David Thayer

We all know that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Writers begin as readers, don’t they? The Ninth Grade Novel? My earliest novel came on the heels of watching Dr. Strangelove while reading East of Eden. The US Army invades Buffalo New York for reasons that now strike me as obscure. I may have been reading William Kotzwinkle or Thomas Berger. Invading Buffalo seemed like a good idea at the time.

I was imitating someone. I used to worry about reading authors in my genre while I was writing. I don’t worry anymore. And, where once I feared Pat Buchanan,  now he amuses me. Pat’s hilarious. I don’t know what the correlation is between Pat’s ability to make me laugh and the topic at hand. My stories don’t tend to be ripped from headlines oozing ink. Current events are a subtle influence.

If only Hugo Chavez believed me dead, I muse at times. That’s where the money is.

Until that happy day I’m left to do things the hard way. Pat and Hugo notwithstanding there are more lasting influences to contend with as I begin to write another novel. I have a confession to make: I read a lot while I write my own stuff. My mind is absorbing the work of others while I write. Many writers avoid reading within their genre for fear of outside influences. After all it was outside influences that led to the demise of Richard Nixon, the fall of Rome, the Babylonian Captivity, The Outlaw Josie Wales and sections of the New Testament. They’re sly and insidious and come from outside like Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, and probably the Nehru jacket. You can’t be too careful.

I don’t know. I keep reading. I imitate other writers. Wallace Stegner and Sara Gran. Denise Mina and Thomas Aquinas. I’ve imitated Steinbeck, Ken Bruen, Dante, Kate Atkinson, Dom DeLillo, Heinrich Boell, Fanny Flagg, Larry McMurtrey, William Brodrick, Richard Price, and a guy from Ontario I went to school with. I’d like to imitate more writers like Cornelia Read, Dan Judson, or George Pelecanos. Maybe Michael Koryta or Pat Conroy, and if I get a running start, blow off ten thousand pages like St. Augustine.

What happens is this: after a sentence or two I’m no longer Kate Atkinson-Thomas Aquinas, but have settled back into the familiar pattern of writing like me. I shed my outer Barthelme fairly quickly. Once I get absorbed in what I’m doing I forget who it was my opening paragraph paid homage to: all too soon the opening is gone in the fog of rewriting, a process that further distills the work until I realize at some point that I’m imitating myself. That’s when a coffee break comes in handy.

VS Naipaul says the novel is dead. Why didn’t anyone tell me? I could’ve been imitating Donald Trump.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 23rd, 2006 at 6:19 am and is filed under Biting the Apple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.