Good contemporary fiction authors.

[Il Medico]

I read a lot of fiction, but but most modern authors (late 20th/ 21st Century) I've read I have found to be shit. And please don't suggest I read Stephen King or Tom Clancy, I said good authors.

Anyways, thanks.

[Invincible Summer]

Douglas Coupland, William Gibson (more sci-fi), Neil Gaiman, and Chuck Palanhiuk are quite good IMO.

[New Tet]

Here's my top list: John Nichols (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Nichols_%28American_writer%29) (essays and political fiction), Ursula Le Guin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_K._Le_Guin) (sci-fi, fantasy, poetry) Gabriel Garcia Marquez (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Garcia_Marquez) (journalism, essays, fiction, fantasy, you-name-it) Joyce Carol Oates (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_Carol_Oates)(fiction, poetry).



Of the dead ones, I recommend: John Updike (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Updike) (a bit reactionary but great prose) and Norman Mailer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Mailer).

[MarxSchmarx]

Haruki Murakami

[Random Precision]

William Vollmann
Salman Rushdie
Roberto Bolaño
China Miéville

[New Tet]

William Vollmann
Salman Rushdie
Roberto Bolaño
China Miéville

Also, two important writers and thinkers that I unforgivably forgot: Tariq Ali (fiction and current affairs) and Noam Chomsky (current affairs).

[Bilan]

Stephen Fry

Edit: I missed the dissing of Stephen Fry. Are you out of your freakin' mind, sir?
Have ye read The Hippopotamus?
It is superb!

[RED DAVE]

John LeCarre

RED DAVE

[Il Medico]

Stephen Fry

Edit: I missed the dissing of Stephen Fry. Are you out of your freakin' mind, sir?
Have ye read The Hippopotamus?
It is superb!
If you are talking to me, I dissed Stephen KING, not Stephen Fry.

[RED DAVE]

The United States of America has gone mad

John le Carré


America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War. The reaction to 9/11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams. As in McCarthy times, the freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being systematically eroded. The combination of compliant US media and vested corporate interests is once more ensuring that a debate that should be ringing out in every town square is confined to the loftier columns of the East Coast press.

The imminent war was planned years before bin Laden struck, but it was he who made it possible. Without bin Laden, the Bush junta would still be trying to explain such tricky matters as how it came to be elected in the first place; Enron; its shameless favouring of the already-too-rich; its reckless disregard for the world's poor, the ecology and a raft of unilaterally abrogated international treaties. They might also have to be telling us why they support Israel in its continuing disregard for UN resolutions.

But bin Laden conveniently swept all that under the carpet. The Bushies are riding high. Now 88 per cent of Americans want the war, we are told. The US defence budget has been raised by another $60 billion to around $360 billion. A splendid new generation of nuclear weapons is in the pipeline, so we can all breathe easy. Quite what war 88 per cent of Americans think they are supporting is a lot less clear. A war for how long, please? At what cost in American lives? At what cost to the American taxpayer's pocket? At what cost - because most of those 88 per cent are thoroughly decent and humane people - in Iraqi lives?

How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America's anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history. But they swung it. A recent poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre. But the American public is not merely being misled. It is being browbeaten and kept in a state of ignorance and fear. The carefully orchestrated neurosis should carry Bush and his fellow conspirators nicely into the next election.

Those who are not with Mr Bush are against him. Worse, they are with the enemy. Which is odd, because I'm dead against Bush, but I would love to see Saddam's downfall - just not on Bush's terms and not by his methods. And not under the banner of such outrageous hypocrisy.

The religious cant that will send American troops into battle is perhaps the most sickening aspect of this surreal war-to-be. Bush has an arm-lock on God. And God has very particular political opinions. God appointed America to save the world in any way that suits America. God appointed Israel to be the nexus of America's Middle Eastern policy, and anyone who wants to mess with that idea is a) anti-Semitic, b) anti-American, c) with the enemy, and d) a terrorist.

God also has pretty scary connections. In America, where all men are equal in His sight, if not in one another's, the Bush family numbers one President, one ex-President, one ex-head of the CIA, the Governor of Florida and the ex-Governor of Texas.

Care for a few pointers? George W. Bush, 1978-84: senior executive, Arbusto Energy/Bush Exploration, an oil company; 1986-90: senior executive of the Harken oil company. Dick Cheney, 1995-2000: chief executive of the Halliburton oil company. Condoleezza Rice, 1991-2000: senior executive with the Chevron oil company, which named an oil tanker after her. And so on. But none of these trifling associations affects the integrity of God's work.

