Of the modernists, who is your favorite author and why?

[Anonymous]

Of the early 20th century modernists - Faulkner, Hemingway, Joyce, Kafka, Proust, Woolf, others - who is your favorite and why?

[Anonymous]

Hemmingway because I'm basic

[Anonymous]

That's a hard choice! I'd say Virginia Woolf. I've read all of her novels and they are so good - The Waves especially stood out to me. I want to read Hermione Lee's biography of Woolf and reread all of the novels some year (or two).

I will also give a shout out to two lesser-known women authors from this era.

Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage series is really worth reading. You can usually find it in used Virago publications on ebay. It's a six book series that is semi-autobiographical, sort of stream of consciousness, and really unique writing.

I also loved H.D.'s Asphodel. In [Asphodel], H.D. writes a flowing, colorful, autobiographical novel about her experience before, during, and just after WWI. Her love life is central to the book and frames the action. The book doesn't necessarily have much forward motion, it sort of swirls around the plot, but I liked that. I was happy to dwell in the descriptions of the main character's experiences, feelings, and observations. You can tell that H.D. wrote a lot of poetry when you read this novel. She has a beautiful way of using color in her writing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hemmingway because I'm basic

I guess I’m basic too. “The Snows of Kilimanjaro & Other Stories” (a collection of his short stories) is one of my favorites.

[Anonymous]

I’ll shout out Edna Thurber. “So Big” is wonderful; I think of it every time I am in Chicago. And of course “Giant”— which I thought of that one time I was in Texas. They’re great novels to learn about the histories of those places.