My Life in Movies

I was tagged with this assignment by Aditi some weeks ago and found it surprisingly daunting.  How to choose which writers have influenced me most?  Certainly everything I’ve read, seen, heard, and experienced has had some influence on me, but there are always the people whose work speaks to us the deepest, who we feel a connection to or simply admire, who on some level we try to emulate.  I tried to focus mainly on writers whose influence is most apparent in my writing, rather than writers I simply like or who serve as attending saints through the tunnels of my brain.  And while there are a few figures outside the purely literary realm mentioned, I tried as much as possible to stick with the written word.

I’m not going to tag anyone with this meme. If the challenge interests you, then by all means give it a try.  Just link back here so I know you did it.  But I would definitely like to see lists from Phill English and Todd Kiesling, who were also tagged with me.  C’mon guys!

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1.  Ray Bradbury
I read lots of his stories while in my teens–The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451, The Illustrated Man, and collections of his early work.  It was always the way he wrote that influenced me, the lyrical, atmospheric style coupled with content that was speculative and fantastic.  I still want to write like he writes.

2.  Poppy Z. Brite
Haven’t read her writing in years, but damn if the influence hasn’t stuck.  Her plots are built around lots of interesting characters who tend to float in “alternative” and underground circles; her prose is lyrical, yet never overwrought; and her Gothic horror stories often deal with themes of alienation and transgression.  Even now, I find evidence of these elements in my work.

3.  Truman Capote
It was my boyfriend who got me into Capote, and it was the surprising recommendation via Burroughs that got him interested.  Again, I keep coming to writers I love for the way they write, but Capote is arguably one of the greatest American stylists of the 20th century, with prose that is very tight and concise, yet dreamy and lyrical, almost precious (though this depends greatly on which period you read).  He also had a way of writing characters you could fall in love with, a habit I often fall into while I write.

4.  Lewis Carroll
While I suppose he borders on “attending saint” and some would struggle to see his presence in my work, I can’t think of anyone so crucial to forming my vision of the world as the contradictory Dodgson.  I have no impulse towards parody, but I can write some witty dialogue when it strikes me.  But there is also the fluidity of reality in his stories, a melting of boundaries, and though his work is noted for its whimsy, there is always something dark lurking underneath.

5.  Nick Cave
What do I care if he’s not technically a writer?  He did write that one novel (And the Ass Saw the Angel, one of my favorites), and his lyrics are as literary as they come.  He can tell a great story with dark, vivid characters and throw in some beautiful imagery as well.  Definitely a major influence on the way I write.

6.  Philip K. Dick
The influence is not quite as related to language as his plots and concepts.  His constant investigation of perception and reality fascinates me.  While his concepts are contained in the sometimes pulpish context of science fiction (and his work is sometimes pulpish), they still relate to philosophical, psychological, and religious issues that have always fascinated me.  What I like and relate to most is the effort he makes to put ideas in a very human context.  He often wrote stories not about scientists, as is common in the genre, but about average people caught up in situations beyond their control, just trying to make sense of the world.  I really admire him for that.

7.  Charles Dickens
I have this need to write broad novels or bildungsromans that is likely influenced by Dickens.  Despite his penchant for writing sometimes stock or idealized characters, I love the way he could make you see and feel a place.  At his best, he had incredible scope and could show you a story at all levels, from the characters to the environment that influences them.
Hardy and the Brontes serve as similar influences.  19th century fiction in general.

8.  Fyodor Dostoevsky
I can’t remember who said it, but you could possibly learn anything you wanted to know about humanity by reading The Brothers Karamazov.  Hyperbole, perhaps, but Dostoyevsky was able to write characters who represent ideas and worldviews while talking and behaving just like real people.  I just love characters, and I love how he loved even the worst of them.

9.  Katherine Dunn
She’s written only three novels that I know of.  Only one of these novels is well known, and it’s more of a cult classic than a popular favorite.  What impresses me about Geek Love (besides the fact that it’s about a family of homemade circus freaks) is that Dunn combined the traditional broad novel approach with writing that was more modern to tell a story that made grotesque and very “Other” characters seem more human.

10.  T.S. Eliot
My favorite poet of all time.  I still catch myself borrowing images, and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” has precisely the kind of mood and atmosphere I like to write.

11.  William Faulkner
Hmm, I keep coming back to great characters and beautiful prose, don’t I?
Faulkner has mainly influenced me via his depiction of decadence and decay, psychologically rich characters (and sprawling family trees), and willingness to play with style.

12.  Neil Gaiman
Oh, how I debated his inclusion.  I’m more familiar with Gaiman’s career in comics than in literature, but even so, the storytelling and elements of the fantastic have definitely influenced my own stories.  What I liked in Sandman was the way he could take several different threads and eventually weave them together at the climax; the effect was striking and something I try to consider.  Also, I like his characters, how real they seem, and that’s always been one of my primary considerations.

