Wait till you sense the storm in the air. It'll arrive as a thickening, like the tension in the room between you and your spouse as bills hiss from their envelopes. It's best engaged in the deep night, when the outside has been blacked by the storm's tardy-gait approach, when the world is more rounded and obscure than rendered angular and jut. Walk up to a window then, before the howl and the water starts. Place your palm against a window's cold glass. Fur your breath white around your fingers. Do what all humans must, that is make their shape against that black. This is how you'll best sense it, anyway. Wait for a rising gust to batter against the pane. You'll feel the window beat just like the naked thump of your lover's heart under your palm. There'll be that same soft flutter of surprise that another life, full of blood and verve, has bucked up to meet yours. We all take that flutter and from it fashion our wants and expectations. Not only in life, but also in literature. We pick up a book and every now and then our window rattles.
This is influence. It is primal.
Some authors will not read other fiction when they write their own out of a fear of being influenced. They wish no muffle to their own voice and fail to recognize the shade and hue of others already infused in their tongue. I maintain that no writer writing now can escape influence if that writer reads at all. And what writer doesn't read? We all write from within a crowd. We are all that girl behind the glass in the photo. Who is talking to her as her face melts into that sad? Much of a writer's job is to manage the shape and force of the breath on the other side of the glass, to huff out the white shape of their palm against the infinite gale of other voices.
I've discovered a new voice with which to temper mine: Jeffrey Lent.
I'm curious who your influences are. Are you the sort of writer that shies away from other fiction when you write? Or do you delve further in, consuming fuel? Who are your influences?
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Brad, I have missed your posts. Influences are everywhere, beyond just authors. The language of people around me rattles me the most; and I want that rattle all the time. Drunk couples arguing at 3am is a damn drug of things to inspire.
As for the influences I will say Adam Voith, Warren Ellis, Sam Lipsyte.
I've been quite negligent here in regards to the blog, but the absence was prompted by the highest of intentions. Nevertheless, I thought I ought to throw something out. Influences is what was on my mind.
I've not actually heard of those first two, so you've prompted me to add a couple more to my burgeoning to-do list. I've heard of Lipsyte, but not yet read any of his work.
I was hoping you'd respond as your interests often come in at angles decidedly different than mine. It's where they cross that I can learn much.
Thanks for stopping by again after such a long absence from me. It's appreciated!
Lipsyte is great. I'd also say for me Larry Brown and Mark Leyner (verrry different writers) and Gary Lutz, though it's near impossible to write like him.
Is this an age thing again? First, I have never heard of any writer mentioned here so far, and I thought I was reasonably well-read.
I think Matt's response is excellent. Influences are everywhere and everything.
My purely literary influences occurred mostly during my youth, which was some decades ago, and consist, as I recall, of the usual gang: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, et. al. That is just what I was reading before the age of 20.
When I matured, so did my literary influences: Conrad, Mann, Musil, Turgenev ... I notice the obvious, that my youthful reading was American, while my more adult reading is European.
I still think that James Salter is the greatest living American writer.
Larry Brown and Leyner is quite an odd combination. I like both writers myself, but for very different reasons. More fond of Brown than Leyner. Haven't read Lutz yet however. More to stack on the to-do reading tower.
Don, you might like Larry Brown (a Southern, hardscrabble sort of writer) but I think you'd pull out your hair reading Leyner. I recommend you stay away from him. I can't see you liking him at all.
Perhaps age tenders some difference, although I'm also fond of most of those writers you list as your later influences, but really, it's likely your lifestyle that tends you toward those selections.
You know how remarkably fond I am of Salter. When I read him, I'm dramatically influenced, and while I think he's one of the more powerful writers we have, I shy away from calling him the greatest because I don't think his themes are weighty enough to propel him into that rarefied air. I so often want him to stretch the ideas a bit farther, to reach and in that reaching have his fingers tremble with the struggle. But he doesn't. He runs his palm down a spectacular thigh or over a quivering belly. This is wonderful, of course, but I always get the impression that he's writing smaller than he's able.
Brad, good to have you back.
I just finished 'Instances of Number 3' by Salley Vickers (English writer.) I love her work as she mixes life experience with her day job as a Psychoanalyst and creates wonderfully simple plots layered with human emotion.
Hi Tracy! Thanks for sticking around for the long absence. There'll likely be another.
