Jean-Paul Sartre, Michel Foucault, Albert Camus, Roland Topor, André Gide, Arthur Rimbaud, Gérard de Nerval (et Thilbert),
Antonin Artaud, André Robert Breton, Georges Albert Maurice Victor Bataille, Tristan Tzara (who lived and worked in France), Philippe Soupault, Paul Éluard, Arthur Rimbaud...
And those are just the books I can see from my desk.
Michel Houellebecq to me, was the dawning of ALL of that purity of thought, all of that effort into explaining a concept down to an average writer who simply insulted all organized religion. Charlotte Roche (a German) cashed in on Houellebecq 'excuses'. I only added 'German' and not 'German Author' because the book was poor, it was that it was purported to be autobiographical concerning her private life... and she makes NO points.
Claude Lévi-Strauss even drew a simple diagram and while for 100s of years, writers 'cooked' their material. In the last decade they haven't cooked it, so it's just gone rotten.
I should add that in the late 19th and early 20th century, many European nations were producing amazing books. In the UK we banned most of them until the 1960s... and we are STILL paying or that.
Oh, of US writers, Burroughs, Huncke (the creep of times square), Kerouac, Hemmingway, Ginsburg, Bukowski and a host of others... mostly banned in the UK until the 1960s.
FYI if you don't know Rimbaud, give it a try - most was written age 14-16, never wrote again after the age of 17. Life worth comparing to the likes of Richard Brautigan John Kennedy Toole and William S. Burroughs Jr. Rimbaud STOPPED when he realized his work could only het worse (or would need decades to develop a new style). The others were either never published in their lifetime or realized that they had written their best so suicide (bullet of bottle) was their last gasp at fame.
TB haven't read WSB Jr work - is it worth the effort?
