The Greatest Author of Fiction of the Past 200 Years: Who?

[Bick]

...entering into the discussion with yet another name, I would strongly suggest Honoré de Balzac. Certainly, within the compass of his Comédie humaine, (let alone when including his other works), there is little or nothing which he overlooks as far as the range of human experience; nor does he lack for "imagination, emotional force, and intellectual perception" in covering any aspect of this. In fact, I would say he is at very least on a par with Dostoevsky; at times his superior. He has, by more than one "great" novelist, been called "the father of us all", and with reason. So I nominate Balzac as worthy of the title we are discussing here, whether we keep it to singular or (more realistically, in my opinion) expand it to an admittedly select and elite plural.

Good man! Nice shout. I would suggest a tie between Balzac, P.G. Wodehouse and George RR martin. Oh no sorry that's a typo, I meant George Orwell.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

@Bick you owe me a new keyboard.

 

[j d worthington]

Good man! Nice shout. I would suggest a tie between Balzac, P.G. Wodehouse and George RR martin. Oh no sorry that's a typo, I meant George Orwell.

Thank you. For some reason, I'd forgotten about the thread on Balzac you began. Was reminded of it today. To be perfectly honest, I've by no means read the entirety, or even the majority, of La Comédie humaine, but I hope to do so in the not-too-distant future (say within the next five years). What I have read has definitely impressed me, and I would not hesitate to put Balzac in the "genius" category....

 

[Extollager]

But it's Dostoevsky.

From an interview with an author of a book on Dostoevsky (RW):

LC For those of us steeped in Russian culture, the relationship between literature and religious thought always seemed very inspiring, but it’s exotic and strange from a British viewpoint. How would you describe it?

RW The key for me is the concept of “personalism”—a fascination with the unfathomable in each person. Russian personalism comprises a sharp reaction against collectivism, which, as we know, is odd given the dominance of collectivist tendencies in Russian history. But there’s a tension there. There’s a wonderful expression of personalism in Boris Pasternak’s novel Doctor Zhivago, when Yuri Zhivago speaks of a time when “There will be no spare people any more. Everyone counts.”

LC There’s also a long-standing tension with western individualism in Russian personalism, isn’t there?

RW Personalism creates a kind of way through to community and freedom at the heart of human life. It doesn’t set individual dignity and integrity against anything. Dostoevsky dismisses western individualism as “wills asserting themselves against reality, as opposed to finding the way through from personal freedom to the freedom of God.”

LC Can we unpack that? It seems important, but the language can be offputting for contemporary readers.

RW Dostoevsky and some of his followers would say ethics is not about good and evil; it’s about truth and falsehood, reality and illusion. The right way to live doesn’t amount to a series of approved actions. It’s about living in recognition of reality.

 

[j d worthington]

Aside from your opening comment on that one (about which I still have my reservations), I'd say that that last statement has been something of a growing trend in most of world literature, including that of the West. It is by no means dominant even yet, but even with a fair amount of writers of fantastic fiction, that lies at the heart of it. Certainly it did with HPL. He wasn't entirely successful either in his fiction or his life in achieving it, but I'd say this became increasingly important to him over time (and I would agree that this also had a good deal to do with humanizing him as well). And for all his "individualism", there is a strong streak of this in Heinlein as well....

 

[GOLLUM]

This is problematic at best but I would include in my list of authors to consider Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Pushkin, Dickens, Poe. Italo Calvino, Stefan Zweig (Austria), Jane Austen (just within 200 years), George Eliott, Thomas Mann, Joseph Roth (Ukraine), Goethe, Honore De Balzac, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Eca De Querios (Portugal). James Joyce, Kawabata and Mushima (Japan), Lu Xun (China), Marcel Proust, Victor Hugo, Gottfried Keller (Switzerland) and George Orwell, with honorable mentions (more because I like them, couldn't single them out per se ahead of the others although I regard them all as great) to Faulkner, Gene Wolfe, Virginia Woolf, David Foster Wallace (USA), Samuel Beckett, Henry James (maybe belongs in prior list? undecided), Naguib Mahfouz (Egypt), Kafka (another borderline, makes it difficult when considering great writing or influence or both) Cesare Pavese (Italy), Bulgakov (Russia), Halldor Laxness (Iceland), Robert Musil, W.G. Sebald & Thomas Bernhard (Germany), Borges and Julio Cortazar (Argentina), Roberto Bolano (Chile), Yeshar Kemal (Turkey), Robert Walser (Switzerland), Gogol and Nabokov.

