YOUR most influential writers.

parmalee

peripatetic artisan
Valued Senior Member
Which writers and/or texts have been most influential and informative upon the way you think, act, perceive, etc.? Or, which echo the preceding. Any genre--science, philosophy, religion, literature, poetry, political theory, etc.

And why? How?
 

Hmmm. Interesting...

This thread's going nowhere, so I'll nudge it with my contribution:

Hui-neng. R.M. Rilke. Ludwig Wittgenstein (post-Tractatus). Franz Kafka. Nico. And if I've gotta throw in a more overtly political one, Pierre Joseph Proudhon.
 
Last edited:
Which writers and/or texts

God/Holey Bible

have been most influential and informative upon the way you think, act, perceive, etc.?

And why?

Ive read very little of the Holey Bible but its prolly been the mos influencial thang ive read... an it was mos informative that "beleifs" are gobble-goop.!!!
 
Hmmm. Interesting...

This thread's going nowhere, so I'll nudge it with my contribution:

Hui-neng. R.M. Rilke. Ludwig Wittgenstein (post-Tractatus). Franz Kafka. Nico. And if I've gotta throw in a more overtly political one, Pierre Joseph Proudhon.

Why 'post-Tractatus'? It was rather thorough. And what do you consider post-Tractatus? His only work outside of that was entitled 'Philosophical Investigations', and it wasn't even finished...
 
Why 'post-Tractatus'? It was rather thorough. And what do you consider post-Tractatus? His only work outside of that was entitled 'Philosophical Investigations', and it wasn't even finished...

But he did write a fair amount afterwards, much of it incomplete and published posthumously--and a lot of it not even remotely in the same vein (criticism, etc.). I guess I should have just said the whole (just slightly favoring the later) as it's a little odd without the other. It's like saying I only like Rimbaud's writing after he went to Ethiopia--you know, the little grocery lists and lists of items he would like his mother to send and such. Ahhh--I'll not edit--reviewing my original question, I think the answer is there.
 
My most influential writers...hmmm...I wish I could say that I had a whole long list of intellectual names, but that's a big negative. Seeing as I love to write fiction, horror/fantasy fiction, then my fave authors are not considered "high-brow".

L.J. Smith was ultimately my biggest influence as a young girl when it came to horror/fantasy.

Laurell K. Hamilton
Alice Borchardt
Kim Harrison
Charlain Harris
Joe Graham
Annette Curtis Clause
Emily Dickinson
Elizabeth Bishop
Anne Carson
Charlotte Bronte
Virginia Woolf
Dylan Thomas
Anne Rice

I could go on forever.
 
I add...shudder Richard Dawkins.

He's still an arse, of course. Yet, the selfish gene was a useful paradigm. Also Lynch, Roff.
 
My most influential writers...hmmm...I wish I could say that I had a whole long list of intellectual names, but that's a big negative. Seeing as I love to write fiction, horror/fantasy fiction, then my fave authors are not considered "high-brow".

L.J. Smith was ultimately my biggest influence as a young girl when it came to horror/fantasy.

More horror please. Do you like Thomas Ligotti? I love all the canonical ones--Poe, Lovecraft, Stoker, etc.--but i can't seem to get into much contemporary besides Ligotti, Barker, another English guy whose name is escaping me--some names, please?
 
I add...shudder Richard Dawkins.

I guess I was more intending influential in an emotional, visceral (for want of a better term), and practical way--do you feel Dawkins does that for you? I can certainly see Marx and Orwell, and even Happeh, heh, I guess.
 
More horror please. Do you like Thomas Ligotti? I love all the canonical ones--Poe, Lovecraft, Stoker, etc.--but i can't seem to get into much contemporary besides Ligotti, Barker, another English guy whose name is escaping me--some names, please?

Poe and Lovecraft are amazing. I will have to check out Ligotti. I have to say I'm a sucker for contemporary horror/fantasy fiction :D, but it depresses me because it makes me realize that the stories I have been working on for 10 years are no longer unique.

Let's see...more names...I will have to peruse my library. I have to say contemporary fiction has been the most influential for me. I really like Octavia Butler, The Parable of the Sower is a great book and Phillip K. Dick is another author who I think has tremendous skill. These authors are not strictly horror, but their subjects are horrifying, if that makes sense. I will think of more and let you know :)
 
Back
Top