In 1993, while ex-President George Bush was visiting the ever-democratic Kingdom of Kuwait to receive thanks for liberating them, somebody tried to kill him. The CIA believes that "somebody" was Saddam. Hence Bush Jr's cry: "That man tried to kill my Daddy." But it's still not personal, this war. It's still necessary. It's still God's work. It's still about bringing freedom and democracy to oppressed Iraqi people.

To be a member of the team you must also believe in Absolute Good and Absolute Evil, and Bush, with a lot of help from his friends, family and God, is there to tell us which is which. What Bush won't tell us is the truth about why we're going to war. What is at stake is not an Axis of Evil — but oil, money and people's lives. Saddam's misfortune is to sit on the second biggest oilfield in the world. Bush wants it, and who helps him get it will receive a piece of the cake. And who doesn't, won't.

If Saddam didn't have the oil, he could torture his citizens to his heart's content. Other leaders do it every day - think Saudi Arabia, think Pakistan, think Turkey, think Syria, think Egypt.

Baghdad represents no clear and present danger to its neighbours, and none to the US or Britain. Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, if he's still got them, will be peanuts by comparison with the stuff Israel or America could hurl at him at five minutes' notice. What is at stake is not an imminent military or terrorist threat, but the economic imperative of US growth. What is at stake is America's need to demonstrate its military power to all of us - to Europe and Russia and China, and poor mad little North Korea, as well as the Middle East; to show who rules America at home, and who is to be ruled by America abroad.

The most charitable interpretation of Tony Blair's part in all this is that he believed that, by riding the tiger, he could steer it. He can't. Instead, he gave it a phoney legitimacy, and a smooth voice. Now I fear, the same tiger has him penned into a corner, and he can't get out.

It is utterly laughable that, at a time when Blair has talked himself against the ropes, neither of Britain's opposition leaders can lay a glove on him. But that's Britain's tragedy, as it is America's: as our Governments spin, lie and lose their credibility, the electorate simply shrugs and looks the other way. Blair's best chance of personal survival must be that, at the eleventh hour, world protest and an improbably emboldened UN will force Bush to put his gun back in his holster unfired. But what happens when the world's greatest cowboy rides back into town without a tyrant's head to wave at the boys?

Blair's worst chance is that, with or without the UN, he will drag us into a war that, if the will to negotiate energetically had ever been there, could have been avoided; a war that has been no more democratically debated in Britain than it has in America or at the UN. By doing so, Blair will have set back our relations with Europe and the Middle East for decades to come. He will have helped to provoke unforeseeable retaliation, great domestic unrest, and regional chaos in the Middle East. Welcome to the party of the ethical foreign policy.

There is a middle way, but it's a tough one: Bush dives in without UN approval and Blair stays on the bank. Goodbye to the special relationship.

I cringe when I hear my Prime Minister lend his head prefect's sophistries to this colonialist adventure. His very real anxieties about terror are shared by all sane men. What he can't explain is how he reconciles a global assault on al-Qaeda with a territorial assault on Iraq. We are in this war, if it takes place, to secure the fig leaf of our special relationship, to grab our share of the oil pot, and because, after all the public hand-holding in Washington and Camp David, Blair has to show up at the altar.

"But will we win, Daddy?"

"Of course, child. It will all be over while you're still in bed."

"Why?"

"Because otherwise Mr Bush's voters will get terribly impatient and may decide not to vote for him."

"But will people be killed, Daddy?"

"Nobody you know, darling. Just foreign people."

"Can I watch it on television?"

"Only if Mr Bush says you can."

"And afterwards, will everything be normal again? Nobody will do anything horrid any more?"

"Hush child, and go to sleep."

Last Friday a friend of mine in California drove to his local supermarket with a sticker on his car saying: "Peace is also Patriotic". It was gone by the time he'd finished shopping.RED DAVE

[Jimmie Higgins]

Ha, I agree with you Doc! I love early 20th century fiction and mid century stuff from highbrow to lowbrow, but after the end of fiction in popular magazines, writing became artificially separated into "Lit" and "Genre" fiction by publishing companies. Since hollywood films have become so expensive and adverse to anything challenging, I really wish popular fiction could become more of a place for more risky stories - but instead we get cookie-cutter "Romance" "Thriller" and "Crime" fiction.

