From here. This post is reprinted below in italics. I listed famous writers with only their last names, and asked you to give me their first names, when they wrote, and to name at least one of their famous books, or, Hell, any book they wrote. No one responded so I will provide the answers here.
Give me the first names of the writers I have listed below and at least one of their books. At least as many as you can come up with, that is. See how well you do. I sort of gave you some clues.
Some great writers of the modern era. A few are still alive; most are not. A few old-timers are thrown in there from the 1500’s, 1700’s, and some more from the 1800’s. I count six who are still living.
Barnes, Boll, Bukowski, Burroughs, Camus, Cervantes, Chekhov, Conrad, Dostoevsky, Eliot, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Franzen, Genet, Goethe, Hawthorne, Hemingway, Jackson, James, Joyce, Junger, Kerouac, Koszinski, Mailer, McCarthy, McCullers, Melville, Miller, Nichols, O’Connor, Oates, Palahniuk, Pound, Proulx, Pynchon, Rechy, Roth, Rousseau, Rhys, Schopenhauer, Stein, Sterne, Stevens, Tolstoy, Twain, Wallace, Warren, Waugh, Woolf
Some hints:
When they wrote:
1500’s: Cervantes
1700’s: Goethe, Rousseau, Sterne
1800’s: Chekhov, Conrad, Dostoevsky, Hawthorne, James, Melville, Schopenhauer, Tolstoy, Twain
1900’s: Barnes, Boll, Bukowski, Burroughs, Camus, Conrad, Eliot, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Franzen, Genet, Hemingway, Jackson, James, Joyce, Junger, Kerouac, Koszinski, Mailer, McCarthy, McCullers, Nichols, O’Connor, Oates, Palahniuk, Pound, Proulx, Pynchon, Rechy, Roth, Rhys, Stein, Stevens, Wallace, Warren, Waugh, Woolf
2000’s: Franzen, McCarthy, Nichols, Oates, Palahniuk, Proulx, Pynchon, Rechy, Wallace
Still around: Franzen, Nichols, Oates, Palahniuk, Proulx, Pynchon, Rechy
Where they came from (typically where they were born)
Dominica (Caribbean): Rhys
Denmark: Schopenhauer
France: Camus, Genet, Rousseau
Germany: Boll, Goethe, Junger
Ireland: Joyce
Poland: Conrad, Koszinski
Russia: Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy
Spain: Cervantes
UK: Eliot, Sterne, Waugh, Woolf
I posted this a while back and nobody answered so I will do it myself. Looking at the initial list:
Barnes, Boll, Bukowski, Burroughs, Camus, Cervantes, Chekhov, Conrad, Dostoevsky, Eliot, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Franzen, Genet, Goethe, Hawthorne, Hemingway, Jackson, James, Joyce, Junger, Kerouac, Koszinski, Mailer, McCarthy, McCullers, Melville, Miller, Nichols, O’Connor, Oates, Palahniuk, Pound, Proulx, Pynchon, Rechy, Roth, Rousseau, Rhys, Schopenhauer, Stein, Sterne, Stevens, Tolstoy, Twain, Wallace, Warren, Waugh, Woolf
Barnes: Djuna Barnes, American writer who lived most of her life in France. Famous book: Nightwood.
Boll: Heinrich Boll, German writer. Famous book: The Lost Honor of Katerina Blum and Billiards at Half Past Nine.
Bukowski: Charles Bukowski, American writer. Famous book: Factotum, among others.
Burroughs: William S. Burroughs, American writer, lived much of his life overseas in Tangier, Morocco. Famous book: Naked Lunch.
Camus: Albert Camus, French writer. Existentialist. Famous books: The Stranger, The Plague.
Cervantes: Miguel de Cervantes, Spanish author who wrote in the 1500’s. Famous book: Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Chekhov: Anton Chekhov, Russian writer from the late 1800’s. Wrote mostly plays and short stories. Famous works: The Seagull (play), among others.
