Detail of Turf One's painting "Holy Ghost."
“Who is the patron saint of your writing?” my lit instructor inquired.
I’m taking a class that looks at how classic works of literature inspire contemporary works. We look, for example, at how Evan S. Connell’s Mrs. Bridge informed Meg Wolitzer’s The Wife. It seems natural that great authors would inspire other great writers to write either in the same style or the same theme. And yet, my instructor’s question has had me thinking for days.
I’ve never thought of my own writing as being inspired by another writer. I don’t try to write like my favorite authors, though I’m sure I must’ve done it subconsciously many times.
In a way, this rejection of sameness is reflective of my life in general. I was the English major in undergrad who hung out with all the premed students. I was the Greek kid in middle school with all the Korean and Japanese friends. It never occurred to me to hang out with people who had my identical interests and culture, and it never occurred to me to try to write like another writer.
Except maybe Gregory Corso.
When I was 22 I wrote an homage to Corso’s “I Am 25.” It was pretty much a rip off of Corso’s poem, but it was meant to be. Corso writes about stealing the poems of Shelley, Chatterton, and Rimbaud, and I more or less swapped out the names of these “old poetmen” for those of Corso, Kerouac, and Ginsberg.
Along those Beat Generation lines, one of my favorite writers is Jack Kerouac. Read these lines from On the Road:
“Soon it got dusk, a grapy dusk, a purple dusk over tangerine groves and long melon fields; the sun the color of pressed grapes, slashed with burgundy red, the fields the color of love and Spanish mysteries.”
“The one thing that we yearn for in our living days, that makes us sigh and groan and undergo sweet nauseas of all kinds, is the remembrance of some lost bliss that was probably experienced in the womb and can only be reproduced (though we hate to admit it) in death.”
It pains me how beautiful these words are. While so much has been made of Kerouac’s subject matter and improvisational style, I find that it is his lyrical descriptions and, yes, the rhythm of his prose that captivate me the most.
I have zig-zagged across the country, visiting places Kerouac visited, and I’ve written short travel articles, but I don’t write road-trip novels. I would like very much to write about America, though. I’ve written about Kerouac, sure, but I haven’t (consciously) attempted to write in his style. I love punctuation rules too much.
I would probably choose Jack Kerouac to be the patron saint of my writing, but in reality, my writing voice comes out more like Sue Monk Kidd or, as my mom has pointed out, Donald Miller and Anna Quindlen.
Others tell me to read David Sedaris. He’s Greek! He writes about his family! And indeed, I do see his humor sometimes creeping into my personal essays. One time, right after reading David Foster Wallace’s Consider the Lobster, I will confess I conjured up his style for an article I wrote, but I fear that was only similar to off-key humming of a song that just played on the radio.
Must I choose just one patron saint?
I admire great writers, and I love to reference them and turn other readers on to them, but I don’t think I could ever choose just one to be my patron saint. I’m way too much of a schizophrenic writer for that.
Who is your patron saint of writing?
Tags: Allen Ginsberg, Anna Quindlen, Beat Generation, Chatterton, David Foster Wallace, David Sedaris, Donald Miller, Evan S. Connell, Gregory Corso, inspiration, Jack Kerouac, Meg Wolitzer, Mrs. Bridge, patron saint, rejection of sameness, Rimbaud, schizophrenic writer, Shelley, Sue Monk Kidd, The Wife, Turt One, writing style, Writing Wednesday
Stephanie Nikolopoulos 