13.  John Irving
Like Dunn, Irving writes traditional novels in a modern context.  He plays less with language, but I still love the richness of his stories, with their myriad of characters (often grotesque) and tendency to span full lives.  And the way he pieces together themes and motifs–fantastic.  He’s made me think a lot about the structure of novels and the way everything comes together.

14.  Franz Kafka
Atmosphere and mood, definitely.  Everything I write seems vaguely Kafkaesque, though I always hope it’s not obvious.

15.  John Keats
When I was 15, he was by far my favorite poet.  I think the Romantic, sometimes melancholy, feel and attention to phrasing really influenced the way I wrote.  And what I wrote.  All my high school poetry has a smidgen of Keats in it, which is both adorable and embarrassing.

16.  Tanith Lee
Mostly I’ve just read her Paradys stories, but I was so thrilled to discover that there was fantasy like hers.  The prose is so rich, the atmosphere so dark, and I love the city of Paradys, which resembles a mythical Paris full of ghosts, magic, and monsters.  Yes, it sounds a bit silly, but the way she writes it, there’s not an ounce of cheese.

17.  Flannery O’Connor
In case you haven’t noticed, I’m really into Southern Gothic fiction.  I love the dark, decadent, and grotesque.  O’Connor did it well, but it always reflects the social and religious themes that obsessed her.  While I don’t share her belief in Christianity, there is a violent, primal, and very necessary quality to her theology that is fascinating.  When discovering her work, I attempted to emulate her use of irony and revelatory climaxes.

18.  Joyce Carol Oates
I like Oates’s short stories, but her novels have tended to disappoint me.  Nonetheless, she wrote a little novella, First Love, that was recommended to me and I fell in love with, mostly for the way she depicted some rather disturbing character dynamics (primarily between a molester and his victim).  In general, I’ve been influenced by the way in which Oates often depicts such dark subject matter in an artistic way, often playing with style and focalization to distance the reader or draw him/her closer.  Again, I’m always interested in elements of the Gothic and grotesque in the context of “literary” fiction.

19.  Mervyn Peake
I love the way he wrote and I love his Gormenghast.  So Gothic, so grotesque, so uncanny.  Style as reflection of theme.  He had the audacity to fill an entire novel with exposition (Titus Groan), and thank God for it.

20.  Edgar Allen Poe
Like Bradbury, Dickens, Keats, and Carroll, absolutely essential.  When I was 12, nothing amazed me as much as “The Black Cat” and his willingness to write from the perspective of such an awful character.  Poe was always willing to go there, to write tormented, extreme characters who transgress in ways we are unwilling to transgress.  Poe wrote The Shadow of American liberalism.  He wrote it beautifully.  When I first read him, I knew I wanted to write that way.  I still do.

21.  Arthur Rimbaud
Baudelaire would be applicable as well, in the category of “Dark French writers who wrote fever-dreams and shadows of decadence and transgression.”  Now I’m getting poetic.  OK, Rimbaud influenced me through his imagery, dark and sorta dreamlike.  He influenced me through his creation of a personal mythology (much like Plath, Ginsberg, Whitman, etc.).  Another of my favorite poets.

22.  Sylvia Plath
I find most criticisms of Plath patently unfair.  She wrote her own mythology, recasting herself as characters and metaphors drawn from classical and contemporary sources, always desperately seeking the truth.  When I thought I was a poet, that’s what I tried to do.  Like everything other depressed girl who thinks she can write poetry, I was never as good as Plath.

23.  J.D. Salinger
I did not, like Aditi, write my own version of Catcher in the Rye, but I did write a lot of stories fashioned after Salinger when I was 17.  Nothing much ever happened, and everyone was so sad and wistful.  He’s still in there somewhere.

24.  Tom Waits
The other songwriter, with no novel to legitimize his presence (OK, he collaborated with Burroughs on a musical play; does that count?).  Well, here’s how his lyrics have influenced me: 1) the use of place, 2) characters who exist outside of mainstream in some fashion, 3) re-appropriation of cliches and idioms, 4)damn, that guy can write good lyrics.  In short, integral.

25.  Denton Welch
Burroughs was also a fan (yes, he’s one of my attending saints).  Like Capote, there’s something bordering on precious about his work, something very detailed and precise–pretty–about his writing.  But also something vaguely dark and strange that fascinates me, especially in the private moments of his protagonists.  I also relate him somewhat to Peake, as both were visual artists, both were English and close to being contemporaries, both had a miniaturist’s obsession with details, and both had rather brief careers as writers.  It helps that there are traces of Camp and traces of an ambiguous eroticism.

Tags: getting rawther personal

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