Out of that list if I I had to choose one I would pick Goethe...

 

[GOLLUM]

Calvino? His is a name I've been seeing off and on for about 40 years but have never read.

Try The Baron in the Trees - absolute hilarious - and interesting too

I have included Calvino in my list to consider for the past 200 years. A great writer and intellect I really admire his writing. Two of his best works would be If On A Winter's Night A Traveller and Invisible Cities. Baron in the Trees is among his better works certainly but I still rate the former 2 more highly. Most people who know me here know that when I discover an author I really like I tend ti collect their entire ouevre (that has been translated) and Calvino is no exception. I also recommend his literary criticism and other commentaries, I would almost go as far as to nominate him my no 2 Italian author of all time behind Dante. A big call I admit given the many superb Italian authors. Fantastic stuff.

 

[anivid]

Out of that list if I I had to choose one I would pick Goethe...

Goethe surely is entertaining, his autobio 'Dichtung und Wahrheit'/'Truth and Poetry' is found very interesting - and the titel itself gives away how it's to be perceived.
There's Truth to be found, but also non-Truth, aka poetry/fiction - good work Johann

 

[Extollager]

Aside from your opening comment on that one (about which I still have my reservations), I'd say that that last statement has been something of a growing trend in most of world literature, including that of the West.....

Well, the commenter's remark would need to be understood in the context of Dostoevsky. "Dostoevsky and some of his followers would say ethics is not about good and evil; it’s about truth and falsehood, reality and illusion. The right way to live doesn’t amount to a series of approved actions. It’s about living in recognition of reality." Dostoevsky would have a very different understanding of truth and falsehood, reality and illusion from adherents of any trend that I see as "growing" in literary circles today.

 

[Extollager]

This is problematic at best but I would include in my list of authors to consider Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Pushkin, Dickens, Poe. Italo Calvino, Stefan Zweig (Austria), Jane Austen (just within 200 years), George Eliott, Thomas Mann, Joseph Roth (Ukraine), Goethe, Honore De Balzac, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Eca De Querios (Portugal). James Joyce, Kawabata and Mushima (Japan), Lu Xun (China), Marcel Proust, Victor Hugo, Gottfried Keller (Switzerland) and George Orwell, with honorable mentions (more because I like them, couldn't single them out per se ahead of the others although I regard them all as great) to Faulkner, Gene Wolfe, Virginia Woolf, David Foster Wallace (USA), Samuel Beckett, Henry James (maybe belongs in prior list? undecided), Naguib Mahfouz (Egypt), Kafka (another borderline, makes it difficult when considering great writing or influence or both) Cesare Pavese (Italy), Bulgakov (Russia), Halldor Laxness (Iceland), Robert Musil, W.G. Sebald & Thomas Bernhard (Germany), Borges and Julio Cortazar (Argentina), Roberto Bolano (Chile), Yeshar Kemal (Turkey), Robert Walser (Switzerland), Gogol and Nabokov.

Out of that list if I I had to choose one I would pick Goethe...

I don't know Goethe at all well, but my guess is that there are those who would be willing to make an argument that he was indeed worthy to be considered alongside Dostoevsky and could be considered a greater author. Myself, I doubt it, but I could imagine that being done. Lots of the others are well worth reading, but I don't think are giants like Dostoevsky, and I think this could be argued, to a considerable degree, not simply on the basis of "I like him/her" but on some solid criteria. Could be interesting to see someone attempt to make the case for some of these as approaching Dostoevsky's greatness. Many of them I fear I hardly know. I don't think Poe has anything like the comprehensiveness and depth of Dostoevsky. There are realms of important human experience that he hardly touches on, surely....

 

[Jeremy M. Gottwig]

Two that I personally like are Mark Twain and Joseph Conrad.