Another one I haven't heard of. I really enjoy the emotionally laden narrative.
even though i write mostly poetry, i identify with and have been more influenced by novelists. aside from the poets wallace stevens and ts eliot, it's specific books by henry miller, faulkner, virginia woolf, and in general hermann hesse; and more recently ben marcus, derek white and the online stuff.
sometimes when i'm about to jump into a poem i'll read a specific author to help ease me into the tone or style i'm looking for, but once i've got something going, i'll back off and not read anything that might interfere with the bubble i've crawled into.
brad. hell-oo-oo-oo-oo brad.
Helloooo Keith! Been a while, so thanks for stopping by again. I cotton rather well to near all your listed influences with a decided slant toward the older group.
I wrote a collection of stories "around" and as a response to The Kreutzer Sonata and Family Happiness, short works by Tolstoy. When I was younger, I really, really wanted to write like Mary Gaitskill.
I do think that there are a few "perfect books", A Handful of Dust, The Fifth Child, The Quiet American, War and Peace, Madame Bovary, The Great Gatsby, The Sun Also Rises- I'm sure there are more.
When I was in contract with a press (that then folded), my editor was stunned I mostly read old stuff, she said "but your voice is so modern"--haha. So I add to this discussion- the writers we love and study, are not necessarily seen as an influence in any discernable way- it can be complicated, or hidden.
I think a timeless voice, such as the ones found within those books you mention, is in some aspect perpetually modern. If something is able to communicate in human terms, it'll be timeless and thus always on the cutting edge.
Thanks so much for stopping by!
Brad, You are right. It's wondrous the crossing over that can happen.
Warren Ellis is actually a comic book writer, who did put a novel out a little over a year ago. His take on future and horror while cracking an anarchistic like humor has always connected to me.
Adam Voith, was a writer. To my knowledge he quit. He also used to be a booking agent in the music business. He quit that too. He released two of his own books and had his own publishing for a while that put out a few novels and collections. His final book "Stand up Ernie Baxter, You're Dead" was a novel mixed with comic book of a guy (mr. baxter) watching his family and others live their lives while he was in heaven. His mother, and his ex-love find out he had a second life, hidden from them all, of a stand up comedian.
Well I hope to see your words here more. I miss the mighty meal that they are, but understand the absence. Sometime the blog can be a choir worth avoiding.
Hi Brad! Joining with everyone in welcoming you back. I've missed your posts as well.
For a while a huge influence on me was Martin Amis - and for a time I think what I wrote was a lot of very bad copies of his style. I still think he's so funny, and uses language so well, esp in books like Money and The Information. Woolf was a big one too (and those copies were even worse). A lot of semi colons...!
Anyway, so than I tried to move beyond copying, to influence....
Denis Johnson & Raymond Carver were big ones. But too many really. I feel bad starting because I'll inevitably leave too many people out.
I'm going to second (third) Matt and Donigan in saying that at the moment the outside environment and in particular my neighbours - are providing me with some pretty interesting influences!
Hi Brad. Glad you're back posting. Though you've worked up enough of a back catalogue that there's been no shortage of words to pour over in your absence. I really enjoyed that novel excerpt that was posted in video form a few weeks back. Wet my appetite for more of the more to come, yes.
Far as influences of late go, DeLillo and Lorrie Moore have been the biggest, and I can see them all over stuff I've been working on -- for good or ill. I also got around to reading, at your recommendation, some of Salter's work (Sport & Pastime and Dusk), and was, like every lover of the well constructed sentence (and fragment), utterly blown away by the prose. The atmosphere, the economy, all that. Some of the short stories I was more taken with than others, but in particular I found American Express to be a real standout; I would probably say it's one of the best short stories in the last 50 years if I was more well-read in that department. Also, in terms of short story writers, I've really been digging on Breece D'J Pancake's small collection. Some of it's pretty rough but there's a ragged intensity to the stories that elevates them even when the form is a bit shaky.
Rose, I'm quite fond of Carver as well. Thanks for stopping by.
I haven't read Pancake yet, but it's on my to-do list. Heard good things about his work, abbreviated as it was. And thanks for the comments re: the Youtube thing. Mel Bosworth did a good job reading, except he said though instead of through - or maybe I typo'd. At any rate, it's interesting to see someone else's interpretation of the rhythm. It was only 291 words and 2 sentences, so I found it curious where he paused and so forth.
Thanks for stopping by and commenting. It's appreciated!
I can heartily second Breece D'J Pancake. His collection is not a foot from me, read through a little an hour ago. He's very good. Why people stand by the Hemingway comparison, I'm not sure, but good nonetheless.
It was very interesting for me to read the blog. Thanx for it. I like such topics and anything that is connected to them. I would like to read more soon.
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