Influential writers part one.

There's a meme going round on Facebook at the moment asking people to list fifteen writers that influenced them in fifteen minutes, and it got me thinking so I decided to make a similar post here. This will take me longer than fifteen minutes to write as I want to go into a bit more detail and include quotes, and I'm only doing ten writers instead of fifteen; partly so I can go into more detail, but also to avoid repetition of similar reasons for their influence on me, so while this won't be an exhaustive list of my influences, I hope it gets under the bonnet of them a bit more. I'm including writers of plays, comedy and scripts, too - I tend to find that people expect a novelist's influences to consist solely of other novelists, which most certainly isn't true in my case. I count influences in all the arts, and a few scientific ones too, and I most certainly wouldn't be the writer I am without them. So, in no order, here are five writers who have influenced me (the other five will follow in a separate entry so I can post this before it becomes totally stale)...

1) Oscar Wilde. Of course, I wouldn't dare compare my writing to dear Oscar's, but we're talking influences here, and the first time I sat down and really read a piece of his (De Profundis), I was blown away by it. I think it's easy for people, regardless of the time they live in, to stereotype our ancestors and see them not so much as people but as nondescripts in funny clothes; like background figures in a painting or a period drama, who weren't so much individuals as carbon copies of our mental image of the zeitgeist at the time they lives (ALL Victorians were sex-hating prudes, don't you know!), and I defy anyone to continue to hold such a view after reading that essay. The humanity and modernity of Wilde's voice is achingly evident, and the way in which he writes about the torments he suffered following his conviction and imprisonment grabs you by the collar and forces you to see Wilde the human being, rather than just Wilde the legendary, impeccably-attired wit. It's something that stayed with me, and something I try to capture in my own work: the fact that the Victorians were as individual as you or I, and that they had feelings too. That sounds so obvious when worded that bluntly, but I really do think that plenty of people don't really see that, on a deep, subconscious level.

On November 13th, 1895, I was brought down here from London. From two o'clock till half-past two on that day I had to stand on the centre platform of Clapham Junction in convict dress, and handcuffed, for the world to look at. I had been taken out of the hospital ward without a moment's notice being given to me. Of all possible objects I was the most grotesque. When people saw me they laughed. Each train as it came up swelled the audience. Nothing could exceed their amusement. That was, of course, before they knew who I was. As soon as they had been informed they laughed still more. For half an hour I stood there in the grey November rain surrounded by a jeering mob.

For a year after that was done to me I wept every day at the same hour and for the same space of time. That is not such a tragic thing as possibly it sounds to you. To those who are in prison tears are a part of every day's experience. A day in prison on which one does not weep is a day on which one's heart is hard, not a day on which one's heart is happy.

Well, now I am really beginning to feel more regret for the people who laughed than for myself. Of course when they saw me I was not on my pedestal, I was in the pillory. But it is a very unimaginative nature that only cares for people on their pedestals. A pedestal may be a very unreal thing. A pillory is a terrific reality. They should have known also how to interpret sorrow better. I have said that behind sorrow there is always sorrow. It were wiser still to say that behind sorrow there is always a soul. And to mock at a soul in pain is a dreadful thing. In the strangely simple economy of the world people only get what they give, and to those who have not enough imagination to penetrate the mere outward of things, and feel pity, what pity can be given save that of scorn?
(De Profundis)

2) Alfred, Lord Tennyson. This is mainly because of The Lady of Shalott (and you all know how much I love that poem); which I first encountered when I was a teenager and off school with the flu and it was read on one of those BBC for schools programmes (do they still do those?). For various personal reasons, it's a poem that means a great deal to me, although for a long time I fought its influence on my own work because I didn't want to 'cut too close to the bone' of my own emotions, as hearing The Lady of Shalott for the first time had done to me, largely because I'm not good with emotions and therefore am a bit scared of them. But I came to accept that in order to get the best out of one's Muse, one sometimes has to be willing to follow it into some uncomfortable, stony-grounded places, and that there is something to be gained from doing so.