Michael Chabon's "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay", is a fantastic read. I don't know what to make of it politically: Jewish anti-nazi immigrants in the early 20th century and not one mention (even in passing) of the Communist Party! I think politics aside, that's a glaring historical omission; there's no way the characters would have not had some kind of opinion of Communist Party anti-nazi work one way or anther. Even stranger is that one of the characters is named Rosa Luxembourg. Anyway, if anyone's read it, I'd like to hear what they think of it from a political angle.

Still, like I said it's a really enjoyable and moving book.

For more challenging reads I'd recommend "Infinite Jest" by David Foster Wallace. It's very interesting and very funny in parts. I think he tried a little too hard to be the new Thomas Pynchon (there was a rumor for a while that the author didn't actually exist but was a creation of Thomas Pynchon). Reading it I alternated between hating it and loving it. The book so full of detail and info-overload (on purpose) that after reading it, I felt like I had just spent a week dropping Acid... it got under my skin.

Roberto Bolano - sort of a bohemian trotskyist from all over the spanish speaking world is also very interesting. "The Savage Detectives" is sort of an overview of the left and the counter-culture in Mexico in a semi-fictionalized way. The way he writes about Mexican poets in the 70s makes the scene sound like the Rev-Left of poetry: lots of denunciations and contentiousness.:lol: His earnestness and passion is a refreshing change from the ironic stance of most American lit since the 70s.

[Bilan]

If you are talking to me, I dissed Stephen KING, not Stephen Fry.

Oh, my bad.
Sorry about that.
...
Read Stephen Fry.

[Jazzratt]

I can only really second people's suggestions with special mentions for China Miéville and William Gibson. I'm surprised no one has mentioned Iain Banks who has written some astoundingly good books Wasp Factory, Complicity & Crow Road being my three favourites. Iain also does science fiction (under the name Iain M. Banks to avoid confusion for fans).

In a completely different direction I suppose you could count Tom Holt and Robert Rankin as contemporary fiction although they both write absurd novels involving the supernatural. They're also humour novelists so that obviously makes them far inferior :rolleyes:

[x359594]

Recently deceased but one of the great contemporary writers is J. G. Ballard. Other good fiction writers are Robert Stone, Don Delilo, the already mentioned Joyce Carol Oates, Michelle Tea and Chris Abani.

[New Tet]

Alice Walker

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFyE7gyW5dk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Walker

Langston Hughes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZk86y1rn78

Richard Wright

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCylbGvCKDk

With special emphasis on James Baldwin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rt-WgwFEUNQ

[ZeroNowhere]

Try George R. R. Martin.

[Schrödinger's Cat]

Try George R. R. Martin.

Second'ed.

Gene Wolfe is a great fantasy author, too, but his imagery and symbolism revolves around Catholicism if that bothers you. If not, "Book of the New Sun" is a must.

"Blood Meridian" (By Cormac McCarthy, author of The Road) is an excellent book that makes Westerns - one of my least favorite genres - exciting.

[ZeroNowhere]

Gene Wolfe is a great fantasy author, too, but his imagery and symbolism revolves around Catholicism if that bothers you. If not, "Book of the New Sun" is a must. It's also worth picking up 'The Fifth Head of Cerberus'. Another good recent Catholic author is R. A. Lafferty. Again, it does have a pretty important part in his work, but it's not shoved down your throat, and he thankfully tends to avoid allegory.

Incidentally, I still find it rather strange how Gaiman is a pretty lousy writer, given the authors which he likes.

[New Tet]

It's also worth picking up 'The Fifth Head of Cerberus'. Another good recent Catholic author is R. A. Lafferty. Again, it does have a pretty important part in his work, but it's not shoved down your throat, and he thankfully tends to avoid allegory.

Incidentally, I still find it rather strange how Gaiman is a pretty lousy writer, given the authors which he likes.

My experience with Catholics in sci-fi/fantasy came through Walter Miller's A Canticle for Liebowitz (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Liebowitz).

Cat's Cradle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat%27s_Cradle) and The Sirens of Titan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sirens_of_Titan) are my favorite of Kurt Vonnegut's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut), as well as Mother Night (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Night).

[ZeroNowhere]

Yeah, 'A Canticle for Leibowitz' is a great book, if not quite contemporary. It was from the second half of the 20th Century, though.

[New Tet]

Yeah, 'A Canticle for Leibowitz' is a great book, if not quite contemporary. It was from the second half of the 20th Century, though.

I call it contemporary, even if the author himself is no longer around.