Who is your writer's writer?

[ariza]

I am a self proclaimed Bard nerd.

You know I havent read the Bard at all. Nothing beyond "Julius Caesar" that I loved. Is it true that you cant aspire to write in English without reading the Bard?

All this time I have been hiding behind the fact that Drama needs to be seen and not read. Do you agree? In any case its time to dust that tome.

[Robert Tulip]

Cervantes

[NY152]

"Who is your writer's writer?" indeed. When you step back and think about it, the answer doesn't come straight at you. You have to think: "Who could possibily be the one (or many) author(s)/writer(s) do I really think about?" Then you go through hundreds (maybe 10) people that you have to go through and figure which one really set you off running. (Who drew the first blood I ask you?)
For me, first name is Hemingway. "il faut (d'abord) durer" and he was at that. Read all of his books, then read them twice over and you'll know why I love that man so.
Second would of course of course be Edgar Allan Poe. There's just something about his words that just cultivates me to no end. Amazing man, amazing stories.
Whenever I start to write, I think of the inspiration I had when I was a kid watching The Waltons. John-boy is a character in a movie, but also in a novel by Earl Hamner, which I can say is where I got my inspiration from.

[ariza]

Hmm...Hemingway....brings to mind the "two big hearted river". Some of the best stuff I have ever read. Its not just that you can step into the stream with Nick Adams, no that would be banal, you also step into the place with Nick Adams. Ofcourse there will be books and books written about how Nick Adams quest to catch fish is an allegory for mankind's....you know. But thats not why you read him. Every time I read him, I think if I'll ever be that clear in my prose.

Methinks the man is the father of a lot of fiction written in the late 20th Century. Unfortunately most never acknowledge it.

[bleachededen]

I am a self proclaimed Bard nerd.

You know I havent read the Bard at all. Nothing beyond "Julius Caesar" that I loved. Is it true that you cant aspire to write in English without reading the Bard?

All this time I have been hiding behind the fact that Drama needs to be seen and not read. Do you agree? In any case its time to dust that tome.

No, I don't think that's true. You can certainly write well without having read Shakespeare, but I think you'd write better and your understanding of language and the timelessness of his stories would give you a more well-rounded approach to writing. Just my opinion, though.

And yes, all drama is better seen than read, but once one has done both, you can get a better sense of what the writer is doing with language when you can see it on the page and also how different people manipulate the inflections and presentation of the words in different productions. I think you should both read and watch drama, not just one or the other. It leads to a much richer experience.

[ariza]

Thanks Bleachededen....that is a keen insight. The advantage with the bard is that there have been so many interpretations of him and so many of them are so good that it can be encyclopedic in itself - in teaching how a text can be read again and again.

And the language yes. He introduced i-dont-remember-exactly-how many words. Some have since been warped and some still retain that usage. To a writer that is a wonderful class to start - I know.

[bleachededen]

Something like 8,000 words, supposedly. He was a precocious little scamp.

[ariza]

Wow...I wonder who's second. Joyce. Finnegan's wake! I know of a word in there that is a sentence long...stretches from one end to the other of the page. Now I wonder...what was the structural need to write like that?

[Neil Griffiths]

James Salter. Same generation as Bellow and Roth and Malamud et al. Probably the greatest writer of the short elegant sentence. Few writers' style has had such an effect on me. When I read Light Years, which I do often, I have to take a breath between paragraphs. The second paragraph of the second chapter might be my favourite in all writing, and it's just a woman at a sink!

[ariza]

Thanks Neil. I will try and get my hands around that... a recommendation like that is worth checking out!