Name some of your favorite forgotten writers...

[First Speaker]

...one of the bad things about getting old is that people--writers, actors, musicians, even politicians--that meant a lot when you were younger get forgotten. It isn't even so much "my" generation--I was born in 1953--but the people in my parent's generation who were part of the landscape when I was young, but have faded. I have lots of writers whom I still love and reread, but they're marching to oblivion. In any event, here are some writers whom I'm ready to revive:

Mystery: Ellery Queen, John Dickson Carr, Fredric Brown, Cornell Woolrich, Joel Townsley Rogers, Margery Allingham. Especially Ellery Queen.

SF/Fantasy: Fredric Brown again, Fritz Leiber, Henry Kuttner/C.L. Moore, Cordwainer Smith, Doris Pischeria, Clifford D. Simak, L. Sprague de Camp

"Straight" fiction: James Gould Cozzens, Willa Cather, Katherine Anne Porter, John O'Hara, Carson McCullers, James Agee, Richard Wright., J.B. Priestley.

Non-fiction: Dwight MacDonald, Andrew Sarris, J. H. Plumb, Mary McCarthy(yes, she was a novelist, too, but I prefer her non-fiction), Richard Rovere, William L. Shirer.

Anyone else have any nominees...?

[trc]

1. W. Somerset Maugham, love the way his prose flow off the page. nt

[First Speaker]

2. Good Choice. He made it look easy...

[uriel1972]

3. Jack Vance...

One of the true originals

[First Speaker]

4. I love the Demon Princes novels!

[sakabatou]

5. Way back when, K. A. Applegate

[Skittles]

6. Enid Blyton

I LOVED her books when I was a kid; yes INDEED

[Ron Obvious]

8. Have you tried re-reading them as an adult?

Like you, I devoured them when I was a kid and couldn't get enough of them. I tried reading a Famous Five again as an adult and felt massively let down. It isn't just that they haven't aged well either, I don't think.

Anyway, don't try to read them again if you want to hold on to the nostalgia.

[Skittles]

13. ha, no, I haven't, and I won't

my favorite toy was a golliwog, and that no, I would not have one of those again either

[VOX]

7. Frederick Exley, Pauline Kael, Ian Frazier, Walker Percy...

James M. Cain, Joyce Carol Oates, Roger Angell, Truman Capote, James Jones, Ian Fleming (guilty pleasure), Janet Flanner, James Thurber, Caroline Alexander...

I'm all over the place. But in particular, I just re-read Capote's "In Cold Blood"-- it is still a masterwork. The "non-fiction novel" is spare, bleak and brutal, speeding along with tones of irony, fate, anticipation and sorrow. It's a remarkable achievement.

[betsuni]

10. I just reread "Breakfast at Tiffany's"

Holly Golightly is a great character. I want a remake of the movie version, this time following the story, and with an actress that looks like Edie Sedgwick because that's who I see when I read the story. And play up any similarities to Melania Trump. Along with "Tiffany's" I'd ordered "In Cold Blood" and another Capote work from an online used bookstore and was disappointed when my order arrived and they weren't in stock. I've never read "In Cold Blood" and need to.

This description of the Tiffany's narrator by Holly always gets me: "Yearning. Not stupid. He wants awfully to be on the inside staring out: anybody with their nose pressed against a glass is liable to look stupid."

[no_hypocrisy]

9. John O'Hara

[betsuni]

11. Lately I've been craving P. G. Wodehouse.

I need amusing stories about aunts and dead cats and failed romances and other silly things.

[femmocrat]

12. Some writers I loved when I was a teen and young adult:

Daphne DuMaurier
Anya Seton
Susan Howatch
James Mitchener
John Steinbeck
Thomas Wolfe

[Dulcinea]

14. Michener is one of my favorites.

I've read most of his books...my favorite is "Chesapeake." His books always had good, strong female characters.