Who were the 10 greatest American writers of the 20th century? (1 Viewer)

my picks would be:

1) J.D.SALINGER
2) CHARLES BUKOWSKI
3) ERNEST HEMINGWAY
4) JOHN STEINBECK
5) NORMAN MAILER
6) KEN KESEY
7) GORE VIDAL
8) JOHN FANTE (reading him now)
9) HUNTER.S.THOMPSON
10) JOHN UPDIKE

make your own top 10 list.

i havent read much of styron, faulkner etc.
 
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for the big hitters I'd add Carson McCullers, Saul Bellow, Paul Bowles, Henry Miller, Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, Philip Roth, E.L. Doctorow and some others I can't think of right now...

but I think a list of underrated (or underknown, or something) might be interesting.

mine? thanks for asking....

no order.

Hubert Selby, Jr.
Richard Yates
John O'Brien
Stephen Dixon
Richard Markson
Richard Powers
William Gaddis
William H. Gass
Paul Auster
Henry Roth
 
" Now let's get this straight for once and for all; Bukowski is the best.
Forget your dreary school books, your Shakespeare and Milton and Wordsworth. Never mind Hemingway, Faulkner, F.Scott.
Anyone with half a brain,a love of literature and an exposure to Bukowski's works out to see that it's true.
The rest of them, the doubters and hesitaters, don't matter: they're blind idiots, deaf fools."

David Barker
 
Mark Twain got a few 20th century years in. F. Scott Fitzgerald dissected the American Dream even while living it, then losing it all. And Martin Luther King, Jr. and FDR both did some tremendously important writing (& thinking) in the 20th Century. Oh--Einstein (U.S. citizenship!), Carl Sagan, and Stephen Hawking too.
 
Boooooo! Here's the good stuff:

H.P. Lovecraft
Ray Bradbury
Elmore Leonard
Elmer Kelton
Jack Vance
Dr Seuss
Raymond Chandler
Jim Thompson
Harvey Kurtzman
Kurt Vonnegut

And that guy Barker mentions in Ponder's post.
 
I don't have a correct numerical order. Not because I'm mathophobic. I just don't know who is the best. Not even sure I know ten American writers I love. Though I do love these few in extremis:

Charles Bukowski
Kurt Vonnegut
Carson McCullers
Walt Whitman
e.e. cummings
James Ellroy (My Dark Places, is excellent memoir. The L.A. Quartet is quality.)
Charles Simic
 
OK, he was a reporter, not a writer, but if we're not too stuffy, let's put Hunter somwhere after 10... The man had a better early education than Buk, but the two should be put out there as guys who somehow made it despite the odds. I'll throw in Kesey for his first two works (not his hippie fame) and I do think William Kennedy deserves a spot, just because he passed the test of dieing before he became famous. Thank god for his mom and the crazy professor who gave her a chance...
 
Ernest Hemmingway - The Old Man and the Sea
John Steinbeck - East of Eden
Charles Bukowski - Women
Hunter S Thompson - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
F Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby
Jack Kerouac - On the Road
Robert Frost
Bob Dylan (if you could label him a writer)

Non American Authors
Tim Winton - Breath
Virginia Woolf - To The Lighthouse (Literary masterpiece if ever I read)
Albert Camus - The Stranger
 
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Buk is first. The rest is in no particular order. I like them all in varying degrees. I could read anything by any of them and repeatedly.

Bukowski
Burroughs
Paul Auster
F Scott Fitzgerald
Hunter S. Thompson
Kurt Vonnegut
JD Salinger
Don DeLillo
Hemmingway
Raymond Carver
 
I just realized I failed to mention a few who now seem obvious to me. Kafka, Camus, & Sartre. That being said, they aren't writers I can pick up and read any old time. Well, I'm an idiot. You said AMERICAN. Duh on me. Well, they would be on my non-American list.
 
I don't know if they're all necessarily the greatest, but, they're my favorite. "Greatest" is a convoluted term. People love Faulkner. I can't stomach him. Doesn't mean he wasn't great.

Fante
Bukowski
McCarthy
Hemingway
Steinbeck
Easton Ellis
Carver
Crichton
Mcinerney
Palahniuk
 
Paul Auster
Lester Bangs
Charles Bukowski
Raymond Carver (and Gordon Lish)
Raymond Chandler
Peter Guralnick
Jack Kerouac
Cormac McCarthy
Flannery O'Connor
Jim Thompson
 
Have none of you read FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS????

Hemingway may be deemed as less than cool these days by some of you. But Ernie was cool and he belongs on the top of any list when discussing the great 20th century writers.

And don't give me Kero. I know: "Keruak never had to kill a bull to have something to write about"...as you hippies like to say. Fuck that. Hem studied the bulls the way Buk studied horse races.
When the PETA people convince us that racing animals is as evil as bullfights then maybe the next generation will frown on Buk's entire body of work the way people shit on Hem.
Hem was a master. Give the man his propers.
 
It seems to me that Hemingway's writings and place in popular culture are as secure as ever. And the value for his rarities only continue to rise.
Steinbeck, of all the writers of that generation deemed "great," seems to have lost the most traction, which to me is ironic, because Steinbeck's work is much more relevant today then Hem' s.
 
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It seems to me that Hemingway's writings and place in popular culture are as secure as ever. And the value for his rarities only continue to rise.
Steinbeck, of all the writers of that generation deemed "great," seems to have lost the most traction, which to me is ironic, because Steinbeck's work is much more relevant today then Hem' s.

I think Hemmingway's style and matter is much more relevant today then Steinback. But this is an awfully subjective debate.
 

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