Chris Dietzel's Blog - Posts Tagged "coetzee"
Writing Influences
I’ve had a quote on my desk for about ten years. So long that I’m not even sure where I originally found it. The quote is:
“William Faulkner imitated Shakespeare and Herman Melville. Cormac McCarthy and Toni Morrison imitated Faulkner. Ernest Hemingway imitated Anton Chekhov. Raymond Carver imitated Hemingway. Jack Kerouac imitated Marcel Proust and Thomas Wolfe. Allen Ginsberg imitated Walt Whitman and William Blake.”
The lesson here is that every writer—every artist of every sort—learns from those who came before them by initially copying their style in order to find the things they liked and didn’t like and, as a result, find their own voice in the process. The same holds true for today’s writers as much as it did for those who are already considered legends. Richard Ford, author of ‘The Sportswriter,’ was influenced by Raymond Carver and Ralph Waldo Emerson. J.M. Coetzee, author of ‘Waiting for the Barbarians,’ was influenced by Ford Maddox Ford. Nick Cole, author of the Wasteland Series, was influenced by Hemingway.
Every author you speak to probably has a similar influence(s). My own are two I mentioned above: Ford and Coetzee. The interesting thing is tracing the lineage of your influence. For example, while I consider myself to be a blend of Ford and Coetzee, if I trace their own influences back one step, I’m actually a blend of Carver, Emerson, and Maddox Ford.
For all practical purposes, this lineage has no implication other than it’s extremely interesting. If you're a writer, how far back can you trace the lineage of your own writing influences? And if you have dreams of one day becoming a writer, take comfort in knowing that the greats and those who aim to be great learned how to write the same way as you: by learning from those whose books they enjoyed and whose writing completely captured them.
“William Faulkner imitated Shakespeare and Herman Melville. Cormac McCarthy and Toni Morrison imitated Faulkner. Ernest Hemingway imitated Anton Chekhov. Raymond Carver imitated Hemingway. Jack Kerouac imitated Marcel Proust and Thomas Wolfe. Allen Ginsberg imitated Walt Whitman and William Blake.”
The lesson here is that every writer—every artist of every sort—learns from those who came before them by initially copying their style in order to find the things they liked and didn’t like and, as a result, find their own voice in the process. The same holds true for today’s writers as much as it did for those who are already considered legends. Richard Ford, author of ‘The Sportswriter,’ was influenced by Raymond Carver and Ralph Waldo Emerson. J.M. Coetzee, author of ‘Waiting for the Barbarians,’ was influenced by Ford Maddox Ford. Nick Cole, author of the Wasteland Series, was influenced by Hemingway.
Every author you speak to probably has a similar influence(s). My own are two I mentioned above: Ford and Coetzee. The interesting thing is tracing the lineage of your influence. For example, while I consider myself to be a blend of Ford and Coetzee, if I trace their own influences back one step, I’m actually a blend of Carver, Emerson, and Maddox Ford.
For all practical purposes, this lineage has no implication other than it’s extremely interesting. If you're a writer, how far back can you trace the lineage of your own writing influences? And if you have dreams of one day becoming a writer, take comfort in knowing that the greats and those who aim to be great learned how to write the same way as you: by learning from those whose books they enjoyed and whose writing completely captured them.
Top 5 Fictional Authors
Classic novels have given us memorable characters of all sorts, from heroes we never forget to villains we can never forgive. In this list, here are the top five most memorable fictional writers of all time.
5. Elizabeth Costello – Costello is J.M. Coetzee’s alter ego. Like Coetzee, she lectures about literature and animal rights. She also happens to be one of Coetzee’s less likeable characters because she is overbearing and obtuse. In addition to appearing in a couple of Coetzee’s works, an entire book is named after her.
4. Jack Torrance – “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” Ever since a crazed Torrance wrote that over and over in Stephen King’s The Shining, readers and moviegoers have loved being terrified by the abusive and alcoholic writer. Jack Nicholson’s portrayal of Torrance helped elevate the fictional author to popular culture.
