Who writes/wrote the best sentences?

[Bossy Monkey]

Poll question: Who writes/wrote the best sentences?

I'll kick off with five suggestions of my own, but just as in my previous life as undisclosedlocation, I will happily replace any of these not receiving votes. Sorry there are no women, but I will gladly add them as suggested from your replies. If none are forthcoming, I'll just add Ursula K. Le Guin and anybody the hell else I can think of.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

1. Jane Austen.

:hide:

[Bossy Monkey]

4. I'll do it! Don't push me!

Seriously, did she write really bad sentences? I've read no Jane Austen.

[Mike 03]

2. Of the authors on this list, I had to vote for Hemingway, even though there are better authors

who assemble more impressive sentences. His work was of enormous importance for its directness and subtext, although many people don't appreciate it nowadays.

[Mike 03]

3. If I may add some authors who are favorites of mine in terms of sentence

construction:

Don Delillo
Cormac McCarthy
Mario Vargas Llosa
T. C. Boyle (one of my teachers)
John Updike
John Irving
Joseph Heller (especially "Something Happened", a fascinating and under-appreciated work of art, IMO)
Thomas Pynchon

ON EDIT:

Rec. This is the sort of worthwhile and stimulating discussion I crave here and wish we could see more of. Awesome.

[Bossy Monkey]

5. I'll start with Pynchon; maybe add a few more if others aren't stimulated n/t

[Redneck Socialist]

6. Have you read any Dennis Johnson?

I'd add him to your list.

McCarthy blows me away.

[Bossy Monkey]

18. I'll consider this a seconding vote for Cormac McCarthy n/t

[Phillycat]

7. Dorothy Parker, Jane Austin, Richard Russo, Jonathan Franzen, Neil Gaiman

and William Shakespeare.

[Bossy Monkey]

9. NOBODY has to suggest Dorothy Parker to me twice for anything!:) n/t

[Phillycat]

14. Well, I mean, for sentences, she's hard to beat. :D

Take care of luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves.

Salary is no object; I want only enough to keep body and soul apart.

That woman speaks eighteen languages, and can't say No in any of them.

She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.

[Bossy Monkey]

19. I hear that Shakespeare fellow's pretty good, too.

Are we both named after our cats now? That's just sick. We'll be drummed out of the Lounge!

[Phillycat]

23. Hee! No, my name is actually Cat.

And I'm actually from Philly. :D

[elleng]

27. And I am the Queen of Rumania!

.

[Taverner]

8. Sorry, gotta go with Papa here

Hemmingway was part journalist, part fiction writer. And he could construct the greatest sentences with less.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

10. Less is more.

:)

[Taverner]

11. As Louis Armstrong said...

It's not the notes you play - its the ones you don't play

[frogmarch]

12. Douglas Adams wrote so well that

as I read what he wrote, I forgot I was reading. I was transported to the imaginary world he'd created. Now, that's good writing!

[Bossy Monkey]

15. I think of him as writing the best paragraphs.

I was kind of surprised he got votes (but pleased).

[kentauros]

24. I voted for Adams, too.

I'm not much of a "classics" reader, though I did start reading a little of Moby Dick a year or so ago and was pleasantly surprised that I might actually enjoy it. I'll have to go back to it when I get the time ;)

[tigereye]

13. hmm, for short, terse sentences, Hemingway

for lush, emotional and full ones, Austen.



for those not on your list, Barbara Kingsolver does pretty well, but there are plenty more writers with lovely sentences.

[YankeyMCC]

16. You want powerful stuff in very short form nothing beats Michael Swanwick's

Periodic Table of SciFi:

http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/periodictable.html

[Tyrone Slothrop]

17. I'll go with Pynchon

He can sometimes be too verbose, and I usually appreciate economy of language; but, some of his more dense sentences contain amazingly vivid descriptions with a clarity and insight that's rarely found in contemporary literature.

I'll even provide an example.

"The structure out here was revealed immediately -- desert punctuated by oases in a geography of cruelty, barkhans or travelling sand-dunes a hundred feet high, which might or might not possess consciousness, cloaked and hooded, not earthly projections of the angel of death, exactly, for species here had gained a reputation for their ability to hold on even under the worst conditions -- the predators tended to be skyborne, the prey to live beneath the surface, with the surface itself, defining them to one another, a region of blankness, a field in which the deadly transactions were to be performed." -- Pynchon from Against the Day

[harmonicon]

20. I voted for Pynchon, but I think it's crazy that you don't include Beckett in this list

[MilesColtrane]

21. F. Scott Fitzgerald

[Zorro]

22. Lawrence Durrell

[Iggo]

25. Hemingway kicked mucho ass.

But don't forget Dashiell Hammett and Mickey Spillane.

[Bossy Monkey]

31. Didn't. Dash (or Sam, if you prefer) has been sitting atop the poll with no votes all night n/t

[Iggo]

32. Well call me Blindy Blinderson! (n/t)

:rofl:

[pokerfan]

26. Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

[Drunken Irishman]

28. G. W. Bush.

[Lyric]

29. Faulkner, of course.

Assuming you don't mind the fact that they take up half of the page. :P

Edit: Save for the best literary sentence of ALL TIME: "My mother is a fish."

[6000eliot]

30. Hemmingway on your list,

but James M. Cain is probably one of the best prose stylists I've ever read, and he also has the best opening lines of any novelist I've ever read. The Postman Always Rings Twice begins, "They Threw me off the hay truck about noon."