"Gods do not answer letters": Ryan on Updike

Same with Orwell, though he's obviously not American ...

 

Wonder how Ben would be perceived today. Little Ben had a tendency to wander.

 

Yes, but would he have been able to turn out a gamer on deadline?

 

I'd put Jack London and the good doctor, Hunter S. Thompson, on this list. Big fan of Ben and TJ, Poe and Twain, but I think John Steinbeck tops them all.

 

Seems like most of list are writers from another era. Who are the current writers that fit the bill.

I would offer up Mark Bowden.

 

I almost put his name up there, as well. Has he tried fiction at all? Halberstam, though he's gone now. From a purely journalistic standpoint, Maraniss does a great job dabbling in both sports and politics and never comes off like a dilletante. An underrated one, to me, is John Ed Bradley.

 

Agree on John Ed but don't think he has enough in book form.

 

I threw out Crichton --- who wrote novels about dinosaurs, the Japanese mafia, an Old West train robbery and space, among other things. He also wrote non-fiction books about 1960s hospital practices and the early days of computers. And then, of course, he created and produced ER, one of the longest-running and most successful television dramas of all-time.

Much of what he produced was dismissed as fluff --- and maybe it is --- but the guy was incredibly versatile.

 

How about David Simon?

 

Steinbeck?

Adapted his (brilliant) novels for the screen, wrote long and short fiction, wrote memoirs about traveling here and in Russia, and covered World War II - while already an acclaimed novelist -- with great narrative journalism. And, relevant to this board, his "Then my arm glassed up," a 1965 piece in SI explaining why he couldn't write a piece for SI, is wonderful. (Available at http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1078035/index.htm)