 

[j d worthington]

Well, the commenter's remark would need to be understood in the context of Dostoevsky. "Dostoevsky and some of his followers would say ethics is not about good and evil; it’s about truth and falsehood, reality and illusion. The right way to live doesn’t amount to a series of approved actions. It’s about living in recognition of reality." Dostoevsky would have a very different understanding of truth and falsehood, reality and illusion from adherents of any trend that I see as "growing" in literary circles today.

Could you perhaps expand on this? We may be approaching these terms from quite different directions ourselves, and clarifying that would (I hope) lead to a better understanding. For my own part, I'm not so sure that this is true, but that may be misperception on my part as well....

 

[Extollager]

Well, I take it that today's literary circles would usually (with the exception of the racism) be fairly close to Lovecraft in thinking that reality is to be understood in materialist terms; but Dostoevsky would hold that the most important aspects of reality elude the scientific method and that materialism, while it can seem compelling, misses out. Look up The Brothers Karamazov where there's dialog between the older, sensual brother Mitya and his younger brother Ivan, who has identified with materialism.

 

[Extollager]

I was working on the message above but missed some kind of time limit. Here's the message I tried to send:

Well, I take it that today's literary circles would usually (with the exception of the racism) be fairly close to Lovecraft in thinking that reality is to be understood in materialist terms; but Dostoevsky would hold that the most important aspects of reality elude the scientific method (applied naturalism) and that materialism, while it can seem compelling, misses out.

Look up The Brothers Karamazov where there's dialog between the older, sensual brother Mitya and his younger brother Ivan, who has identified with materialism. Dostoevsky gives to Ivan a very strong (I almost wrote "compelling," but in the context of the book it is not, finally, compelling) statement of atheism, which, I suppose, would be the view of most literary authors today.* See also the passage in which Mitya's been talking to a disaffected seminarist, Rakitin (who, as I recall, is something of a disciple of Ivan's).

This source says Dostoevsky hit the nail on the head as regards "neuroessentialism," which I take it was Lovecraft's view and is close to the view of lots of literary folk today:

https://neuroethicscanada.wordpress.com/2011/07/04/dostoevsky-prescient-neuroessentialist/

I take it that most literary folk today who have thought about philosophical and religious matters would pretty much go along with Ivan's classic exposition of atheism, which seems to have three basic points:

1.No supernaturalism is needed to explain the world, and supernaturalism often gets in the way of perceiving reality.
2.The horrendous sufferings of the innocent, such as small children, make the notion of a benign deity not only intellectually hard to sustain but just even disgusting.
3.The chicanery done in the name of religion is enormous.

You'll get most of this in Book V of The Brothers Karamazov, which includes the famous Grand Inquisitor sequence, often reprinted as a stand-alone thing (!), which I think would have gratified Dostoevsky's authorial vanity, but which deprives it of the context of the entire book, which is an answer to it. The whole book is the context for the commenter's "reality vs. delusion" that you picked up on.

I think Dostoevsky might say that, till one seizes or perhaps rather has been seized by reality in his sense, one had better act in terms of familiar rules regarding what is right and not doing what is wrong, of choosing good vs. evil. I think I get what the commenter meant about Dostoevsky focusing on reality vs. delusion, but what he meant was something very different from what most literary circles would mean.

*Some might describe themselves as agnostics, but I think agnosticism is often little else than the atheism of people who don't want to be bothered to work out the details; they just want to do what they want to do.

 

[GOLLUM]

Goethe surely is entertaining, his autobio 'Dichtung und Wahrheit'/'Truth and Poetry' is found very interesting - and the titel itself gives away how it's to be perceived.
There's Truth to be found, but also non-Truth, aka poetry/fiction - good work Johann

A minor thing but having German as a second language to clarify that title should read as "Poetry and Truth". In fact I looked it up and the full title is" Aus meinem Leben: Dichtung und Wahrheit" which translated is literally From My Life: Poetry and Truth. Incidentally there is some debate surrounding the etymology of the term Dichtung...but that's for another time.

