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Contemporary authors worth reading if you don't care about liberal arts major navel gazing, sex addicts, or closeted nazis?
Early Stephenson suggests William Gibson, Dhalgren, and The Illuminatus! Trilogy for their uniqueness (though they are sex addicts); Bolaño the almost contemporary Javier Marías; Hempel Tobias Wolff; Kundera Yu Hua; Truman Capote's nonfiction Norman Mailer; and Plath Maggie Nelson. As a side note, I dislike Didion's nonfiction in the extreme. You may like Susan Sontag (though deceased; RIP) or Haruki Murakami (who also bears some similarities to Bolaño) for that reason.
I like Kundera, Borges, Bolano, Emily and Anne Bronte, Turgenev, Limonov, Dostoevsky, Junger, Amy Hempel, some of Nabokov, some of Joan Didion's fiction but all of her non-fiction, some of Truman Capote's non-fiction but all of his fiction, Dorothy Parker, Sylvia Plath, most of Sinclair Lewis, most of Jack London, Verner Venge, Robert Silverberg, Peter Watts, some of Neal Stephenson but nothing recent, Chekhov, Erskine Caldwell, early Celine and his non-fiction essays, Aldous Huxley (never read brave new world because I already dislike H.G. Wells), some of Hemingway, and so on. If you made me type that out and then you don't follow up with any recommendations, I will hunt you down.
What do you like? It's easier to recommend based on that than your dislikes. Also, novels, short stories, or poetry?
I got a Yu Hua, a Tobias Wolff, and a Javier Marias that looked promising. All totally new to me and look like they're right up my alley. Can't thank you enough, I don't think I would've found them on my own! As for the others, I'm familiar with them and it would seem we're attracted to very different aspects of the same writers, but I appreciate your perspective.