Favourite Writer/ Your specialist Knowledge

IrishMark

Which writer/poet do you know more about than anything else? My tuppence worth is Yeats, followed by Seamus Heaney and Edmund Burke.

The Princess Bride

When I was younger,it would have been Charles Dickens,even tried to form a CD appreciation society:o,the CDS(I was 11). Enjoyed Emily Dickenson's poetry( hope it wasn't just because of the dickens in her name,only seeing this now)
Nowadays ,I really enjoy books by Harlan Coben & Dennis Lehane-and would know most info about both,also.
Nothing too heavy,thank you very much.

RonMexico

Hunter S. Thompson.

Madison Lee

I like to keep reading new authors but one that I know better is Harper Lee. I guess it helps that she’s written only one book The only reason I now consider To Kill a Mockingbird my ‘area of expertise’ is that I wrote a 25 page paper on it as a senior in college. Also, recently my son wanted my help with his 5 page paper on it so I got a chance to refamiliarize myself with the book and fall in love with it once again. I was so surprised when he said he really wanted to understand the mid-50s and what went on in American History because he has started to read this website (Shmoop) that really made him want to look into it. I’m so grateful for educational websites like this one that show kids that life is more than aimless video games.

old gregg

In my angsty late teens while going through a Kerouac, Burroughs, etc period I detoured and fell in love with the work of William Faulkner. 30+ years later and I've managed to spread his work out to a point where I've still not read everything but can savour a work every so often as if it were a new publication.

As an aside, had I read Harper Lee's masterpiece when younger I'd likely be giving a +1 to Madison Lee's comment. An astonishingly brilliant book.

Mayhap the topic for another discussion but American literature has produced some truly brilliant work. I'll stop now before this post turns into the great American novel

orchidsrpretty

My favorurite is John Irving. I love his writing style and have never found his books to be predictable. When I read a new one I always find myself spending any spare second I have finding out what happens next.

Denerick

I fancied myself as an up and coming Burkean scholar when in Uni (Read all of the biographies on him, as well as all of his pamphlets/writings and a fair chunk of his letters... I wrote a few not altogether terrible essays too) Much of that knowledge has seemingly evaporated, and I've read very little 18th century history over the past two years. The curse of the humanities student; eventually he has to go out into the real world and get a real job

old gregg

Denerick wrote: »

The curse of the humanities student; eventually he has to go out into the real world and get a real job

tell me about it. My years studying Plato equiped me for what?

Grievous

Too many to list.

Gore Vidal is one of my literary heroes and to paraphrase him on another of my heroes..."Calvino was the real deal".

Bodhidharma

Murakami

highlydebased

Orwell and J.G Ballard.

Anything Dystopian please!

Emiko

Robert Anton Wilson.

Tesco Massacre

Flann O'Brien, David Foster Wallace & George Orwell.

mnop

Sylvia Plath.

Mardy Bum

Brian Friel, JM Synge and Raymond Carver.

To a lesser extent Carver but both Friel and Synge were truly visionary.

Gordon Gecko

Elizabeth Bishop, though there is so much that I don't know.....

kickarykee

I know quite a lot about a few, but I've never been the type to read biographies and study a person's personal life in every detail only because I love their work.
I know a lot about some current writers since I talk to them occasionally or follow their careers more closely, but that's more or less it

Sergeant

Flann O'Brien I suppose.

emeraldstar

Jane Austen. Wrote my MA thesis on her.

Did a fair bit of work on Woolf during my undergrad years too though.

peregrinor

James Joyce, without a doubt! I fell in love after reading Ulysses. I've been slowly making my way through Finnegans Wake over the past year, which has certainly been an experience I'd recommend.

Da Shins Kelly

Shakespeare is probably one writer that I know a great deal about, having studied him in depth. In my own time, I've learned a lot about Oscar Wilde.

Odysseus

Da Shins Kelly wrote: »

Shakespeare is probably one writer that I know a great deal about, having studied him in depth. In my own time, I've learned a lot about Oscar Wilde.

+1 I never encountered any of his work until I was nearly 30, when I started my ungrad. There are lots of references to Shakespeare in Psychoanalysis, since then I have read the complete works, reading many of the plays again and again. At that time I used to commute to work on public transport, now that I have my own transport I don't get to read as much. Who would have thought Dublin Bus had its benefits:D

If I had the time I would love to do a MA in Shakespearian Studies just for my own pleasure, but I'm currently doing a second Masters, so I don't see that happening for a good while.

henryporter

peregrinor wrote: »

James Joyce, without a doubt! I fell in love after reading Ulysses. I've been slowly making my way through Finnegans Wake over the past year, which has certainly been an experience I'd recommend.

Well done - are you using the annotations?

Ulysses is a behemoth of a book, however my favorite writer would have to be the other great Irish master Samuel Beckett for his wit, sparseness, humanity and courage using a vast range of media to express his thoughts. His plays are a joy to witness and his novels reward the patient reader with ever increasing power of distillation where single words express more than chapters in other books by lesser skilled writers.

peregrinor

henryporter wrote: »

Well done - are you using the annotations?

Ulysses is a behemoth of a book, however my favorite writer would have to be the other great Irish master Samuel Beckett for his wit, sparseness, humanity and courage using a vast range of media to express his thoughts. His plays are a joy to witness and his novels reward the patient reader with ever increasing power of distillation where single words express more than chapters in other books by lesser skilled writers.

Oh, yes! The annotations are my best friend. I also have William York Tindall's A Reader's Guide to Finnegans Wake, which is okay. It is more of a friendly summary of the text rather than in-depth analysis, but sometimes I just need to have the basic plot spelled out for me.

I must admit that I have not read much Beckett! I will be reading Watt in the upcoming weeks in one of my modules and am quite looking forward to it. I have heard many good things. What works of his would you recommend?

IrishMark

Denerick wrote: »

I fancied myself as an up and coming Burkean scholar when in Uni (Read all of the biographies on him, as well as all of his pamphlets/writings and a fair chunk of his letters... I wrote a few not altogether terrible essays too) Much of that knowledge has seemingly evaporated, and I've read very little 18th century history over the past two years. The curse of the humanities student; eventually he has to go out into the real world and get a real job

If you've still got any of those essays, or would just like a chat about Burke, I'd love to read them or talk to ya. I'm thinking about doing a phd and have a few ideas about Burke myself. If ya fancy it pm me...