Who wrote the best prose?

[NOIRTRASH]

​"Going up that river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest. The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. There was no joy in the brilliance of sunshine. The long stretches of the waterway ran on, deserted, into the gloom of over-shadowed distances. On silvery sand-banks hippos and alligators sunned themselves side by side. The broadening waters flowed through a mob of wooded islands; you lost your way on that river as you would in a desert, and butted all day long against shoals, trying to find the channel, till you thought yourself bewitched and cut off for ever from everything you had known once -- somewhere -- far away -- in another existence perhaps….

Joseph Conrad?

 

[NOIRTRASH]

the white fringes of her drawers were like feathering of soft white down. Her slate-blue skirts were kilted boldly about her waist and dovetailed behind her. Her bosom was as a bird's, soft and slight, slight and soft as the breast of some dark-plumaged dove. But her long fair hair was girlish: and girlish, and touched with the wonder of mortal beauty, her face. She was alone and still, gazing out to sea; and when she felt his presence and the worship of his eyes her eyes turned to him in quiet sufferance of his gaze, without shame or wantonness. Long, long she suffered his gaze and then quietly withdrew her eyes from his and bent them towards the stream, gently stirring the water with her foot hither and thither. The first faint noise of gently moving water broke the silence, low and faint and whispering, faint as the bells of sleep; hither and thither, hither and thither; and a faint flame trembled on her cheek.

Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (p. 158). . Kindle Edition

JAMES JOYCE?.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

It was a Sunday evening in London, gloomy, close, and stale.
Maddening church bells of all degrees of dissonance, sharp and
flat, cracked and clear, fast and slow, made the brick-and-mortar
echoes hideous. Melancholy streets, in a penitential garb of soot,
steeped the souls of the people who were condemned to look at them
out of windows, in dire despondency. In every thoroughfare, up
almost every alley, and down almost every turning, some doleful
bell was throbbing, jerking, tolling, as if the Plague were in the
city and the dead-carts were going round. Everything was bolted
and barred that could by possibility furnish relief to an
overworked people. No pictures, no unfamiliar animals, no rare
plants or flowers, no natural or artificial wonders of the ancient
world--all TABOO with that enlightened strictness, that the ugly
South Sea gods in the British Museum might have supposed themselves
at home again. Nothing to see but streets, streets, streets.
Nothing to breathe but streets, streets, streets. Nothing to
change the brooding mind, or raise it up. Nothing for the spent
toiler to do, but to compare the monotony of his seventh day with
the monotony of his six days, think what a weary life he led, and
make the best of it--or the worst, according to the probabilities.
+


CHARLES DICKENS?

 

[NicoleZ]

You are posting passages heavy with adjective usage, e.g. descriptions without any further comment except asking which is subjectively perceived as the better. Yet there is an inverse timeline present in your postings: Conrad to Joyce to Dickens. I'm going to add an even earlier one; Jonathan Swift, as in all likelihood, Swift was known to Dickens, who in turn was known to Joyce, who was indubitably read by Conrad - if perchance that is the observation you want to establish, that great authors not only ignore grammatical conventions but also copy, imitate or are inspired by those before them? (No doubt you will counter this by posting an excerpt from Twain. )

It is a melancholy object to those, who walk through this great town, or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads and cabbin-doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags, and importuning every passenger for an alms. These mothers instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in stroling to beg sustenance for their helpless infants who, as they grow up, either turn thieves for want of work, or leave their dear native country, to fight for the Pretender in Spain, or sell themselves to the Barbadoes.