Conrad: Joseph Conrad, Born in Poland but lived most of his life in the UK, wrote in English. Wrote in late 1800’s to early 1900’s. Famous works: Lord Jim, The Heart of Darkness.
Dostoevsky: Fyodor Dostoevsky, Russian writer from the late 1800’s. Famous works: The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment.
Eliot: T. S. Eliot, British poet in the early 1900’s. Famous works: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (poem), The Wasteland (poem).
Faulkner: William Faulkner, US writer from the South, wrote from 1920’s-1960’s. Famous works: The Sound and the Fury; Light in August; As I Lay Dying; Absolam, Absolam!; many others.
F. Scott Fitzgerald: American author from the Northeast, wrote from 1920’s-1940’s. Famous works: The Great Gatsby, Tender Is the Night.
Franzen: Jonathon Franzen, American author writing currently. Wrote from the 1980’s-present. Famous work: The Corrections.
Genet: Jean Genet, French writer who wrote in the middle of the 20th Century, mostly in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Famous works: A Thief’s Journal, The Maids (play), The Balcony (play), Our Lady of the Roses.
Goethe: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German writer who wrote from the late 1700’s to the early 1800’s. Famous works: Faust, The Sorrows of Young Werther.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, American writer who wrote from the 1820’s-1860’s. Widely regarded as the greatest American writer of that period. Contemporary and friend of Herman Melville. Famous works: The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, Young Goodman Brown (short story).
Hemingway: Ernest Hemingway, American writer who wrote from the 1920’s-1960’s. Famous works: The Sun Also Rises, Death in the Afternoon, A Moveable Feast, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Men without Women, Winner Take Nothing, The Green Hills of Africa, The Old Man and the Sea.
Shirley Jackson: American horror writer who wrote in the from the 1940’s-1960’s. Famous works: The Lottery (short story), We Have Always Lived in the Castle, The Haunting of Hill House.
James: Henry James. American novelist and short story writer who wrote from the 1870’s-1910’s. Famous works: The Portrait of a Lady, Daisy Miller (novella), The Aspern Papers (novella), What Maise Knew, The Bostonians, The Ambassadors, The Turn of the Screw (novella), The Wings of a Dove, The Golden Bowl.
James Joyce: Irish writer who wrote from the 1910’s-1940. Famous works: The Dead (short story), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, Finnegans Wake.
Junger: Ernst Junger, German writer who wrote from 1920’s-1990’s (A long time!). Famous Works: The Storm of Steel (autobiography), On the Marble Cliffs, The Glass Bees.
Kerouac: Jack Kerouac, American writer who wrote from the 1940’s-1960’s. Famous works: On the Road, The Dharma Bums, Big Sur, Desolation Angels.
Koszinski: Jerzy Koszinsky, Polish writer who wrote in English. Wrote from 1960’s-1990’s. Famous works: The Painted Bird, Being There, Steps.
Mailer: Norman Mailer, American writer who wrote from the 1940’s-200’s (A long time!). Famous works: The Naked and the Dead, An American Dream, The Armies of the Night, The Executioner’s Song.
McCarthy: Cormac McCarthy, American writer who wrote from the 1960’s-2020’s (A long time!). Famous works: Suttree, Blood Meridian, The Border Trilogy, No Country for Old Men, The Road.
McCullers: Carson McCullers, American writer who mostly from the 1940’s-1960’s. Famous works: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, The Member of the Wedding, Reflections in a Golden Eye.
Melville: Herman Melville, American writer who wrote from the 1840’s-1880’s. Famous works: Moby Dick; Bartleby the Scrivener (short story); The Confidence-Man; Billy Budd, Sailor (novella); Clarel (poem); Benito Cereno (novella); The Encantadas (novella).
Nichols: John Nichols, American writer writing currently from 1970’s-present. Famous works: The New Mexico Trilogy.
O’Connor: Flannery O’Connor, American writer who wrote from the 1950’s-1960’s. Famous works: Wise Blood, The Violent Carry It Away, Everything That Rises Must Converge, A Good Man Is Hard to Find.
