Influence and Inspiration

Roland Barthes wrote in Writing Degree Zero that "there is no art which does not point to its own mask" and it could also be said that there is no art which does not point to its own inspiration.  Emily Dickinson frequently used the language of religion - even in poems not about religion - and this made her Biblical influences obvious (much like the Brontës' language). Religious mythology and fairytales have been a big influence on many fiction writers, including myself. At a young age I would be reading ancient Egyptian myths and Russian folklore, and these inspired me to start writing stories.

Writing can be inspired by anything. My writing is, so like John Cheever I am often inspired by everyday life and people, but like Dickinson I'm also influenced by bigger topics such as death and scientific discoveries. My imagination tends to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary so I am influenced by other fantasy and science fiction authors who do this - like Neil Gaiman, Enid Blyton, Alan Moore and Philip K. Dick. Music and lyrics inspire me as much as these writers, though - particularly The Sisters of Mercy and Siouxsie and the Banshees:

Eternal visibility?

This is forever but it won't last long,
This is a memory that fades away in neverending.
And in the death of all that's long been said and done before,
We'll wish that we were something more.

 

‘To Die For’ by The Birthday Massacre

When it comes to a writer being "invisible", if they are not known, they will have no personal legacy as a writer, and while their works live on - horcrux-like - as pieces of them, the writer as a person cannot be so easily associated with it. On the poem 'Westron Wynde', Al Alvarez writes that "nobody knows who wrote that poem or even precisely when he wrote it [...] but whoever it was is still very much alive" - alive in the sense that it is a piece of life recorded and is relatable.

I could leave behind many works of my writing and I don't know if I'd really care whether I was known, as long as people continue to read these things for centuries. On the other hand, it's nice to get recognition, and in the end I may feel unfulfilled if people knew my books but not me. I only follow a particular author's works if I loved something else they wrote, and the visibility of a writer helps - although for someone like Cheever, knowing about his personal life may be detrimental to enjoyment of his fiction. The main thing is what a writer writes, not who a writer is, because - as Alvarez writes - "the point is that the voice is unlike any other voice you have ever heard and it is speaking directly to you [...] in its own distinctive way."

Sociopolitical subjectivism...

I don't think a writer has an obligation to write about society and politics, although it seems almost inevitable that elements of their culture and opinions will make it into their writing. If quality of writing exceeds any other expectations, that's great - but it doesn't have to be a linguistic masterpiece to say important things. As Margaret Atwood writes, "there's one characteristic that sets writing apart from most of the other arts... its availability to almost everyone as a medium of expression." I couldn't judge the quality of my writing, but it must have value in that it can say something unique about the world.

I've never been in a war and I could only write about real war from a detached perspective, like Emily Dickinson. However, I would invent fictional wars which give me freedom to comment on war in general. The writer Philip K. Dick never participated in war, so in his anti-war short story 'Some Kinds of Life' he uses a science fictional war to represent real life wars. I'll write social and political critique allegorically in prose fiction, like this - and more literally in poetry or lyrics, inspired by punk bands like The Damned and Rubella Ballet:

The International Dream

To me, what makes John Cheever's stories "uniquely American" is that they frequently show the unreality behind the illusion of the American Dream. 'The Enormous Radio', described by American literature scholar Allan Lloyd Smith as Domestic American Gothic, exposes the domestic lives of Americans for how troubled they really are. It ends with a twist that reveals that its protagonists are no more perfect than their neighbours, having had an abortion and financial troubles. The protagonists of 'O City of Broken Dreams' pursue a glamorous opportunity that could eventually get them to Hollywood, perhaps the most archetypical American area of the USA, but this fails due to broke bigwigs and the threat of a lawsuit.

From Gaiman's Sandman books

Cheever's American settings and themes show that the stories are American, but a story could be set in an imaginary place and still have a national feel. J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit is not set in any Earthly place, but does feel British - it could be very different if written by an American. However, British writer Neil Gaiman seems adept at writing American stories, perhaps because he has lived in the USA for the past 20 years. I've never left Europe so any American stories I write would have to be inspired by fiction or Americans I know - they'd be less authentic as I haven't experienced what it's like to live there. I would write what I know, and much of what I know is from a British perspective. Even my fantasy stories would probably "feel British" due to any themes unique to Britain, the lifestyles of the characters, and the way they speak.