Some of my favorite writers

These are the top 3 literary writers whose books I kept as faithful companions through my teenage years into young adulthood. I used to pretend that I am into literature. I love beautifully constructed sentences, not just what it conveys, but also the sounds and aesthetics of word arrangements. The truth is, regardless the respect I have for certain writers, I have rarely managed to sit through an entire book of fiction.

I digress. Anyway, what I used to be obsessed with when I was younger, were writers’ diaries or at the very least, semi-autobiographies.

#1 René Crevel

Whenever I think of the ultimate literature ever written, it would be the under-rated French writer- René Crevel’s “My Body And I”. It is a short semi-autobiography book narrating his disconnection with the world and his own body. It is a deliberately unstructured surrealist novel written with a burst of intense poetic energy. Not only is it written in concise perfection, I relate to it so much that at times I completely forgot that I did not write this book. There was a point in my life where I comprehended writing a book, but after reading this it seems unnecessary since he has already written what I always wanted to write, just a million times better than I ever can (plus I also lack a beautiful tragic setting such as Paris to base my story on). I loved this book so much that I got myself a French version hoping that I can read it one day in his original words.

#2 Sylvia Plath

“The Unabridged Journals Of Sylvia Plath” was literally glued to me during my adolescence years. I have a whole drawer filled to the brim with my diaries which I wrote faithfully everyday. After i got more internet savvy, I wrote on many secret blogs instead, many which I don’t even recall anymore. I used to think that it is such an romantic notion to have your diaries read long after one has passed on. However, now that I am older and wiser, I realized a lot of my entries are written so sloppily that I pray nobody is ever going to read them (if you have not realized yet, I am a hardcore perfectionist).

#3 Fyodor Dostoevsky

Sometimes I have trouble choosing (hypothetically) between a beautiful tragedy (which is very French), or a gritty but intense suffering (which is very Eastern European- at least this is how I always imagined it to be). “Notes From Underground” is narrated by a nihilistic man who happens to loathe himself and the world. It is extremely powerful and raw in its execution. He portrays himself as the villain but yet is a victim of his own spite. I cannot help but imagine that it is not entirely fictional.

This is a much longer rant than I expected to be. Keep posted, I will touch on the 3 top movies that impacted my life soon.