Something light for a change. I wanted to list my favorite authors of fiction, say my top five in no particular order.
- Dostoevsky - I first encountered Dostoevsky in my early twenties. I have read all of his novels. I particularly like The Brothers Karamazov having read it 5 times. I can’t read it again because I am burned out. I read many of his short stories but not all of them. The Brothers Karamazov is so interesting because it is almost like each of the main characters represents a different aspect of the main lines of personality. The father is totally amoral physically, intellectually and morally. The oldest brother Dimitri is physically impulsive, passionate, and emotional with some sense of honor. The middle brother Ivan is a brilliant intellectual with no moral foundation, and the youngest brother Alyosha is simple, kind, and has a genuine love for humankind. Alyosha is in my mind the hero of the story even though he overshowed by the outsized egos of his family.
- Plato- I honestly believe that Plato is as much a poet and fictional writer as he is a philosopher. I also encountered him in my early twenties. No one knows what the historical Socrates was like and Xenophon’s Memorabilia paints Socrates as a shrewd down to earth person, something like an ancient Benjamin Franklin. Plato’s Socrates involves himself in discussions about courage with Athenian Generals, rhetoric with a man who believes he is the best rhetorician in Attica, piety with a man who claims to be the best religious authority in Athens, justice with the top political leaders of Athens, and the list goes on an on. It is a sheer joy to see how Socrates is able through skillful means to genteelly show all the pompous (hubris) people he is speaking to that they know more about what they don’t know then what they knew.
- Tolstoy- Obviously his two great novels, War and Peace and Anna Karenina, cover every moral issue under the sun. Another author I found in my early twenties. What is especially interesting to me is that when he converted to Greek Orthodoxy he rejected his novels as being rubbish. He focused on short stories about Christianity. My two favorites are The Death of Ivan Ilyich and The Kingdom of God is Within. Another interesting fact is the last letter he wrote was to a young lawyer named Gandhi. He pointed out to Gandhi that the British only needed thousands of troops to could control millions of Indians because of internecine warfare. The string continued when Martin Luther King visited Gandhi’s lieutenant Nehru where he learned the fundamentals of non-violent resistance.
- Dante - I studied the Divine Comedy for months along with learned commentaries. I wanted to know why Dante fainted at the end when he saw the vision beyond the Trinity, a mystical vision of basically pure light with a face. I think I came to my own conclusion but it can be interpreted in so many different ways.
- Orwell - HIs life is almost more interesting than his novels. I started working for the U.S. Congress in 1984 after having read the book shortly before. I got the creeps. I would say the book had a lasting impression on me.
I would be interested in other people’s favorites. I left out a lot of authors, especially science fiction and spiritual authors who widened my perspective of the world.