In France, for instance, one magazine writer was convinced that On The Road had been a huge influence on Lost Souls and was crushed to learn that I hadn't read the one until after I'd written the other.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I don't think I can pick apart how I was influenced by which author. But these were the authors whose books I went back to again and again when I was in high school and college, when I first started trying to write stories.
The road that led me to literature was very different from the one followed by my fellow writers in Poland.
The writers who have the deepest influence on one are those one reads in ones more impressionable, early life, and often it is the more youthful works of those writers that leave the deepest imprint.
Probably every book I read influenced me in some small way. Authors like Jan Westcott, Kathleen Winsor, Catherine Cookson, Georgette Heyer, and even Barbara Cartland taught me to write character-driven stories.
I was really influenced by Joan Didion and Pauline Kael; they were both at the height of their influence when I was coming into my own as a reader.
When I was young, I assumed that authors must have traveled the world or done exotic things in order to tell great stories.
I'm not sure there's a difference between books that affected the way I see the world and books that influenced me as a writer.
I don't read novels, but my semiotics study influenced everything about the way I read and edit and write.
Another thing I learned is that novels, even those from apparently distant times and places, remain current and enlightening, and also comforting.
I'm sure I've been influenced by every fine writer I've ever read, from Dickens and Austen to Auden and Jane Hirshfield. And also, the short stories of Updike, Cheever, Munro, Alice Adams, and Doris Lessing. And the plays of Oscar Wilde. And paintings by Alice Neel and Matisse.