Sophelia Posted December 8, 2005 Share Posted December 8, 2005 Which novels contain the most beautiful prose? It's been 23 years since I studied English language/literature at school. Now I am trying to write novels of my own, I am frustrated that so many of my sentences are just 'meh' (functional, unmemorable or clumsy). I'm not sure if my style has simply not developed since I was 16 (I tend to revert to sequences of short sentences with 'and' being my most common sentence connective ), or whether the style I developed for work (scientific reports and teaching materials for university students) has been detrimental to my creative writing. So... I would like to study novels by authors who are widely regarded as having beautiful prose(doesn't have to be fantasy). Any suggestions? If you can say a bit more about why their prose is so good, that would be even better. P.S. And if anyone knows of authors who didn't write very well when they were 40, but later become masters/mistresses of prose, I'd be very encouraged to hear of them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maid Sansa Posted December 8, 2005 Share Posted December 8, 2005 My obligatory answer here is Jane Austen. But then, I'm a biased non-native speaker fangirl, so perhaps it shouldn't count. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashara Posted December 8, 2005 Share Posted December 8, 2005 From the fantasy world, I would recommend G.G. Kay. I think that he had achieved what most beginner writers are *trying* and failing miserably to do. He makes the purple style work and turn it into an elegant, sparkling show of mastery. He mesmerizes me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nobodymN Posted December 8, 2005 Share Posted December 8, 2005 I think when your talking about stylists the name that comes to my mind instantly is Mervyn Peake (see Gormenghast). Regarding authors currently, I really think Catherynne M Valente has the most aluring andc captivating prose I have read in a very long time. Her Yume Me Hon: Book of Dreams and The Labrynth are excercise in literary beauty. Just the first sentence in her Yume Me Hon: "Put a truce to any thoughts of departure. I am she who glides through the sky when the snow is falling fast, the lady of frost and darkness. I am a ghost, which is not to say I ever lived. I am a memory, which is not to say I ever died. I begin at the moment the ice on the river begins to crack like bones of glass. I am a silence written on pulp mash paper, in ink drawn from village wells" Nobody that I haves een lately fills her books from start to end with prose like Valente. China Mieville is capable of some of the most baroque and image inducing passages I have read, but Valente is continuous. Regarding classical authors, I think Thomas Wolfe (Look Homeward Angel) and Thomas Mann. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Angalin Posted December 8, 2005 Share Posted December 8, 2005 Sophelia, I've been having a ton of fun with Nancy Mitford's "The Pursuit of Love" lately. Witty, sharp, well-drawn characters... and snobbish as all hell. Love it. I'd say it depends on what kind of thing you yourself are working on, to a degree. Realistic? Fantastic? Sad? Funny? Not to say that you can't learn a lot from authors writing in a different genre than yours, but there's no harm in learning from the masters in your own. I'm working on the text for a children's picture book, so when I read to my children, I'm hyperaware of how another author puts it together. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pellegrina Posted December 8, 2005 Share Posted December 8, 2005 Anything by Sylvia Townsend Warner; my favourite is Lolly Willowes. I can't describe what appeals to me so about her prose, but she just changes the way you look at the world. Her short stories aren't special to me in the way that particular novel is - I've never really liked short stories that much - but always beautifully written. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Monboddo Posted December 8, 2005 Share Posted December 8, 2005 Gore Vidal, Samuel R. Delaney, Alexander Jablokov, Donna Tartt, Harlan Ellison, Winston Churchill, Mary Renault . . . those are just the ones off the top of my head. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry. Posted December 8, 2005 Share Posted December 8, 2005 I'll second the Thomas Wolfe and Thomas Mann references, then throw in Alejo Carpentier and Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez to the mix. Then toss in a dash of Hemingway ( to those troglodytes that hate him ) and FitzGerald, shake with some Saul Bellow and I'll have myself a nice, yummy cocktail to read! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
needle Posted December 8, 2005 Share Posted December 8, 2005 Sophelia, I've been having a ton of fun with Nancy Mitford's "The Pursuit of Love" lately. Witty, sharp, well-drawn characters... and snobbish as all hell. wink.gif Love it. Ang, I love Mitford, for the wit. Read her so many times. Soph..as far as fantasy goes, I agree with the G.G. Kaye reccs. He's definitely got the most luminous prose I've seen from a fantasy writer. Outside of fantasy, my mind has gone blank..except your style of writing makes me think of Dickens somehow. Not that I think his prose is neccessarily the most beautiful, just, seems to fit with your work. Donna Tartt..I'd second that one too, actually. