Who has influenced you as a writer?

Parent Cafe
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<p>For nonfiction-- Joan Didion is a very elegant, moving writer. Anna Quindlen’s prose is lovely, simple and emotional. Anne Lamott’s “Bird by Bird” is a great book on writing and also very funny. Tracy Kidder is superb; he finds the soul of any topic. I liked Louise Erdrich’s “Blue Jay’s Dance” very much. Molly Ivins impresses me in how she can write on serious topics and toss in utterly goofy colloquial expressions so effectively.</p>

<p>Steve Martin, though not entirely consistent, has done some very funny essays, IMO. (One particularly hilarious one in the New Yorker that was about aging and memory loss; had a middle aged guy playing “Name That Wife.”) For pure laughs I have to mention John Nichols’ “The Milagro Beanfield War”-- if you only saw the movie, you really missed out. That book is a treasure. Jane Smiley’s “Moo” is also hilarious. </p>

<p>For Fiction: Gabriel Garcia-Marquez is my absolute favorite. I love the magic realism in Alice Hoffman as well. For beautiful writing, particularly evoking a place or a memory, Pat Conroy. Milan Kundera, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Anne Tyler are all wonderful. Classics-- Dickens, Shakespeare, Poe, Hawthorne. </p>

<p>I know I have left many out but this is off the top of my head.</p>

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<p>I had neglected to include Conroy and Bellow in my earlier post but I enjoy both of them. And Anne Tyler, yes! Ladder of Years is one of my favorite books, particularly love the scene where she returns home. </p>

<p>One author I forgot to mention earlier is Elizabeth Berg. She writes with confidence, ease, and amazingly accurate detail and feeling about women’s relationships, with one another and with the men in their lives. Her books are always a pleasure.</p>

<p>To return to the original question here, the writer who influenced me the most is not someone that any of you would be familiar with, and, in fact, he was never published. :slight_smile: He was my World Lit teacher from senior year of high school. He was a writer, a mentor who had volumes of notebooks filled with his writings, some of which he kindly would share with me. He encouraged my writing and my interest in psychology, literature, family dynamics and the ways in which human beings interact with one another. I’ll always be thankful to William Morrissey. :)</p>

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<p>JS Mill, Heller, and some political scientists nobody will have heard of.</p>

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<p>Actually alwaysamom, I have to say that my Dad most influenced me as a writer. He gave me Strunk and White, he wrote me hundreds of letters that modeled excelent writing, and (a lawyer) he loved to argue. Nothing like having to have an ironclad position in bi-weekly arguments throughout your childhood-- great prep for writing tight essays!</p>

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<p>William F Buckley,
for language—no surprise. Reading Buckley is like playing Chess with a grand master; still, I particularly enjoy his breezy writing on sailing. I couldn’t put down Miles Gone By. Buckley’s best subject is himself, because he happens to be a great subject. </p>

<p>John Barthes,
For language and imagination. “The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor” was remarkable, especially for those who have sailed on the Chesapeake…or The Persian Gulf — a modern Scheherazade (a great Persian Lady) for our times. </p>

<p>Rene Guenon,
For the complete originality of his thought.</p>

<p>Mortimer J Adler,
For clarity and straight thinking.</p>

<p>Thoreau’s Journals,
For pleasure and remembering. </p>

<p>**Roberson Davies<a href=“Oh%20Canada!”>/b</a>,
For story-telling: As TheDad, I loved What’s Bread in the Bone (actually, the whole trilogy was great).</p>

<p>Saul Bellow,
Humbolt’s Gift for snappy dialogue and the life.</p>

<p>Stanley Crouch,
For pontificating cool.</p>

<p>Theodore Dalrymple,
For the finger in the eye of the squinters.</p>

<p>Robert Christgau,
For the only music reviews worth the reading.</p>

<p>G. K Chersterton,
For the common sense, particularly, Orthodoxy.</p>

<p>Nabokov,
For the majesty of Language (also loved his literary lectures).</p>

<p>Calvin & Hobbes,
For the pictures.</p>

<p>John Updike
For keeping it all on the ground.</p>

<p>Last, but not least, not a few on cc in the last year,
Driver,
because, because, because; because of the wonderful things she does.
Thedad,
for erudition and an incredibly strong self image.
Mini,
for being sarcastic…and fearless in being out-there (where ever there might be).
Xiggi,
For fearless thought.</p>

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<p>Majesty is a word Nabokov deserves. Tinker Creek is right by my home but Annie is no longer married to Professor Dillard. Interesting point made earlier about writers one barely “likes” that make a big impact regardless…I found Disgrace by Coetze to be almost unbearably bleak and laser beam accurate, TC Boyle also creates a lot of dissonance in me as a reader that is uncomfortable, I once asked Joyce Carol Oates what her favorite book was as a child and she replied “Alice in Wonderland”…right on. I once had my photo made with Pat Conroy in Charleston…we both are members of Militarybrats.com, god bless us all, and does anyone have a better heart than McMurtry, mentioned above, screenplay credit for Brokeback Mountain, too.<br>
Well, I hover on these boards as I prepare to launch my children and let go and regroup. Maybe Parents Cafe could have a Book Clubbers Night? Wine and chocolate mandatory. Reading is a comfort through all transitions and let us hope our offspring also learn to take comfort in the written word even with those gorgeous laptops sucking out the hours of a day. one of my favorite flights of fancy is to come up with my favorite book titles list, new thread. Just for the merit of the titles alone.</p>