Thank you for bringing this up though. I do not have Goethe's biography although I do have some of his travel writings and almost all of his fiction including plays and poetry. I have another well known work that functions as a fascinating insight into Goethe's ethos in a book I recently picked up at a second hand bookstore entitled "Peter Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe" which took place with Goethe in his old age.

I don't know Goethe at all well, but my guess is that there are those who would be willing to make an argument that he was indeed worthy to be considered alongside Dostoevsky and could be considered a greater author. Myself, I doubt it, but I could imagine that being done. Lots of the others are well worth reading, but I don't think are giants like Dostoevsky, and I think this could be argued, to a considerable degree, not simply on the basis of "I like him/her" but on some solid criteria. Could be interesting to see someone attempt to make the case for some of these as approaching Dostoevsky's greatness.

I haven't read enough by Dostoevsky to make that sort of call on him but of what I have read by him and all of the other authors I listed I am comfortable in nominating Goethe as my choice from the sample size I have to work with. Ideally I would need to read the entire oeuvres of all the authors I have listed before I could feel satisfied (100% comfortable) about making an absolute call. I like the idea of this thread, I'm just not sure how practical it is in terms of placing someone 'ahead of the rest" especially when considering not only the greatness of the writing but also their influence. You've posted a tough yet intriguing challenge for us to which end it would be good to get feedback from other members on this topic.

Also who would you consider to be the greatest (that we know of) single writer ever? Shakespeare or are there other contenders like Goethe, Dante, Homer(I know that one is contended in terms of a single person), Dostoevsky maybe..as I say intriguing stuff.

 

[Extollager]

More with reference to #54 above.

I think what the commenter in #44 may have been getting at was that Dostoevsky understood that, for someone who lives deeply in the Gospel, there is that "Love God and do what you will" possibility. Zosima is like that and Alyosha will become like that, one may hope (but it seems Dostoevsky intended a sequel in which Alyosha would fall very far indeed from this for a time). Most people are not "there" and need to live according to a conscience humbly attuned to the Natural Law, the familiar moral standard with its Thou Shalt Nots.

Unfortunately, American society is working out a different scenario. Rejecting or disbelieving in Natural Law (largely because of its prohibitions of sexual activity apart from a man and a woman married to one another, and also because -- see below* -- we fancy ourselves scientific), we are likewise -- I see this quite clearly, it's very interesting! -- falling away from conscience. We have been a society that, historically, tended towards the "guilt culture" paradigm, but we have become and are going to go further in the direction of a "shame culture."

In a guilt culture, which is basically restricted to Jewish and Christian-influenced societies, one must do the right thing, whether or not others approve. When conscience is attuned to the moral law or Natural Law or Tao, you can get people like Martin Luther King, Jr. You can also get occasional fanatics if someone becomes focused on one "aspect" of the Natural Law at the expense of others. In a guilt culture, one should examine oneself and correct one's behavior and try to make amends when one has hurt another. A guilt culture deals often with repentance. Ideally, it recognizes the moral agency of the offender and expects him to accept his rightful punishment but also to turn from crime. A guilt culture may inculcate severity towards oneself but compassion towards an offender (but not the condoning of his crimes).

In a shame culture, what matters is how one is perceived by the people who count,** which, in a democracy, may mean the mob, but may mean mostly just the group with which one identifies. A shame culture is not very interested in repentance but in shaming and blaming the offender. It will often behave quite brutally, e.g. attempt to drive out of business, or out of the community, people who offend the "feelings" of the people who count. For example, a mom-and-pop bakery that (out of conscience) declines to bake cakes for gay weddings must be harassed by social media and, if possible, driven from town. A speaker may be prevented from addressing university students by a mob of the same. And so on. There's little or no attempt to discuss things with the offender on the basis of conscience. Rather, he must be made to feel himself odious. Picture a mob during Mao's Cultural Revolution surrounding a frail old Confucian and screaming and spitting at him. That's where we are going.

So, in summary:

1.Dostoevsky recognizes that, for one living in and from the Gospel, like Zosima and (for a time) Alyosha, spontaneous, mature love may guide behavior. Someone like Zosima may not have to "think about" what the right thing to do is; he is thinking about the other person, as someone who is loved by God and whom he loves, and so he acts according to real reality. So long as such a one doesn't fall from love and right reason, he may "do as he will."