3. Benno von Archimboldi – 2666 is considered Roberto Bolano’s masterpiece and Archimboldi, a fictional German writer, is at the center of many of the plotlines in the story. At the beginning of the novel, he is introduced as an elusive writer who not even his most loyal critics and professors know much about and have never seen a picture of. At the end of the novel, you find out exactly who Archimboldi is and how his life has driven varying storylines to converge. The amount of mystery at one point, combined with the amount of depth throughout, makes Archimboldi impossible to forget.
2. Ellsworth Toohey – Toohey is a journalist and critic in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. He represents the embodiment of establishment opinion and the power of creating popular conformity. In the novel, Toohey starts off as a sort of bumbling and lowly critic, but as the story progresses you come to understand that he’s more powerful than the business owners and the men and women of true ability because he shapes the public’s opinion. How many times have we heard of a lackluster movie or book that became a success just because the critics all said it was great, or a movie or book of true genius that bombed because critics convinced people it wasn't worth their time? Toohey is the embodiment of that idea, and Rand’s success in using him to that end makes Toohey a highly underrated villain.
1. Kilgore Trout – Although the character was inspired by one of Kurt Vonnegut’s friends, in many lights, Trout is also Vonnegut’s alter ego. Like Vonnegut, Trout is a science fiction writer. Also like Vonnegut, many readers simply don’t know how to interpret much of Trout’s writing. He is noted as being a prolific writer and even writes his own memoir. Trout is mentioned or appears in almost a dozen of Vonnegut’s stories, most notably in Slaughterhouse-Five.
Honorable mention - Richard Bachman – Bachman was Stephen King’s pseudonym for many of his early novels and isn’t a fictional author in the classic sense. He’s included here because the idea of two different writing personas within one man, which is what Bachman represents, was King’s inspiration for The Dark Half. I include Bachman here because he went from being a pseudonym to a fictional author when King dedicated The Dark Half to "The late Richard Bachman."
5. Elizabeth Costello – Costello is J.M. Coetzee’s alter ego. Like Coetzee, she lectures about literature and animal rights. She also happens to be one of Coetzee’s less likeable characters because she is overbearing and obtuse. In addition to appearing in a couple of Coetzee’s works, an entire book is named after her.
4. Jack Torrance – “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” Ever since a crazed Torrance wrote that over and over in Stephen King’s The Shining, readers and moviegoers have loved being terrified by the abusive and alcoholic writer. Jack Nicholson’s portrayal of Torrance helped elevate the fictional author to popular culture.
3. Benno von Archimboldi – 2666 is considered Roberto Bolano’s masterpiece and Archimboldi, a fictional German writer, is at the center of many of the plotlines in the story. At the beginning of the novel, he is introduced as an elusive writer who not even his most loyal critics and professors know much about and have never seen a picture of. At the end of the novel, you find out exactly who Archimboldi is and how his life has driven varying storylines to converge. The amount of mystery at one point, combined with the amount of depth throughout, makes Archimboldi impossible to forget.
2. Ellsworth Toohey – Toohey is a journalist and critic in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. He represents the embodiment of establishment opinion and the power of creating popular conformity. In the novel, Toohey starts off as a sort of bumbling and lowly critic, but as the story progresses you come to understand that he’s more powerful than the business owners and the men and women of true ability because he shapes the public’s opinion. How many times have we heard of a lackluster movie or book that became a success just because the critics all said it was great, or a movie or book of true genius that bombed because critics convinced people it wasn't worth their time? Toohey is the embodiment of that idea, and Rand’s success in using him to that end makes Toohey a highly underrated villain.
1. Kilgore Trout – Although the character was inspired by one of Kurt Vonnegut’s friends, in many lights, Trout is also Vonnegut’s alter ego. Like Vonnegut, Trout is a science fiction writer. Also like Vonnegut, many readers simply don’t know how to interpret much of Trout’s writing. He is noted as being a prolific writer and even writes his own memoir. Trout is mentioned or appears in almost a dozen of Vonnegut’s stories, most notably in Slaughterhouse-Five.
Honorable mention - Richard Bachman – Bachman was Stephen King’s pseudonym for many of his early novels and isn’t a fictional author in the classic sense. He’s included here because the idea of two different writing personas within one man, which is what Bachman represents, was King’s inspiration for The Dark Half. I include Bachman here because he went from being a pseudonym to a fictional author when King dedicated The Dark Half to "The late Richard Bachman."