There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott.
(The Lady of Shalott)

3) Victoria Wood. I've been watching her comedy since I was a child (I've been watching a lot of comedy since I was a child; my parents trusted me with Blackadder and Billy Connolly and the like from a relatively early age, for which I am immensely grateful as I don't know who I would have become if I hadn't been able to cultivate a sense of dark humour before I hit my teens), and I could just as easily have included quite a few other stand-ups, comic actors and writers of comedy, but I chose to include Victoria Wood on this list as I do see her influence in my own work, as different as out ultimate outcomes are. I don't blame you if you can't see it, but I know it's there, at a skeletal level where it probably isn't as visible once the flesh has been laid over the bones. It has often been said that Victoria Wood is often unfairly pigeonholed as a 'northern comedian', when she is in fact just a comedian who happens to come from the north; and that's something I can relate to. Ultimately, it wouldn't be a point for discussion if Ms Wood and/or I just happened to come from Cricklewood, and so in a sense I find it a bit baffling when someone's regional roots are discussed in the context of their work (a northern solicitor/dental hygienist/admin worker?), but then I can also understand it when, as is the case with both Victoria Wood and myself, the writer does choose to write about the areas they grew up in with characters who speak in the local dialect. What can I tell you - for obvious reasons it comes naturally, and I don't see any reason not to. I never really thought about it much as a kid, but later as I realised the relatively smaller proportion of fiction/plays/films/TV/sketches etc set in the north, Victoria Wood's example did prove to me that this didn't have to be the case. In a recent documentary on Wood's work, Celia Imrie also remarked on a 'musical' quality to the choice of her words; something in the rhythm of Wood's sentences, and that's something I also like to do.


(Live at the Albert, 2001. The part on horror films is genius.)

4) Kim Wilkins. I've mentioned Kim before, and everything I said in that entry still holds true, so there's little point in me going over it again now. I think it was reading her work that really gave me the shove and got me to actually write a novel of my own (as opposed to meaning to get around to it one day), so you can all blame her.

I came to London to write and found myself practising magic instead. I suppose they're not so very dissimilar if you think about it - there are words in magic, just as there is magic in words. So be warned. There are a lot of words in this book.
(Angel of Ruin, published as Fallen Angel in the UK, and home of my favourite ever plot twist)

5) Stephen King. Like most writers, I do of course love The Shining - there's something in the idea of a demented author that a worrying number of us seem to relate to, and I actually have a mug that I think is far better than those ones with the word WRITER emblazoned on them; it's got an axe-wielding ant on it with the slogan Here's Johnny!. (Of course, in the book Jack Torrance goes after his family with a croquet mallet not an axe - the axe came from the Kubrick film adaptation, as did the line "here's Johnny", which Jack Nicholson just happened to ad lib on the take they eventually used. Anyway, I got the mug from B&M Bargains if you want one.) But, like King himself, I don't think that The Shining, as good as it is, is his scariest novel - I'm with King in my conviction that his most bone-chilling work to date is Pet Sematary. If you've never read it, or if you've just seen the film adaptation, you probably won't understand why - on the surface, it doesn't sound like the sort of thing that would lead perhaps the most famous horror writer of our time to pen a foreword confessing that he actually put the manuscript away in a drawer for a while because he thought he'd gone too far. But read it, and I think you're likely to understand. This is a novel about perhaps our most primal fear - that of death - and everything that goes with it: the visceral revulsion of decomposition; the eeriness of a stiff, cold body and how different they look from the individual you knew; the crushing weight of grief. That book can reliably scare the hell out of me every time I read it, and that's no mean feat; but it's also achingly sad, and if you've ever lost someone you love, I think the scene detailing the protagonist's inner thoughts as he attends the funeral of his toddler son will be quite a taxing read. But hey, writers are masochists - we have to be.

Louis was told how merciful it was that Gage hadn't suffered thirty-two times by his own inner count. He was told that God works in mysterious ways his wonders to perform twenty-five times. Bringing up the rear was 'he's with the angels now': a total of twelve times.
(Pet Sematary)

Stay tuned for part two!