Jonathan Swift: A Modest Proposal

PS. As descriptive passages go, the prose of Swift is vastly superior because he makes do without all those "arty", heavy-handed sentences designed to bludgeon the reader to insensibility.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

You are posting passages heavy with adjective usage, e.g. descriptions without any further comment except asking which is subjectively perceived as the better. Yet there is an inverse timeline present in your postings: Conrad to Joyce to Dickens. I'm going to add an even earlier one; Jonathan Swift, as in all likelihood, Swift was known to Dickens, who in turn was known to Joyce, who was indubitably read by Conrad - if perchance that is the observation you want to establish, that great authors not only ignore grammatical conventions but also copy, imitate or are inspired by those before them? (No doubt you will counter this by posting an excerpt from Twain. )

It is a melancholy object to those, who walk through this great town, or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads and cabbin-doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags, and importuning every passenger for an alms. These mothers instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in stroling to beg sustenance for their helpless infants who, as they grow up, either turn thieves for want of work, or leave their dear native country, to fight for the Pretender in Spain, or sell themselves to the Barbadoes.

Jonathan Swift: A Modest Proposal

PS. As descriptive passages go, the prose of Swift is vastly superior because he makes do without all those "arty", heavy-handed sentences designed to bludgeon the reader to insensibility.

I post what I fall over first. many sites offer names without examples. Or I sample my Kindle. But I'm after your opinion.

 

[SamScribble]

I have recently been re-reading (for the umpteenth time) various collections of essays by Joseph Epstein. I gather that some people - on the west side of the pond - are not entirely comfortable with Mr Epstein's politics. When reading essays, I suppose that I should have my political antennae on alert. But I seldom do. I just read Mr Epstein's sentences. If you wish to learn to write well, there are many worse things that you could do. Maybe start with Once More Around the Block. Amazon has second hand copies available for pennies.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

I have recently been re-reading (for the umpteenth time) various collections of essays by Joseph Epstein. I gather that some people - on the west side of the pond - are not entirely comfortable with Mr Epstein's politics. When reading essays, I suppose that I should have my political antennae on alert. But I seldom do. I just read Mr Epstein's sentences. If you wish to learn to write well, there are many worse things that you could do. Maybe start with Once More Around the Block. Amazon has second hand copies available for pennies.

I'll give Epstein a twirl.

I'm a fascist. Most people assume FASCIST means evil monster though the label is about management style more than anything. Fascism is patriarchy, democracy is the mob. I'm not immune to facts and coherent arguments. I simply believe too many cooks spoil the soup. I endorse better soup, though. Consequently I'm annoyed from incoherent quarrels.

 

[JayG88]

When it comes to prose, for me, there is one writer above all others: Vladimir Nabokov.

Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster.

 

[karaline]

​"Going up that river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest. The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. There was no joy in the brilliance of sunshine. The long stretches of the waterway ran on, deserted, into the gloom of over-shadowed distances. On silvery sand-banks hippos and alligators sunned themselves side by side. The broadening waters flowed through a mob of wooded islands; you lost your way on that river as you would in a desert, and butted all day long against shoals, trying to find the channel, till you thought yourself bewitched and cut off for ever from everything you had known once -- somewhere -- far away -- in another existence perhaps….

Joseph Conrad?

Is this from Heart of Darkness?

 

[NOIRTRASH]

Is this from Heart of Darkness?

I think it is, it wasn't identified.

 

[Adre]

“When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest. The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.”


― Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

 

[KindofHere]

..............

 

[karaline]

I think it is, it wasn't identified.

I've never read the book, but I'm getting a very 'Apocalypse Now' vibe from it

 

[NOIRTRASH]

I've never read the book, but I'm getting a very 'Apocalypse Now' vibe from it

I read theyre kissin cousins

 

[NicoleZ]

Writing is simple, people who want it to mean something come on here.

Ooh! I'd love to hear you tell that to the shade of George Orwell...

 

[ElectricBlue]

I've never read the book, but I'm getting a very 'Apocalypse Now' vibe from it

Mister Kurtz = Colonel Kurtz

"The horror, the horror." It's a direct lift from the book.

 

[SimonDoom]

This is a tough one to answer. I think there is such a thing as great prose, but I also think it can take many forms and doesn't have to conform to one set of rules or guidelines. Cormac McCarthy and Ernest Hemingway are both extraordinary prose writers, even though their styles are completely different from one another, and I wouldn't want to try to imitate either one of them.

Here's a twist on the question: is there a best erotic prose writer? Does erotica demand or favor a prose style that's different from that of other genres?