Your Favorite Literary Epoch Is?

DKM · Feb 16, 2018

I'll read other novels, but keep being drawn back to authors who wrote between 1900 & the 1930s. To me it is a transitional era, between the 'more' traditional prose of what came before & what after. Of course there are always gray areas in literature.

In the 1930s, Sinclair Lewis wrote It Can't Happen Here, w/ its exploration of fascism, a book which became a best seller after the 2016 Presidential Election. E.M. Forster came out w/ Howards End--the 'silent' war btwn the Schlegels & the Wilcoxes--Schlegels the devotees of the arts, & the Wilcoxes, who put utmost importance on business & material wealth. Joseph Conrad wrote Nostromo, wherein rebel forces rise up against foreign influences in South America.

All these conflicts are still alive & brewing today. It seems as if we're actually going backwards. I don't want to get political, least not directly, but I can see why apocalyptic novels have their appeal today.

What is your favorite literary epoch?

lonestarlibrarian · Feb 16, 2018

I love the Golden Age mysteries-- technically described as "1920-1940"-ish, but just generally so many awesome mysteries set in the late-Victorian/Edwardian/Great War period, but stopping before you get to WWII and firmly into the modern era. The point where mysteries and detective fiction are feeling their way around and exploring the genre and setting up new rules and separating themselves from their roots in the old Gothics, but still hanging on to some of the awesome-est parts of setting and atmosphere and cliches of its parent genre.

Your Carrs and your Christies and your Doyles and your Marshes and your Sayers and your Knoxes and any other number of amazing and influential authors.

Harlequin · Feb 16, 2018

I guess it depends on genre. Epic poetry has sort of fallen out of fashion, you might say >.> but I love it a lot.

For lit fic, the 1800s/Victorian time also produced a lot of stuff that is still landmark for me (I guess predictably the Brontes, Dickens, Shelley, MacDonald).

SFF I don't discriminate. There's great things in every decade (sorry, not what you asked, I know.)

Kjbartolotta · Feb 16, 2018

80-90's hysterical realism, moreso when I was younger and had the attention span, but still love it.

Elenitsa · Feb 16, 2018

Romanticism for me. And a bit of Medieval/ Renaissance poetry too

JoB42 · Feb 16, 2018

Anybody else remember all those old Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms novels? Back when Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman did the original six Dragonlance books. Back when Salvatore wrote Homeland and Greenwood wrote Spellfire. Good times.

Some of my favorite authors are Dostoevsky, Norman Mailer, and Herman Hesse. But as great and life-changing as I found their novels to be, none of it ever compared to the sheer innocent delight I got from reading those old dungeons and dragons setting novels.

blacbird · Feb 16, 2018

DKM said:
In the 1930s, Sinclair Lewis wrote It Can't Happen Here, w/ its exploration of fascism, a book which became a best seller after the 2016 Presidential Election. E.M. Forster came out w/ Howards End--the 'silent' war btwn the Schlegels & the Wilcoxes--Schlegels the devotees of the arts, & the Wilcoxes, who put utmost importance on business & material wealth. Joseph Conrad wrote Nostromo, wherein rebel forces rise up against foreign influences in South America.

Both Howards End and Nostromo were published well before the 1930s. That said, I am very fond of the great pile of fiction published in the first half of the 20th century.

caw

jjdebenedictis · Feb 16, 2018

Answer: This one!

I love the fantasy that is being published right now. It's fun, modern, diverse, thoughtful, and actively pushing outward from its Tolkienlandia origins, plus the incidence of the women-as-servants-or-penis-sleeves trope has gone waaaaay down.

Enlightened · Feb 16, 2018

I am with jjdebenedictis.

I think the writing, today, is easier to read (SFF) compared to SFF stuff with loads of info dump of '70s and earlier.

The Urban Spaceman · Feb 17, 2018

DKM said:
What is your favorite literary epoch?

Ancient Egyptian, New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty (pre-Amenhotep IV). Can't get enough of dem hieroglyphs.

I jest. Probably. My taste in literature is very similar to my taste in music. My favourite is classical new-wave punk indie glam hard alternative rock rat-pack swing big band jazz symphonic and heavy Göteborg melodic death metal with occasional dashings of electronica. Best described as eclectic. I don't like to play favourites.

Chris P · Feb 17, 2018

DKM: I just finished reading It Can't Happen Here a couple days ago. Parts of it are still right on, other parts seem dated and way more "telly" than "showy" than is popular now.

But over all I agree with you that F Scott Fitzgerald and Sinclair Lewis represent the start of what we today think of as contemporary lit (my fav genre). They set the stage for Evelyn Waugh, John Updike, Tom Wolf, and with twists added by Vonnegut for Jonathan Franzen, Douglas Coupland and others active today.

TheLimitDoesNotExist · Feb 17, 2018

jjdebenedictis said:
Answer: This one!

I love the fantasy that is being published right now. It's fun, modern, diverse, thoughtful, and actively pushing outward from its Tolkienlandia origins, plus the incidence of the women-as-servants-or-penis-sleeves trope has gone waaaaay down.

I agree! I love the stuff that is coming out now. I definitely love me some older stuff as well, but there are great novels being published now.

Kjbartolotta · Feb 17, 2018

JoB42 said:
Anybody else remember all those old Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms novels? Back when Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman did the original six Dragonlance books. Back when Salvatore wrote Homeland and Greenwood wrote Spellfire. Good times.

Some of my favorite authors are Dostoevsky, Norman Mailer, and Herman Hesse. But as great and life-changing as I found their novels to be, none of it ever compared to the sheer innocent delight I got from reading those old dungeons and dragons setting novels.

LOL, I remember these streams running concurrently in my teens as well.

ZachJPayne · Feb 18, 2018

YA contemporary fiction, written from the early-to-mid 90s to the mid-late '00s. Chris Crutcher, Ellen Wittlinger, Laurie Halse Anderson, Ellen Hopkins, Sarah Dessen, Lurlene McDaniel. These are the stories that feel like home.

Dave.C.Robinson · Feb 25, 2018

I love the craziness of the 1930's pulps when no idea was too big or too wild to put to paper. It's by no means perfect, but there are so many wild ideas crashing in at such a rapid pace that nothing else matters.

Brightdreamer · Feb 25, 2018

Plus-whatever to "today." Great, diverse stuff keeps hitting the shelves faster than I can save up the money or the time to get to them. Dang it, people, slow down until I can land myself a better job or win the lottery, already!

For earlier stuff, I like the imagination in some of the pulp-era SFF; yeah, the characters and styles can be dated and occasionally cringeworthy in ways that make me glad the genre's moved on and grown up (for the most part), but there's something about the wild, almost seat-of-the-pants sense of wonder and fun in some of those tales. Sometimes modern stuff can get a little full of itself with the brooding and the darkness (not all of it, of course, but some of it.)

Your Favorite Literary Epoch Is?

DKM

In an interstitial space

lonestarlibrarian

senior bean supervisor

Harlequin

Eat books, not brains!

Kjbartolotta

Potentially has/is dog

Elenitsa

writing as Marina Costa

JoB42

blacbird

jjdebenedictis

is watching you via her avatar

Enlightened

Always Learning

The Urban Spaceman

Existential quandary

Chris P

Likes metaphors mixed, not stirred

TheLimitDoesNotExist

Kjbartolotta

Potentially has/is dog

ZachJPayne

Beware: #amQuerying

Dave.C.Robinson

... with the High Command

Brightdreamer

Just Another Lazy Perfectionist