20th Century Author?

Ok, let me try to make this a bit more simple. I obviously love Dickens and David Copperfield and it has been suggested that it can not be matched, at least for those people such as myself who enjoy what I do in it. Fair enough. We each have our favorite joys when it comes to beauty, humor, ice cream.....

So in order to simplify the search for a really good 20th century author with Dickensian wherewithal, does anyone have an author in mind who uses words in such a way that it is obvious they view each word as a 'delicious morsel.'

Listening of late to David Copperfield I heard him describe one of his characters as enjoying words as if they were each a 'delicious morsel.' And yes many authors enjoy words greatly, but I wonder how many authors can savor a word as a 'delicious morsel' in the same light and apposite way that was done in David Copperfield.

Whatever....

Urquhart: The following are my picks for 'delicious morsel ' writers, but they do not have the humor or lightness of Dickens in David Copperfield:

My number one pick for delicious morsel writer is James Joyce in Ulysses. In New York, on June 16, (Bloomsday), actors read the book non-stop, and it is broadcast on the radio. You can hear every delicious morsel and each year you feel it more.

Some other picks:
Henry James- Daisy Miller or any other novel
Colm Toibin-The Master
Anita Brookner - Hotel du Lac or any other novel
Vladimir Nabokov - any not translated from Russian unless you read Russian. (I love the early Russian novels, but I don't trust the translations).

Well it is an interesting list and I do enjoy Henry James. And the way he uses words is indeed powerful. But do you feel his use of a word has the same sensuous quality that Dickens had?

I agree that yes Joyce definitely enjoyed his words.

#2 I find it strange that you don't trust the translations of Nabokov's Russian novels considering he did many of them himself. The differences between the Russian and the English editions are due to authorial interference, not translator interference, and Nabokov took the opportunity to "improve" his early works.

jargoneer: I just don't know enough Russian to compare them. I know his son did some of the translating, but we were talking about the love of words, and finding a match to the word in another language is not the same as finding it in the language you are creating in. It is sort of forcing a choice. When Nabokov wrote in English, he wasn't tied to another language's form of expression. I didn't mean that the translations were inaccurate (although they might be).

This is an interesting article on the English translations of Nabokov's novels, in most cases he had a major hand in them - Nabokov translations.

What is intriguing about Nabokov is that he must be the one of the very few major writers who have translated themselves.

edited to fix link

Urquhart, that's why I recommended Pynchon to you, as I do feel that he has a passion for language in the way that Dickens had, a kind of intoxication with the sounds and rythms, the physicality of the language, and of course he's wildly funny, IMO.

Another 20th century writer who has the same love for the flavour of words is of course Virginia Woolf, but she has absolutely no humour, bless her.

Apart from these two, almigwin's list is probably what I would have recommended too.
Actually, I can’t help feeling that it’s really in the American novelists of the 2nd half of the 20th century that the greatest use of the language is made. Pynchon, Bellow, Gaddis. British novelists of the same period seem to be so pale in comparison, rather like lukewarm tea….