Oates: Joyce Carol Oates, American writer currently writing from 1960’s-present. Famous works: A Garden of Earthly Delights, We Were the Mulvaneys, them, Wonderland, Black Water, Blonde.
Palahniuk: Chuck Palahniuk, American writer currently writing from 1990’s-present. Famous works: Fight Club, Invisible Monsters, Choke, Rant.
Ezra Pound, American writer who mostly lived overseas, often in London, Paris, and Italy, especially Trieste and Genoa. Famous works: The Cantos (epic poem), Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (epic poem), Cathay (poems), A Lume Spento (poems).
Proulx: Annie Proulx, American writer currently writing. Famous work: The Shipping News, Brokeback Mountain.
Pynchon: Thomas Pynchon, American writer currently writing. Writing from 1960’s-2010’s. Famous works: V., The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity’s Rainbow, Against the Day, Mason and Dixon, Inherent Vice.
Rechy: John Rechy, American writer currently writing. Writing from 1960’s-2010’s. Famous works: City of Night, Bodies and Souls, The Sexual Outlaw, The Miraculous Day of Amalia Gomez.
Roth: Philip Roth, American writer who wrote from the 1960’s-2010’s. Famous works: Goodbye, Columbus; Portnoy’s Complaint; The Plot against America; The Human Stain; Sabbath’s Theater; American Pastoral; Operation Shylock; The Counterlife.
Rousseau: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, French writer who wrote from the 1740’s-1770’s. Famous works: The Social Contract; Julie, or the New Heloise; The Confessions; Emile, or On Education.
Rhys: Jean Rhys: Dominican writer who wrote from the 1920’s-1970’s (A long time!). Famous works: Wide Sargasso Sea; Good Morning, Midnight.
Arthur Schopenhauer: Danish philosopher who wrote in the 1880’s-1920’s. Famous works: On Women, The World as Will and Representation, Parerga and Paralipomena, Studies in Pessimism.
Stein: Gertrude Stein: American writer who spent much of her life in exile, particularly in Paris. Wrote from 1900’s-1940’s. Famous works: The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Tender Buttons, The Making of Americans, Three Lives, Lucy Church Amiably.
Sterne: Laurence Sterne, British author who wrote from the 1740’s-1770’s. Famous works: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman; A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy; A Political Romance.
Stevens: Wallace Stevens, American poet who wrote Harmonium (book of poetry), The Idea of Order at Key West (poem), The Man with the Blue Guitar (poem), The Auroras of Autumn (book of poetry), Of Modern Poetry (poem).
Tolstoy: Leo Tolstoy, Russian writer who wrote in the late 1850’s to 1910 (A long time!). Famous works: War and Peace, Anna Karenina, The Death of Ivan Ilyich (novella), The Kingdom of God Is Within You (nonfiction book), Resurrection.
Twain: Mark Twain, American writer who wrote from the late 1800’s to the 1900’s. Famous works: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Pudd’nhead Wilson, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, The Awful German Language, The Innocents Abroad, Roughing It, A Tramp Abroad, Life on the Mississippi, Letters from the Earth, The Mysterious Stranger.
Wallace: David Foster Wallace, American writer who wrote from the 1980’s-2000’s. Famous works: Infinite Jest, Consider the Lobster, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, The Girl with the Curious Hair, The Broom of the System, The Pale King, A Supposedly Fun Thing That I Will Never Do Again, The Depressed Person, E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction, Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way.
Warren: Robert Penn Warren, American writer who wrote from the 1930’s-1980’s (A long time!). Famous Works: All the King’s Men, Understanding Poetry (poetry criticism).
Waugh: Evelyn Waugh, British writer who wrote Decline and Fall, A Handful of Dust, Brideshead Revisited, Vile Bodies, Black Mischief, Scoop, Put out More Flags, The Loved One, Men at Arms, Officers and Gentlemen, The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfoil, Waugh in Abyssinia.
Woolf: Virginia Woolf, British writer who wrote from the 1910’s-1940’s. Famous works: Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando, A Room of One’s Own (nonfiction), The Waves.