I recommend a reading of The Brothers Karamazov with this in mind, and specifically that one watch how each brother deals with what I call "the test of the child." Mitya, Ivan, and Alyosha each have an encounter with a child in need. Watch to see how and why they act.

2.Most of us don't live in divine love, certainly not so consistently as that we don't need the rules, and have to refer to perennial rules: Thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not commit adultery, etc. This isn't the best way but it is the good way and for most of us most of the time perhaps the necessary way. One needs to be taught it and to teach it: "Johnny, that toy belongs to Susie, you must not play with it unless Susie lets you." And Johnny rightly learns his lesson well. When he steals Susie's toy and lies about it, his conscience troubles him and he takes the toy back to Susie and says he is sorry.

3.We don't keep that Natural Law very well even when we try, and many resent it and become excited about personal and cultural emancipation from it. We then grossly exaggerate the alleged discrepancies between moral standards in different cultures. (It will be found that these differences are not utter differences, but variations in application. In a tribal society, I must not steal... from another member of the tribe; but stealing from another tribe is dandy, and not to do so when one has the opportunity may be deemed shameful. The tribe may be brought to see that the ethics that pertain within should be extended outside its boundaries.) We then -- probably inevitably -- become more and more a shame culture. It is quite interesting how much discussion in op-eds and so on is largely, if you realize it, about shaming, shaming whom, etc.

Although I don't think living in a shame culture is going to be good, I don't think all shaming is bad. There was an element of shaming in Dr. King's work, for example. But he would hardly find a following today. How quaint he now seems, with his preaching (appeals to conscience, calls to change one's life) and his willingness to suffer if need be.

*Science cannot be the basis for ethics. Science deals with what may be demonstrated, according to the scientific method, to be; i.e. it deals with what is, and you cannot get from that to what ought to be done. Since "science" is the default source of authority for many thoughtful people, but science itself has no moral authority whatsoever, we are in a pickle.

 

[Extollager]

Gollum, I'm ducking your "greatest single author of all" question, but I am starting a thread on Goethe to which I hope you will contribute.

 

[Extollager]

My further thoughts on your "greatest of all" question, Gollum, are here:

Greatest author of all times

 

[anivid]

A minor thing but having German as a second language to clarify that title should read as "Poetry and Truth". In fact I looked it up and the full title is" Aus meinem Leben: Dichtung und Wahrheit" which translated is literally From My Life: Poetry and Truth. Incidentally there is some debate surrounding the etymology of the term Dichtung...but that's for another time.

Ah, but there's no dichtung as poetry in his autobio - but some dichtung as phantasy/dreaming/fiction, especially in the later parts.

 

[j d worthington]

As is all too often the case, I only have a few moments to spare here, but I do want to address one point in particular. I disagree that science "cannot" be the basis of ethics; if one looks at studies of such things (and there are many in science these days), one finds that it may very well have a great deal to say about the subject, and at the very least some very good pointers toward a sound and workable set of ethics based on observed and tested realities. Essentially, that which enhances the long-term chances of not only survival but of the thriving of, a species seems very much to be those very things which we associate with conscience and a high moral sense, such as compassion, a sense of fairness and justice, empathy, both punishment and redemption (or reclamation), etc. The more they study these things, the more they find they are very much pro-survival traits, which may indeed be the actual basis for them having evolved as such important values during our own (and, for that matter, many other species') evolution.*

Basically, I am becoming more and more of the mind that there is no question which science cannot at least study, though whether or not it will achieve any "final" answer or solution or formulation of the question concerned is itself an open question. At the very least, as noted above, it seems capable of giving some very good indications of these things....

*Incidentally, the latest I've seen -- admittedly, some months ago -- is that this sort of moral sense extends beyond the parameters of one's own group, tribe, or even species for good, sound, pro-survival reasons. It's a relatively new field of study, with a lot of ground to cover, but promises to be a fascinating field, and one which may well provide the soundest basis for any kind of ethics (including our treatment of not only other forms of life, but of the planet itself) which we have ever evolved.