Comment by Guestmodinfo
14 hours ago
Please please suggest me some books where language and style of speaking sentences takes the crown rather than the story being the selling point.
I'm tired of hearing about the usual greats and also booker prize ones because they have good characters and good story content or shocking emotionally but are quite bland on the language front because they assume their readers have grade 5 level capacity so the sentences are simple, the vocab is basic. Thank you vintage dave
I really enjoyed Josiah Bancroft's Babel series: start with Senlin Ascends. I feel like he enjoys writing sentences -- a strange way to put it, but, I think he does. But this is an extraordinary book on its own.
For the ultimate in non-basic vocab, try Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun.
The English translation of Metro 2033 is amazing. You can feel the stylistic differences originating in the Russian language, and it's a very evocative horror story with slightly longer sentences and richer language than ordinary books.
Both the Babel books and Metro 2033 (especially) were inspirations for me, writing my novel. And Wolfe is one of my literary heroes, one of the most amazing writers I have ever read. Every one of his novels is rewarding, often through not just language but complexity of plot and narrator. He uses unreliable narrators a lot; beautifully, in one of his series the narrator has amnesia and cannot remember what occurred the previous day, so writes notes to himself. (Soldier of the Mist. Also rewarding once you figure out the name and location references.)
An older classic: Mervyn Peake's Titus Groan is extraordinary in language, but also in the rhythm of sentences. Definitely one written to be read with a voice, not just internally.
Perdido Street Station by China Mieville has dense prose. Wonderful book, very rewarding to read.
Here's another. I focused on denser prose: prose that is rewarding to read because of the complexity of the language and style.
But simpler prose but it can be just as rewarding when it is written for a purpose, and I'd love to recommend to you Lavie Tidhar's Osama. It is written in noir style, and so the sentences are far simpler, sparser. Yet there are multiple styles in this book and the kind of prose tells you a lot about story or the place in the world. I am writing vaguely because I don't want to give spoilers. He is an excellent writer and he chose a specific style in this book that he executed very well.
John Updike. Better than average prose in all of his books, but his debut The Poorhouse Fair is outstanding. It may be too much for modern readers - not many explosions or super heroics - but even if you only get a chapter in, it shows what can be done with English.
Moby Dick is unexpectedly stylish. You'd think a story about a whale would be more genre-ish, but the writing is very fun.
Then there are heavy hitters are writers like Gabriel García Márquez, Tom Wolfe, and Virginia Woolf.
James Joyce is the end level boss. Ulysses is readable, but by the time you get to Finnegan's Wake it's hard to imagine anyone getting more abstract.
I really liked "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" by Milan Kundera because of the style of writing and not because of the story. The author goes on a lot of thought-provoking philosophical tangents. Here's an example from the very beginning of the book:
But is heaviness truly deplorable and lightness splendid?
The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become.
Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant.
What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?
Parmenides posed this very question in the sixth century before Christ. He saw the world divided into pairs of opposites: light/darkness, fineness/coarseness, warmth/cold, being/non-being. One half of the opposition he called positive (light, fineness, warmth, being), the other negative. We might find this division into positive and negative poles childishly simple except for one difficulty: which one is positive, weight or lightness?
Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian especially. His style won't be to everyone's tastes, but you certainly can't describe it as bland.
I second this, CM is an incredible storyteller. Blood Meridian is one of my favorite novels & made me want to write.
> Blood Meridian is one of my favorite novels
I cannot fathom how people enjoy that book. I appreciate the writing (and love other CM books) but Blood Meridian felt like a gratuitous ordeal to me. I tried watching lit professors lecture about it too but I still just don’t get it.
Neal Stephenson - Anathem is great and not an easy reader. I enjoyed most of his other books but that one was the complexity sweet spot for me.
Umberto Eco and Ursula Le Guin I agree on.
His latest one, polostan, may be the worst book I’ve ever read on the other hand.. No idea what happened.
Easy. The turn of the screw by Henry James. Literally anyone who absolutely loves James primarily appreciates his descriptive form.
Another author that comes to mind is Zizek. His books could easily be reduced to a boring 2 page essay, but instead they are taken on a wild ride through cultural and theory and philosophical history and virtually encoded in philosophy jargon in order to absolutely reek of intellectualism. I'm 0% ashamed to admit openly that keeping up with him as I read makes me proud of my brain and attention capacity way more than I actually agree with his specific political philosophy in a work.
> Please please suggest me some books where language and style of speaking sentences takes the crown rather than the story being the selling point.
I will give you approximately twenty delightful novels where the prose and the stories are both excellent: Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey–Maturin series.
I avoided these books for the longest time because I didn't believe I was the kind of person who would read “books about tall ships.” But so many people recommend these particular books because of the masterly writing that I tried the first, Master and Commander. Immediately, I was taken by O’Brian’s writing: vivid, lively, and engaging, while also utterly precise.
