I need to add one more... Federico Garcia Lorca has become more influential to me lately.
My biggest influences are Richard Wright, George Orwell, Allen Ginsberg, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Mao Tse-tung.
While I can not truthfully answer who my writing resembles or even who my favorite writer is, there are a few who are especially important to me. Hemingway for sure I love the simplicity of his style. Hunter S. Thompson is absolutely hilarious and some of his correspondence and articles are as good as his fiction. I went through a big beat generation phase with a particular interest in Burroughs and have even done some cut up work myself. I also have to put up Orwell as well because not only was he a man of words but a man of action as well who put his neck on the line in Spain. Truthfully as much as I love Hemingway and especially For Whom the Bell Tolls, Homage to Catalina was the best work to come out of the war.
I've heard I write a bit like Robert Frost, but my main conscious influences are probably Haruki Murakami and Charlse Bukowski.
My first real influences were H.P. Lovecraft along with August Derleth's Lovecraft pastiches. These were never as strong or apparent as I wanted them to be though, and after that I was influenced (to miserable effect) by de Sade's libertine porn, Poe's murder fantasies and Clark Ashton Smith. Influences that followed, and that I think are more prevalent now, include: Frank Belknap Long (I have a selection of his stories over a 20 year period, which I've read over and over again for lack of many other physical books to read on the toilet), early Clive Barker, and that "living legend" of British Horror, Ramsey Campbell. But I hardly actually even write anything other than tedious gay porn.
Knut Hamsun Jack Kerouack Lars Saabye Christensen Allen Ginsberg Kahlil Gibran Walt Whitman Henrik Wergeland Inger Hagerup Olaf Bull Sigbjørn Obstfelder
Main: George Orwell, Karl Marx, Tom Clancy. Minor: J. J. R. Tolkien, Leo Tolstoy, Ben Thompson.
