i believe we were intended to stay in america, guy. so nabokov is out, so is Ishiguro. if you really wanted to have that discussion i would blow your world apart with so many french, czech, japanese, and russian authors you would have crap yourself. if we wanted to drift away from fiction i would further drink your milkshake.
and bukowski is about the only "hipster" author i mentioned, and i didn't place him above or below any of the others. the rest are fairly tested american literary giants. so don't tee off on one author i mentioned just because modest mouse made a shitty song about him. and just because a bunch of kids in skinny jeans started reading an author doesn't discredit his work. his prose is one of the best of his generation, but his poetry is where its at.
gtfo
Please, by all means, try to blow my world apart. I'm ready. If you want to limit Nabokov to being just a Russian author, do so at your own preference. I'm pretty sure most people consider him a little bit of everything.
You talk like a hipster, you drop books like a hipster, and you act like you can drop your little world lit knowledge bombs on the rest of us like a hipster. I'm going to call you out for it, especially when you sound like you don't know what the eff you're talking about. You can get the eff out, little boy, if you can't deal with it.
We'll see in the course of time how Bukowski turns out. For now, he suffers from the reputation that assholes like you like him, so maybe he isn't all that great.
I am more than willing to suggest or stick to American lit, but it seems like everyone else had some good stuff to suggest, and I didn't want to repeat. And michigancat also noted that American lit was just where he wanted to start, not completely limit suggestions.