two words for The Cat Who: Nero Wolfe!)
I love the Scarlet Pimpernel and all the follow up books. Great stuff!

I remember last year in the ninth grade, I loved "Catcher In The Rye", but much like "The Da Vinci Code", it wasn't until some time after reading it that I realized there was something I didn't like about it.  In the case of J.D. Salinger, it was the repetetive first-person prose that kept rambling on with sentences like "Sometimes I imagine..." or "One time...".  In Dan Brown's case, it was just the utter kookiness and steep drop into self-importance by the middle of the book.

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/J.D._Salinger
That was great.....thanks :)

We were discussing this in my class yesterday and another girl and I got into a rather "interesting" discussion.....basically, she told me I was too "old" to "understand" Holden's "issues" ::)

That was great.....thanks :)

We were discussing this in my class yesterday and another girl and I got into a rather "interesting" discussion.....basically, she told me I was too "old" to "understand" Holden's "issues" ::)
Right, of course you've never been young at any point in your life have you.  ::)

That was great.....thanks :)

We were discussing this in my class yesterday and another girl and I got into a rather "interesting" discussion.....basically, she told me I was too "old" to "understand" Holden's "issues" ::)


I hope you smacked her!

That was great.....thanks :)

We were discussing this in my class yesterday and another girl and I got into a rather "interesting" discussion.....basically, she told me I was too "old" to "understand" Holden's "issues" ::)


I would have given her a few more issues

Hawk, the Slayers Top 10 Authors Who Have Got To Go!

7. Anne Rice (Does she know anything other than vampires?)

3. Barbra Streisand (Babs- when you open your mouth to speak, you certainly remove all doubt.)



Oh yes! Anne Rice also knows mummies and witches!  ;D "Interview" was fine, "Queen of the Damned" was a damned fine horror novel, but she has treading water ever since "The Body Thief". And her Jesus novel was pretty puerile.

How does Babs fit into this listing? ???

Here's my literary beefs:
Raymond Carver--OK, he inspired Altman's Short Cuts. But man, I didn't get his stuff when it was forced down my throat in college.
John Grisham--I gave up after two pages of "The man awoke. He got up. He put on his shoes. He wondered what he was going to do that day...zzzzzzz"
Nathaniel Hawthorne...should be burned at the stake for The Scarlet Letter
Add me to the Dickens detractors. If I had a nickel for every descriptive sentence he ever wrote... :D

Right, of course you've never been young at any point in your life have you.  ::)
Well, you know, as we get older, we start to forget things.....
I hope you smacked her!
I would have, but I couldn't reach her ;D
I would have given her a few more issues
I basically said that yes, she may be experiencing the same "issues" as Holden RIGHT NOW, but I've been there, done that, and got the t-shirt 8)  She started to get REALLY po'd when I said "When you're my age and have kids of your own, go back and re-read the book and you'll realize that you'll have a little more insight than you do now about 'teenage angst' and the importance of parents being involved". ;D

I guess it shouldn't surprise me as she and I have had a "discussion" before about "Love"....basically the teacher asked why there are no "true" "love stories" in American Lit and she was rambling on and on about how God's "love" the "world Church" and a bunch of other crap when our teacher was obviously talking about romantic love.  When she told me I obviously didn't know the difference between "unconditional love (i.e. God's love)" and "romantic love", I REALLY let her have it ;)