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<p>Found the link to the Steve Martin essay:</p>

<p><a href=“compleatsteve.com”>compleatsteve.com;

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<p>Meh. Attilla the Hun undoubtedly had an incredibly strong self image as well.</p>

<p>Among other reasons, I enjoy Robertson Davies for the quick, clean evocation of character. From THE REBEL ANGELS, in which Ph.D. student Maria Magdalena Theotoky is describing the students in her seminar on New Testament Greek taught by Prof. the Rev. Simon Darcourt:</p>

<p>“…There were only five of us: myself and three young men and one-middle-aged man, all studying for the ministry. Two of the young men were modern and messy, long-haired and fashionably dirty; they were heading for advanced evangelical church work, and in their spare time assisted in services with rock music, where people like themselves danced away Evil, and embraced one another in tears when the show was over. They were taking the course in hopes, I think, of discovering from the original texts that Jesus was also a great dancer and a guitar player. The oher young man was very High Church Anglican, and addressed Darcourt as ‘Father’ and wore a dark grey suit to which he obviously hoped, very soon, to add a clerical collar. The middle-aged man had given up his job selling insurance to become a parson, and worked like a galley-slave, because he had a wife and two children and had to get himself ordained as fast as he could. Altogether, they were not an insiring lot. God had presumably called all four of them to His service, but surely in a fit of absentmindedness or perhaps as some complicated Jewish joke.”</p>

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<p>TheDad…that excerpt is PRICELESS. Now I am going to go out and read some Robertson Davies and get more of that.
If you get the New Yorker…a new German comedy film is favorably reviewed in it this week that makes an interesting segue to your excerpt above. Subject a Jewish famiily of German origins separated by the Berlin Wall and now reunited in awkward post unified Germany comical get togethers. I think your gonna like it.</p>

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<p>TheDad, Robertson Davies was one of the busiest writers, and not just busy with writing! He was such a Canadian treasure and I had the pleasure of meeting him several times as he lived next door to a dear friend for many years prior to his death. He’s actually quite a hero to my D who is the drama major and passionate writer and playwright. Robertson’s first passion was drama and he penned several plays in his lengthy career. Not only wrote them, but also performed in and produced them. His efforts are largely responsible for the existence of the Stratford Festival, the largest and most successful repertory theatre in North America. He was an actor/writer/director/musician who also made a living for much of his life as a journalist/publisher. He also spent many years as a beloved professor of English at the University of Toronto, where coincidentally, another of my daughters is attending college. His writing is like coming home to me. I studied many of his works while in college and was thrilled to meet him many years later. I’ll always love his characters.</p>

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<p>I regeret that, before I had read his works, TheMom had offered to take me to a function where he was at UCLA and I passed. The old “we don’t know what we’re missing” gambit. And his love of theatre certainly comes out in some of the novels, including THE LYRE OF ORPHEUS, FIFTH BUSINESS, and TEMPEST TOST. I like Davies very much and even have a book or two of his essays…my biggest criticism of Davies is that he is at times too pleased with himself. As they told the African chieftain, people who live in grass houses… Davies is one of those lifetime gifts I received from TheMom…her very first present to me was a volume of John Fowles. We will not discuss the time she confessed that she had been reading one of my autographed first editions in the bathtub.</p>

<p>Faline, Davies has written some solo novels but I like his trilogies. They’re the type where major characters in one are minor characters in another, the three works forming a sort of tryptich. In my order of preference:</p>

<p>The Cornish Trilogy: THE REBEL ANGELS, WHAT’S BRED IN THE BONE, THE LYRE OF ORPHEUS</p>

<p>The Salterton Trilogy: TEMPEST TOST, A MIXTURE OF FRAILTIES, LEAVEN OF MALICE</p>

<p>The Deptford Trilogy: FIFTH BUSINESS, THE MANTICORE, WORLD OF WONDERS</p>

<p>WHAT’S BRED IN THE BONE is particularly appealing because while it deals mainly with the world of painting, many of its currents can be transposed into other art forms, including writing…kind of like transposing music from one key to another.</p>

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<p>TheDad: your excerpt from Robertson Davies has inspired me to pick up one of his books and give it a go! I had no idea he was funny!</p>