Give that first novel a try. It’s not easy, but it is oh so rewarding.
Edited to add some examples from the first novel:
“I have never yet known a man admit that he was either rich or asleep: perhaps the poor man and the wakeful man have some great moral advantage.”
“Where there was no equality there was no companionship: when a man was obliged to say ‘Yes, sir,’ his agreement was of no worth even if it happened to be true.”
“He held up two fingers, in case a landman might not fully comprehend so great a number.”
“But you know as well as I, patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which is infamous, or my country is always right, which is imbecile.”
> language and style of speaking sentences
Nabokov? His protagonists have very special styles of speaking. I'd recommend "Pale Fire" (which is also very funny and has an interesting hypertext-like structure) as a starter.
Nabokov is even more impressive once you realise that English wasn't even his first language!
It more or less was. He grew up in an extremely cosmopolitan household and was trilingual.
Any book from Jack London. It’s not difficult to find great books.
Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient. When I read that book I found myself rereading pages because the prose was so beautiful. No book’s has come close to that for me. I didn’t know you could assemble words and sentences and paragraphs so perfectly.
Thankfully, the story is as strong as the prose. Excellent book all around.
This has both: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/65058/pale-lights
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig, especially if you're into philosophical thinking. The way he blends it with a compelling narrative is masterful.
It’s hard to know what anyone considers the “usual greats”. Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize for literature, but she doesn’t seem to make it into the “average” person’s greats list, possibly because her use of language is very much not grade 5. Try The Golden Notebook, The Summer Before the Dark, The Grass Is Singing, The Good Terrorist, The Fifth Child, or the series that starts with Shikasta.
E.L. Doctorow is another such example. Try The Book of Daniel, Ragtime, Billy Bathgate, Loon Lake.
In the scifi genre (aside from the Shikasta series already mentioned), M. John Harrison is worth a look. He’s got a long bibliography but Light might be a good starting point.
Umberto Eco: The Name of the Rose, Foucault’s Pendulum.
Some of Ursula Le Guin’s more serious books might fit the bill, like The Dispossessed or The Left Hand of Darkness.
Someone already mentioned Mervyn Peake, he definitely fits this category.
The Name of the Rose by Eco is essential. Don't be fooled if you've only seen the movie, which was not good. The book itself is phenomenal.
Loved it. The earnest perspective of these monks can be very funny. Don’t know how to describe the rewarding prose except “chewy”, and this is a translation from Italian. Speaking of writing, the author’s extensive notes at the end are also excellent.
How far are you willing to go? If you want a novel that really emphasizes language over plot and character, read Ulysses.
I see Joyce was already recommended. How about Borges then?
Read some mature Discworld content (Guards! Guards! is the best entry point, I'd say), it's an easy read too. Pratchett's skill with English would make even a tax report smooth and riveting.
No need to always flex with some highbrow stuff to find a masterful style.
Yes - he's popular for a reason, not pop, but that he deserves popularity. I wonder about being highbrow... in that yes you're right, that's how he's viewed, and he's well-known and it's fantasy and it's comedic and therefore cannot be highbrow (awful how we judge these things) but he has some very insightful ideas or ethics he wants to communicate. If, to me, lowbrow vs highbrow is about depth or insight, or long-lasting value in literature (will he be read in a hundred years? Yes), he is high, even if 'easy'. You're absolutely right, 'masterful' in style.
He writes sentences around how they're, eh, delivered? Can't think of a better word. Lots of footnotes and clauses and parentheticals. And the timing of his words make the jokes.
His stories are beautiful. The language is very ordinary. (Not a criticism.)
I would absolutely call him a landmark writer, but I wouldn't call him lit fic in the publishing sense.
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Well, I think the wisdom is too neatly packaged (basically: Vetinari speaks, so listen you pillock) and his simplistic views often hamfisted by shaping the world to make them sound Right^tm to be "highbrow" per se, but still, it's not for the idiot either.
> He writes sentences around how they're, eh, delivered? Can't think of a better word. And the timing of his words make the jokes.
You put the words in my mouth, very accurate way of describing his style!
Proust. In search of lost time (caveat I’m halfway through book one) is a story in which almost nothing happens but it is described exquisitely.
Indeed. This is usually the go-to example of writing as performance art. So far I haven't had the courage to dip my toe in.
I have some vague memories of people praising the prose of The Name of the Wind but being less impressed with its plot.
I find Sanderson very easy to read, the "style of speaking" just flows of the page. I'm not a huge fan of what he writes about, Ive only read a few of his books, but I assumed his style is one of the reasons for his popularity.
I asked this question on Metafilter ages ago, should be some good suggestions in there: https://ask.metafilter.com/116971/What-are-your-favorite-nov...