I was trained in the '50s as a New Critic. I remember what literature was like before the New Critics, when people stood up and talked about Shelley's soul and such things.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I was really exposed to great old-time literature - the classics, the poetic realists like Strindberg and Ibsen and all those guys. I was really inspired by all those guys. That's when writing became a primary focus.
I love the '50s and grew up loving works from that time period and from those great playwrights.
I think all writers of my age who are brought up on films probably by the age of 16 have seen many more films than they have read classics of literature. We can't help but be influenced by film. Film has got some great tricks that it's taught writers.
I still think like a critic, and I still analyze films like a critic. However, it's not possible to write criticism if you're making films.
I wouldn't call myself a 'literary critic,' just a book reviewer.
I have never believed that the critic is the rival of the poet, but I do believe that criticism is a genre of literature or it does not exist.
I was an outsider, never quite part of what was going on, always looking in. It turned out to be great preparation for writing fiction.
I felt like I haven't had the typical experience of a novelist whose book becomes a movie.
It wasn't until I was in my teens that I started admiring writers as inspirations for my own work, and my earliest influences there were Stephen King, Marion Zimmer Bradley and Richard Adams.
I attempt to write a good novel. Whether it is literature or not is something that will be decided by the ages, not by me and not by a pack of critics around the globe.