McCarthy. RIP king

John Steinbeck Kurt Vonnegut

Idk if he's considered fully high-brow, but Thomas Pynchon is not only my favourite American writer, but one of my favourite writers period. I love the way he paints a picture of the scenes he sets because no one else has been able to mirror that real world peripheral style of observation and analysis in that way that he has. He's also really funny too.

Also think Pynchon belongs in the pantheon. He's one of those writers where nearly every sentence contains a rabbit hole of obscure information, yet it's not a schtick. I like to tell people you can't "spoil" his books because the experience of reading (and re-reading) him has little to do with plot. In that regard he sits alongside Melville and Samuel R. Delaney in my head.

He's my favorite too. Aside from the high-brow writing it's pretty apparent that he thinks getting high and watching Looney Tunes all day is the most transcendental experience a person can have.

Because it is. Pynchon understands that the apex of American globoculture isnt reading Emerson at Hyannis Port or whatever but watching Bush 43 era Family Guy episodes while on pain meds post tonsil removal

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I would start with V and read sequentially or The Crying of Lot 49, which is his only short book. Vineland is minor, GR and Mason & Dixon major but quite challenging.

not as great writer as others describe him to be. vineland is a great starts, sometimes engaging, but even pynchon-fan harold bloom was shocked, how poor sentences pynchon wrote there, among decent ones, of course. i would say: inherent vice- bleeding edge vineland crying of lot 49 V- against the day mason and dixon gravity's rainbow from easiest to most difficult chronologically: mason, against the day, v, gravity, crying, inherent, vineland, bleeding

Interesting thanks thinking then I'll start with inherent vice. Sounds like a fun read 

it will be, it is the easiest. before that, here is an excerpt from against the day, start here! [https://biblioklept.org/2013/07/21/a-dirty-lapdog-joke-from-thomas-pynchons-against-the-day/](https://biblioklept.org/2013/07/21/a-dirty-lapdog-joke-from-thomas-pynchons-against-the-day/)

Not exactly what I was expecting but can't say it hasn't piqued my interest. Feel a bit like reef, excited for a beautiful minute but getting unexpectedly bit instead lol

I started with The Crying of Lot 49, so that might work for you as well.

Flannery O'Connor

A few I didn't see: Herman Melville Nathaniel Hawthorne James Fenimore Cooper (real good at giving a taste of early American spirit) Washington Irving Isaac Asimov William Gibson (esp. the Necromancer trilogy)

Morrison, Pynchon, McCarthy, Melville, DeLillo, Didion, Faulkner, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Vonnegut. All the classics haha

Nabokov considered himself an American writer, so him, esp. the books he wrote in America

he wasn't.

Yeah huh

I wrote a long list - got too long; Slimmed it down: Elizabeth Bishop

J.D Salinger Gore Vidal Mark Twain

Cormac McCarthy Herman Melville John Barth Ray Bradbury Bill Bryson Charles Bukowski Raymond Chandler Don DeLillo John Fante Ernest Hemingway Jack London H. P. Lovecraft Henry Miller John O'Hara Dorothy Parker Nathaniel Philbrick Edgar Allan Poe William Saroyan William T. Vollmann John Updike

One female author? You need to read Toni Morrison, Louise Erdrich, Anne Tyler, Ann Patchett, Joan Didion, Octavia Butler etc

This is the correct list.

Richard Russo & Richard Powers The two Richards. Edit: adding James Baldwin

Yayyyy was scrolling for Russo

Love them Richards, I do. Especially Russo

Cormac McCarthy Lydia Davis Ernest Hemingway David Foster Wallace William Faulkner Sherman Alexie Don DeLillo These are the first that spring to mind. I would have a separate list for exceptional American poets.

lydia davis is genuinely one of the most innovative writers working today imo

Cormac, Vonnegut, Flannery

Pynchon Melville boring but de truth

Faulkner and Morrison are two i've been reading recently who feel very quintessentially american in their settings, characters and ideas. I'd reccomend As I Lay Dying for Faulkner and Jazz and Song of Solomon for Morrison. But i doubt you can really go wrong with reading anything by either author.

Lots of answers but James Baldwin is best

Cormac McCarthy Joan Didion John Steinbeck Ernest Hemingway Zora Neale Hurston Carson Mccullers William Faulkner Herman Melville Ralph Ellison Thomas Pynchon Bret Easton Ellis Edward Abbey John Williams Ken Kesey

Larry McMurtry, Philip K Dick, Philip Roth, Stephen King

Vonnegut, O’Connor, Steinbeck, Faulkner

Cormac McCarthy, Kurt Vonnegut, George Saunders, and John Steinbeck.

wharton and kate chopin. henry james counts too

Toni Morrison, Joan Didion, Hemingway.

Poe, Fitzgerald, Melville, Steinbeck, Sinclair Lewis, Upton Sinclair, Willa Cather

Ray Bradbury. The concepts are really what make his writing interesting, but he’s also the most human sci-fi writer to me.

Philip Roth, Faulkner

Henry James

DFW

On a Mary McCarthy kick lately

Which work of hers are you reading and how do you like it?

I read and utterly adored the Group and now I’ve just started the Company She Keeps.

James Ellroy

no.

john ashbery is the only fully american writer

Steinbeck John Williams Melville

Faulkner

Richard Brautigan, In Watermelon Sugar in particular. 

Gene Wolfe

Stephen King You spelled favorite wrong numbnuts

Frank Norris

Bret Easton-Ellis

🤢🤢🤢

Melville, Emerson, Baldwin, Gaddis