<p>Writers who have influenced me began at a young age with the Brothers Grimm, (especially “Diamonds & Toads”…as a consequence as a child I always tried to speak as though flowers and diamonds already fell from my lips, and when in the future I met odd strangers I tried to be polite, lest I experience the visceral sensation of reguritating toads! Because of this, I once spent a memorable night on a train with a crippled street beggar from Sweden. I had watched him warily at the train station in Barcelona. He was very tall with long yellow hair, had numerous burlap sacks hanging about his neck and walked with two long sticks to help him. H e lurched through the crowds yelling “Invalidio, Invalidio” and my only thought was that I hoped he wouldn’t be on my train car. So it was fate that he ended up sitting across from me, our knees touching. He smelled strongly of onions and garlic, and I learned he was on his way to Crete to enjoy the sun and eat oranges. I was the only one who spoke to him.Everyone else in the car ignored him and they quickly fell asleep as though under a spell. We were the only two left awake as the train rocked through the night along the south coast of France and I heard the most amazing story of … )</p>

<p>Guy de Maupassant’s short stories (translated ) amazed me when I was young and helped me to observe more carefully. The sweaty oppression and darkness of Joseph Conrad’s short stories have stayed with me a long time, and I was glad I had read ‘Heart of Darkness’ before I saw ‘Apocalypse Now’. It is odd how strongly some writers stay with you, even after years, and others fade away. I love Jane Austen, Pat Conroy, Mark Twain, Mary Renault, CHUMS - the boys own annual of 1923, Rider Hagard, LM Montgomery, and Roald Dahl…</p>

<p>I have always been an accidental reader, and as such appreciate this thread with all the new books/authors that I have now tripped over! I’ve got to get out Sinner’s Alley more often and sober up !</p>

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<p>This is from TEMPEST TOST, the first of the Salterton Trilogy: (apologies for any typos…I thought I’d proofed the last excerpt and <em>still</em> found errors).</p>

<p>

This was the first Davies that I read and one of the paragraphs early in that really grabbed me. But I never noticed until just typing it in just now that he uses four semi-colons in this paragraph, including in the last three consecutive sentences.</p>

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<p>This discussion reminds me of one of my favorite quotes:</p>

<p>“In literature as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others.”
–Andre Maurois</p>

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<p>Robertson Davies is my personal favorite. I’ve re-read his trilogies so many times I could plausibly be diagnosed an obsessive-compulsive. I can’t say he’s influence my own writing, though.</p>

<p>William F. Buckley, Jr. was an early influence. My local public library carried several volumes of his published columns, and I read them all, carefully and repeatedly, when I was in junior high and high school. I consciously aped his style for many years. I never missed Firing Line when I had any choice in the matter. Depending on one’s outlook, I’ve either strayed from the fold, or broadened my horizons, but I’ve never lost my appreciation for Buckley’s facility with an argument, or sense of style. (His sesquipedalianism doesn’t impress me quite as much as it did my adolescent self, but I retain a fondness for the “zoo sections of the dictionary.”)</p>

<p>Strunk & White played an important role as well in my development as a writer. I re-read “The Elements of Style” (pretend that I underlined the title - I can never remember how to do that) at least once a year.</p>

<p>My songwriting was influenced most heavily by J.S. Bach, Hank Williams, and the Grateful Dead. There’s probably a clue in there as to why they’ve never been played on the radio.</p>

<p>These other influences on my writing pale in comparison to the King James Bible, however; its beautiful cadences were a daily part of my childhood; I was raised in a home where it was assumed that any child old enough to read was old enough to read the Bible. </p>

<p>And though I have in this respect also, depending on one’s outlook, either strayed from the fold, or broadened my horizons, its words are still hidden in my heart.</p>

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<p>BHappyMom…I so enjoyed your reference to Diamonds and Toads, a story that amazed me in second grade. My grandmother had a version with exquisite illustrations where everyone was dressed in flapper clothes as dancing princesses and such. In her collection was also a story about a pearl necklace that changed colors when you lied or even fibbed! that also sort of hit me in that zone where a child believes in magic. Greybeard, your writing certainly has been influenced by many greats, and although my children are in public schools without daily exposure to King James, I was reminded of two years in a private Presbyterian school in Atlanta where Bibles were handed out daily for morning devotional and recitations, and we would all open them and put our heads on our desks and smell them…they had a lovely smell of what I suppose was a fake leather. Andrew Young’s children integrated our school that year and Martin Luther King’s family integrated the school up the road and the Biblical texts I was memorizing were taking on new dimensions.</p>

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<p>My athiest dad read to us from the Bible every evening. He thought nobody could consider themselves even marginally literate without familiarity with the King James Bible. The cadences and poetry absolutely train the ear, and it is the source of so many literary allusions.</p>

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<p>SBmom, There is a tiny book taken from the Massey Lecture series by Northrop Frye called “The Educated Imagination” . He talks about the importance of teaching the Bible as literature “…the cadences and phrases of the King James translation are built into our minds and way of thought, the fact that it’s full of the greatest and best known stories we have…”. He goes on to include study of classic Greek & Roman myths as being part of the foundation of a literary education.<br>
You are lucky to have had such a smart Dad!</p>

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<p>Funny, he gets smarter as I get older. When I was 15 he was an idiot! ;)</p>

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<p>The biggest influence in my writing and, arguably, my academic life was Carl Sagan. I was fifteen years old when I first discovered who he was and what he had done (the man passed away when I was ten) and it just enchanted me so that I fell in love with everything he had to say and his philosophy on life. :)</p>