May 11 2009
Our Writers and their Writers
I like to read.
You should see me in a library or bookstore; all kinds of bookstores (big chains, small independent, used, thrift store book sections, library booksales). I like to read.
And as I read my writers, I enjoy discovering what they like to read, so as to get information about more books I can read. And my writers often don’t disappoint–they point me to other amazing writers. It is always good to read what they like to read.
I recently discovered Colm Toibin, an Irish writer who has often been compared to James Joyce and others. And those others happen to be writers I have read. I want a writer to point me to writers that I already thought were good, but I also want a them to help me discover new writers along the way.
Petina Gappah, because she talks about her writing as well as her reading process all the time, just helped me discover Toibin, and I am reading The Master, which uses the American writer Henry James as the main subject of the story, in the same way that Cunningham uses Virginia Woolf as the main character. Such books are nice.
That’s the beauty of writing; if you would like to make an impact, you also have to appreciate reading. Some writers pefer to read classics only while they are working on their own writing, to remove the sense of competition, or the anxiety that my result from knowing what your contemporaries are working on. I have read that Jhumpa Lahiri is like that–avoids current writing news or reviews, arguing that knowing too much of what others are doing may be discouraging.
I get to know the writers my writers like to read through interviews. I have many collections of conversations with writers for this reasons; those interviews are enlightening and highly inspiring….and they send me to book stores or libraries often. That’s why I like interviewing writers: I get to ask them what writers influenced them, and usually those end up being good writers who lead to other writers. After a while you realize that most of these works are from a common creative oasis….you have no idea, for instance, how much writing leads back to James Joyce, or to William Faulkner, or to William Golding, not to mention Anton Chekhov.
Some books will send you to the classics. You have no idea how many times I went back to The Sound and the Fury when I was reading Harare North by Brian Chikwava. The guy who tells the story just kept reminding me of Benjy Compson. When I was reading Adichie’s The Thing Around Your Neck, I kept seeking Joyce Carol Oates.
Reading is good and I like it.
