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A WRITER WHO HAS MOVED ME

curiousa2z

curiousa2z

Be patient till the last.
I am currently reading a collection of short stories written by people who had been greatly influenced by Ray Bradbury.

That got me thinking about the various authors I've come across over the years who greatly influenced me for various reasons.


Tell me about an author who has made an impact on you and why.
 
Frank Herbert (duh) - made me think about politics and religion in an entirely different way. Every time I read Dune I get something new out of it.
 
Ernest Hemingway is another favourite: a brilliant wordsmith - honing and pruning his writing until only the purest prose remained.
 
I study writers I admire for the specific traits they embody, whatever it is that strikes a chord in me, and try to "find" that for myself without sounding like bad fanfiction. For example, I love Twain's sly wit and his way of sneaking a different message entirely into the narrative than what you thought you were reading. For example, his anti-slavery stuff woven into the words of the pro-slave Huck Finn, or his caustic take on organized religion in the pages of Letters from the Earth. If I could master that way of leading the reader down what seems to be a familiar path before they realize they're not at all where they thought they'd wind up...that is epic literary trolling.

I've seen the same style in Tarentino's films and it's damn near perfectly executed in "Falling Down" with Michael Douglas, and in the book version of Life of Pi. Can't speak for the movie. In poetry Robert Frost has a lot of the same feel, like he's having a laugh at the world's expense...
 
There's a surreal quality to them. It's like laughing at cartoons and then finding out they weren't kidding about the drawings. Those people really exist in some plane or another.
 
agreed - the great writers make the denizens of their worlds so real on some plane of existence for us, never mind what genre they come from.
 
Terry Pratchett. He created a whole world as a mirror to show how he perceives human nature. He writes about the most horrific, stupid, and beautiful aspects of human behavior in a way that makes me laugh hysterically for minutes, then the realization about what it really is he just told me sets in and all I can do is bow to his understanding of the world. In a way, he helps me to understand and accept human nature without becoming world-weary or incapable of loving life and people.
 
Madeleine L'Engle is the first author I remember moving me. Also Peter David. I just loved his Star Trek novels as well as his novelization of Hook and The Hulk.
 
How interesting, Loktar - Madeleine L'Engle was one of the few Christian writers I knew of who could blend her interest in science with her beliefs and not make me crabby from reading her work, if that makes sense.
 
I just started Moby Dick after avoiding it for a long while because I heard it was a difficult read. It has a lot of bible references and there is terminology of the age that you might have to look up, but far from being difficult I'm finding it an effortless and joyful read. It doesn't feel at all self consciously written, but all the same, Melville must've laboured to whittle each sentence down to the bare minimum of words needed to express each idea. It just feels like someone effortlessly relating the story of their trip to you. I'm only 60 pages in and I've been moved.
 
and I'm not gonna lie - I have read and re-read this guy's books I do not know how many times because his story-telling enchants me...





“For the trouble with the real folk of Faerie is that they do not always look like what they are; and they put on the pride and beauty that we would fain wear ourselves.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, On Fairy-Stories
 
also about Tolkien:

FIRST BIG BOOKS I ever tackled- prolly in grade 5....I remember my grade 5 teacher read the Tales of Narnia to us and Tolkien was a natural progression from there, I guess...but there after I leaned to sci-fi...not sure where that progression came from...comic books, maybe.
 
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