Philip Roth, John Steinbeck, Evelyn Waugh.

Please don't say my clearout wasn't radical enough....

i love the books of and am very attracted to will self.

but he does sth in his novels that really annoys me:

its like a sort of "peak" in the book where he will allow the character to decsend into madness, which he uses as a plot device to change everything around.

ok so im not describing it v well but suddenly in his books everythign will go all vague and wishy washy and i sorta think "you dont know where you are going with this do you"

Sartre, Salinger and Wolfe for me.
The first two because they are among the most important writers ever and Wolfe as I fell in love with The Electric Kool Ade Acid Test when I was about 16 and I've never looked back :)

When David Nobbs took his second wife on honeymoon to Majorca, they visited the resting place of Robert Graves at Deia.

Nobbs turned to his wife and said, "This makes you the only woman to have seen Robert Graves's grave and David Nobbs's nob."

A true story.

I enjoy Self a great deal as a novelist/short story writer. But find him a horrible, smug prick as a person.

That is a uniquely one off exclusively personal moment

:lol: divvey.

have you noticed that Wiil Self is Self Will backwards??


spooky.

he doesn't come over as backwards.

:lol: divvey ur funny today.

ha ha or peculiar??

bit of both : P

I wonder if he did the same thing with the first Mrs Nobbs?

Thomas Hardy proposed to his second wife by taking her to visit the grave of his first wife. He pointed at the adjacent plot and said "That could be yours".

Nah, he didn't have the money back then, first time round they had to honeymoon in England. But as they were walking along a cosy suburban street he pointed over a wall and said to his new bride, "You know the Goodies? Well that's Graeme Garden's garden."
new bride: "oh that's nice"
DN: "you're the only woman etc etc"
new bride: "i highly doubt that"

*Third* marriage, had a bit more money and some showbiz pals. Honeymooned with some prog friends at their country pile. One morning they were walking in the grounds:
third wife: "this is so beautiful"
DN: "see that lake? you're the only woman to have seen Greg Lake's lake and...."
third wife: "what about those two over there?"

Do any FOFers have details on honeymoon one-liners from David Nobbs' fourth, fifth and later marriages?

No, but I did hear one about Stefan Kuntz- former VfL Bochum midfielder and current chairman of the German football team.

One would normally assume that putting Shakespeare on a list with other writers is a bit unfair, but according to the FOF, I see he's considered roughly on a par with Tom Wolfe. :lol:

If I were David Nobbs' wife, I'd have left him for Phillip K. Dick after a gag like that...

Three blind votes for the non-fiction, and it won't let me.

Shakespeare, Sartre and Orwell. You know, I don't think your clear out was radical enough.

I thought non-fiction would be a cop out, so went for Roth, Steinbeck, Tom Wolfe who have all written books that left me completely satisfied when I finished them.

Orwell, Steinbeck, Waugh.