The Classics

|

9 books

My greatest influences are the classics. From antiquity to the 20th Century, but with special emphasis on the ancient poets. Mighty Mary and Spirits of the Ice Forest were more straight prose but with my upcoming novel I’m moving back into my more poetry-influenced style that I had in some earlier works because I feel that I’m a good enough writer now that I can control it. It was reemerging in Spirits. But In Doom Messiah I’m taking it to another level. It’s not poetic prose – my lack of knowledge when it comes to Ancient Greek, Assyrian, and Latin prohibit me from reading these works in their intended forms, so I’ve only got the more prosaic language in English translations. Of course there are later classics as well. Traditional prose. They can be a challenge for me, especially the English ones because I hate meandering sentences and commas and that seems to be about 90% of classical English prose, but the French and American classics are forerunners to contemporary literature that are often overlooked.

Read more... Read less...

The Count of Monte Cristo

Alexandre Dumas, 1998

This was absolutely my go-to whenever someone asked me what my favorite book was. Nobody’s done that for a long time but if they did I’d probably say it again now – I absolutely love the conflict of personal desire and compassion set at odds with one another, I love its complexity and the cast of characters, and I love the grounded realism Dumas brings to these incredible and fantastical situations. I can’t think of a time in literature where that was done sooner. There’s talk of sunlight glistening and heat burning to bring truth to a scene that absolutely would never really happen in the real world. It’s a monument and I adore it.

Jason and the Argonauts

Apollonius of Rhodes, 2014

I grew up with it. It’s probably influenced more of my works than any other single book – a sea voyage and island of aggressors in Off the Map, the struggle of people against petty and callous gods, the quiet strength and cunning of the true heroine Medea as a foil to Jason’s foolhardiness and stupidity, Heracles, Orpheus, it’s all here.

The Lord of the Rings

J. R. R. Tolkien, 2012

Writing fantasy is the pursuit of truth unrestrained by the confines of contemporary geopolitical sensitivities. And nothing is truer than the destructive nature of fanaticism – it destroys the self who is fanatic, the fanatics destroy other people’s lives, and in great enough numbers fanatics destroy whole nations, continents, and races of people. And it took an author with first-hand experience of the Somme to bring all the terror and horror of fanaticism and give it to the world in the form of a fantasy novel about a ring. Yes, there are some problematic ideas here. But this dire and alive and immediate warning against the loss of the self in exchange for the devotion to an ideology has never since the Second World War been more relevant and urgent.

Jamaica Inn

Daphne Du Maurier, 2014

My work sometimes gets compared to Cormac McCarthy’s, which is amazing, but I didn’t discover McCarthy until more recently in my life. The link is Du Maurier. This is a sort-of update of Wuthering Heights in much the same way Blood Meridian was a reimagining of Moby Dick for McCarthy and if you’ve read that and then mosey on over to Jamaica Inn it’s impossible not to see the influence she had on him too. This is just a very special book by a too-often overlooked writer.

Moby Dick

Herman Melville, 2010

It’s one of the most important books ever written. Astonishingly powerful. The visual dynamic – wordscapes if you will – has never been matched by another writer and the characterization of the crew of the Pequod will never leave you as a reader. So ahead of it’s time. Hawthrone might have been a forerunner to the Great American Novel but Melville is it’s grand architect.

The Iliad

I long shove this cornerstone of all literature into the chest of every critic who’s dragged my work for being too violent. Now I’m not professing to handle violence with the artistry Homer does but at least see the influence there – Iliad, attributed to Homer, doesn’t moralize. And that’s something that still motivates me as a writer today. Moralizing violence, whether it’s meant to shock or entertain, makes it acceptable. Showing it for what it is as coldly and distantly as Homer does gives it the impact of true life which I believe it is exactly how it should be shown. Any moral stance runs the risk of justification. Violence is revolting. And Homer shows it as much. But it’s also a incredible story, expertly told, and Fagles’ translation is the best I’ve yet come across.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Bronte A., 1926

I hate Gilbert Markham. Hate. Hate him. He is a terrible character and the whole framing story absolutely sends me into a rage. But I can forgive Anne Bronte. She was raised in a time when everyone was insane and the fact that she got anything lucid and remotely relatable down on paper is worthy of great respect. And that is the story of Helen’s marriage that Giblert stumbles upon. It may the first depiction of domestic violence extant and of a woman’s escape from it and it will stop your heart at times.

Les Miserables

Victor Hugo, 2012

You could write quite a piece on this. Again, it addresses lives wasted on fanaticism with an urging immediacy and – to me – that makes it the superior novel to War and Peace, the book most influenced by it. The evocation of history is incredibly well handled and that means a lot to me. If you’ve read my work you’ll understand. But this is essential reading to everyone because it’s a call to compassion and again – we are lacking that probably as badly as we were in the time of Les Misérables. Don’t talk to me about the musical though.

Don Quixote

Miguel Cervantes, 2003

If you write prose then this book is important to you. Vital. But it serves a far greater purpose than simply being “the first” – it’s not really anyway – and that is that might actually be the most touching, cooky, funny, heartwarming, and at the same time tragic tale ever committed to language. Beautiful. Just beautiful.