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thynessa Reed Posted December 8, 2005 Share Posted December 8, 2005 Soph, here's my opinion for what it's worth. In fantasy - R A Lafferty. Anything else - John Banville. Haven't seen you on the boards very much. - I hope you are well and that your writing is in full flight. And here are a couple of links that may help Lafferty - http://www.mulle-kybernetik.com/RAL/MT/arcanum.html Banville - www.macmillan.com/11October2005BookerPrize.asp cheers T Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Banipal Posted December 8, 2005 Share Posted December 8, 2005 Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles has incredible imagery" "This fertile and sheltered tract of country, in which the fields are never brown and the springs never dry, is bounded on the south by the bold chalk ridge that embraces the prominences of Hambledon Hill, Bulbarrow, Nettlecombe-Tout, Dogbury, High Stoy, and Bubb Down. The traveller from the coast, who, after plodding northward for a score of miles over calcareous downs and corn-lands, suddenly reaches the verge of one of these escarpments, is surprised and delighted to behold, extended like a map beneath him, a country differing absolutely from that which he has passed through. Behind him the hills are open, the sun blazes down upon fields so large as to give an unenclosed character to the landscape, the lanes are white, the hedges low and plashed, the atmosphere colourless. Here, in the valley, the world seems to be constructed upon a smaller and more delicate scale; the fields are mere paddocks, so reduced that from this height their hedgerows appear a network of dark green threads overspreading the paler green of the grass. The atmosphere beneath is languorous, and is so tinged with azure that what artists call the middle distance partakes also of that hue, while the horizon beyond is of the deepest ultramarine. Arable lands arc few and limited; with but slight exceptions the prospect is a broad rich mass of grass and trees, mantling minor hills and dales within the major. Such is the Vale of Blackmoor." I also like the romantics, though that's poetry and not prose - Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, Tennyson. Their poems tell stories and I think they are a great inspiration. Bronte's Wuthering Heights. Anything by Dickens for characterization. Poe is my favorite for fantasy. His prose could have been written yesterday. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's short story "A Study in Scarlet." And I second Mervyn Peake for sure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Knight of Ashes Posted December 8, 2005 Share Posted December 8, 2005 Patricia A. McKillip's The Winter Rose, The Book of Atrix Wolfe and Ombrisa in Shadow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TehipiteTom Posted December 8, 2005 Share Posted December 8, 2005 Soph, here's my opinion for what it's worth. In fantasy - R A Lafferty. Anything else - John Banville. Haven't seen you on the boards very much. - I hope you are well and that your writing is in full flight. Aha! So at least one other person in the world has read Lafferty! I heartily second the nomination; Lafferty has a wonderful prose voice, precise yet whimsical. I think Lord Dunsany may be the greatest prose stylist in all of fantasy; his prose is musical, and well worth studying. In general fiction, read Gregory Rabassa's translation of Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. It's a masterpiece of prose, and a masterpiece of translation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
williamjm Posted December 8, 2005 Share Posted December 8, 2005 Which novels contain the most beautiful prose? I suppose it is subjective to some extent, but some fantasy authors whose prose I like are M. John Harrison, Steph Swainston, Roger Zelazney and Susannah Clarke. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Linda Posted December 8, 2005 Share Posted December 8, 2005 Seconding the recommendations for Kay (he's the God of Beautiful Prose as far as I am concerned) and also for Mary Renault. Oh, and Dorothy Dunnett, of course. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser_Denys Posted December 8, 2005 Share Posted December 8, 2005 I'd recommend Richard Russo, Ian McEwan, Cormac Mccarthy, and Jim Harrison. Great writing from all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brendan Moody Posted December 8, 2005 Share Posted December 8, 2005 I think Lord Dunsany may be the greatest prose stylist in all of fantasy; his prose is musical, and well worth studying. Absolutely seconded. I've just started his novel The Charwoman's Shadow, and it is endlessly wonderful and lyrical. Most of Dunsany's work is so carefully wrought as to be poetry in prose form. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unJon Posted December 8, 2005 Share Posted December 8, 2005 Outside of fantasy I love the prose of Goethe. Especially the Sorrow of Young Werther. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marcelo Rebelo Firqoralas Posted December 8, 2005 Share Posted December 8, 2005 Here are a few extremely skilled prose artists: Gene Wolfe (especially in The Book of the New Sun) Jack Vance Tanith Lee Ursula Le Guin Mervyn Peake John Crowley Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cteresa Posted December 8, 2005 Share Posted December 8, 2005 Gosh, not GGK, do not take his style - when it works for him, it works because of other elements, copying his style might lead to too purple prose. Like Linda, I love Dunnett and Renault. Graves as well, if you are going for historical novels. And I do loveGRRM´s writing as well ( duh), specially the short stories. McKillip is the obvious suggestion for lovely prose, totally agreed. Firgoret suggestions are all awesome prosists in my opinion - Jack Vance ( yep, it´s characters and plots I got a problem with), Tanith Lee ( oh yeah), Ursula Le Guin ( yep), Mervyn Peake ( yep), John Crowley ( if you want ultimate lovely fantasy prose, Little Big) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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