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What author(s) really "get it?" Get you?

The authors who most influenced me:

Stephen King: For his keen wit and superb dialogue.
Robert Silverberg: For the existential slant he throws on all of his characters.
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o: Mugo, the deeply-conflicted main character in his novel A Grain of Wheat, has put his mark on every major character I've written.
 
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louis-ferdinand celine
john niven
james ellroy
irvine welsh
charles bukowski
comte de lautremonnt
alfred jarry
antonin artaud
charled baudelaire
joe abercrombie

probably lots more but i can't think of any.
 
Liam Rector, Richard Brautigan, Luke Davies, Charles Bukowski, Alice Glass.
 
Light of God dimming weak
Nothing’s wrong go back to sleep
Lost the will at infancy
Drown them in charity
Lend them comfort for sorrow
Enthusiasm they borrow
I can clean impurity
Wash away with kerosene

Can’t offend my modesty
Thank you for defiling me
Language pure as binary
Instruct with dishonesty
In nature there’s no tragedy
Bandage them in tapestry
Trade comfort for identity
Drown me in kerosene
Kerosene

I’ll protect you from
All the things I’ve seen
And I’ll clean your wounds
Rinse them with saline
Kerosene

~ Alice Glass
 
Gotta 2nd the OP th]at Phil Dick is in my pantheon of literary giants, but when it comes to creating a character that is complete and complex enough to really capture me and feel like I know them and relate to them like a real person, hes never gotten there. I love him for his mind bending concepts and plots but not as much for his powers of creating true characters.

And to everyone who said aasimov... I love aaaimov ive read the entire foundation series even the shifty books at the end. I mean the guy has more published works than anyone ever. Literally he holds the Guinness record. Aasimov had two crucial weaknesses Imho however... his works are one dimensional in the sense that he has no ability to convey true suffering. He said himself he never had writers block. Never had a moment of anguish trying to pit his thoughts in print it was pure joy for him to write which is why he wrote so much. Its his greatest strength and his greatest weakness. 2nd is that he was completely incapable of creating a believable female character. All his women are stereotypes. Never any depth of emotion or true conveyance of the female Psyche. His women are just inverted mirror images of his men when women are so much more than a mans opposite. But in fairness few men understand the female element enough to pull one from their brain. Our culture degrades women and fears homosexuals so rampantly that men whos anima and animus are allowed to manifest in equilibrium are ridiculed as not being "real men". Its almost ironic aasimov died after a negligent doctor allowed him to receive a blood transfusion infected with aids. He refused to take action against said doctor, terrified of being labeled gay.

I would say dostoyevsky is the greatest genius ive ever read if were talking bringing characters to life. The idiot and the brothers karamazov are both full of literally dozens of characters with long hard to spell Russian names and even years after reading I can remembers at least 10 characters from each book because I feelnlike I know them... their weaknesses their hopes and secret thoughts and desires. I feel like he has more insight into the human Psyche than anyone who ever put pen to paper if u read the original Russian or a really good translation not the Constance garnett shit they give you in high school. I know its daunting to pick up dostoyevski but if u finish u feel u just lived a hundred lifetimes... its a true experience.

For us junkies no one captures the true essence of what it feels like to be a junky like William Burroughs. Its a complex and very unique typeof suffering that is all too often stereotyped and pushed into this simple one dimensioned addict archetype. Ur average person who has never been under the spell of the poppy only knows the requiem and trainspotting junky because they are simple and easy to swallow. Easy to stigmatize and fear. Platitudes from trainspotting like "heroin is like your best orgasm times a hundred" that are repeated endlessly but meaningless. The sexual act is the essence of new life and creation, the manifestation of love. Heroin is the essence of decay and entropy, the chemical manifestation of deaths. Polar opposites The junky is a complex creature ethereal and odd with a brand of pain and despair oh so hard to capture. He is a hideous and strange yet beautifully tragic creature so alien to the unititiated masses that he feels like hes from interzone as he wanders through society. Borroughs nails it. As Neil young said so poetically "every junky's like a setting sun".

Returning to the Russian masters,Gogol is the master of the absurd and petty. He captures with exacting verisimilitude the essence of the artificial shallow and material obsessed masses that truly define most of human life on earth. If u look around and find despair in the complete lack of depth in nearly every other human being alive... gogol is for u. He uses truly laugh out loud parody to capture what Churchill so eloquently coined "the evil of heedlessly oblivious and trivial men". Ayn Rand in a similar way captures perfectly the maddening frustration one feels seeing these vacuous people running the world

Just in case the words ive written above come together to form the nonsensical gibberish... sorry I'm tweaking like shit on crack and it seemed like pure genius when I was writing it... and why the fuck did u keep reading this long?!
 
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^^^ I agree with your notions, for the most part, 1800GJ. Have you read anything from Stephen R. Donaldson? You will find intense detail of character and emotion, especially suffering.
 
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Nice post 1-800

Spot on with Dostoyevsky. Complete and total insight to the human psych. Have you read crime and punishment?

And also, are you reading them in Russian?
 
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