It's true of so many fiction writers that I much prefer the essayistic work they did, whether it's David Foster Wallace's, or John Cheever's, or Nathaniel Hawthorne's.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I think that like all writers - and if any writer disagrees with this, then he is not a writer - I write primarily for myself.
There is more to be pondered in the grain and texture of life than traditional fiction allows. The work of essayists is vital precisely because it permits and encourages self-knowledge in a way that is less indirect than fiction, more open and speculative.
Writers such as Richard Powers and the late David Foster Wallace have shown the path to a newer generation of writers for whom all national boundaries are quaint curiosities.
David Foster Wallace, in my opinion, is one of the greatest writers we've ever had, certainly in the last twenty years. His obvious dominance of the English language is partnered with honest moments and the most beautifully dark sensibility.
John Dos Passos, Raymond Carver, Flaubert and William Maxwell were all very influential when I first started writing. Now, the writers I'm most interested in are the writers who are most unlike me: for example, Denis Johnson.
William Faulkner, Muriel Spark, Richard Yates, William Styron, James Salter, Alice Munro. They're very different writers, and I admire them for different reasons. The common thread, I guess, is that they remind me what's possible, why I wanted to write fiction in the first place.
Since childhood, I wrote a lot of fiction, a lot of stories, but I most loved writing essays.
Fiction writers tend to err either making people more than they are or less than they are. I'd rather err on the side of the former.
Writers do draw inspiration from their own lives, which, quite frankly, might be more interesting than fiction.
I can't tell you any more than any other writer can tell you why they write, and I don't know what my influences are.
No opposing quotes found.