Jessica Chace | May/Summer 2013

When world leaders gathered for the first 2012 G8 summit, the American Writers Museum’s online Power of the Word exhibit asked some of America’s best authors which books by writers in G8 countries most influenced them. Their rich and varied responses demonstrated the considerable impact foreign authors have had on America’s greatest literary voices. Among the most popular selections were works by Canadian author Alice Munro, Russian writer Anton Chekhov, and British novelist Graham Greene. Though the authors generally favored writers from English-speaking nations, their choices traversed a broad cultural spectrum, as some authors listed favorites from countries as far away as Japan. But while their selections differed, most authors agreed that the best literature, foreign or otherwise, combines strong plots with careful writing to create powerful stories that cross cultural boundaries.

Literature has the power to transport readers across cultures, and as many authors pointed out, the best books give readers a sense of place, even if they are not natives of that place. A few authors also chose foreign works that portray the outsider’s experience, such as Albert Camus’s The Stranger, a novel about existential loneliness to which readers of all backgrounds can relate. Despite being American-born, the authors lauded foreign works as some of the purest and most transformative literature of all time. The absence of cultural bias in these American authors’ selections raises an important question: Is there a distinctly American literature? Likewise, is there a distinctly Russian, French, or German literature? Countries certainly have established literary canons, but as a number of authors pointed out, great literature transcends cultural differences by speaking to the collective human experience.

In response to the question posed to them about foreign influences, authors often recommended classic works spanning genres and time periods. A number of their selections make up high school and college reading lists, suggesting that books like Crime and Punishment and Ulysses are obligatory reading for practicing and aspiring writers. The selections also illustrate the profound effect these seminal works have had on writers throughout the ages. As T.S. Eliot writes in Tradition and the Individual Talent, the significance of an artist is measured against his appreciation and absorption of our greatest writers’ works. For many of the authors featured in the exhibit, foreign works are the brick and mortar that have allowed American writers to develop their own distinct voices. Thus, according to several writers, Chekhov and “the Russians,” for example, are necessary reading. “Of course we all read, and had to read, the Russian classics,” Nikki Giovanni said. “I found them trying, though my favorite Dostoevsky is Winter Notes on Summer Impressions.” In addition to Dostoevsky, a good many writers recommended the works of Chekhov and Tolstoy for their ability to depict life in 19^th-century Russia and inspire writers with their intricate prose and dynamic characters. Other examples of necessary reading included Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, the novels of Charles Dickens, Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, and the poems of Charles Baudelaire.

Though most of the authors claim to have been impacted by the classics, the books that have influenced the authors’ individual styles varied from writer to writer. For Chuck Palahniuk, author of the bestseller Fight Club, stories with strong action and description are essential. “As usual I trend toward the surreal: Günter Grass, Irvine Welsh, Michel Houellebecq,” said Palahniuk. “Each of them uses strong, well-depicted physical moments to achieve their effect. Who can forget Grass’s severed horse head filled with eels? Or Houellebecq’s brothels? The physical actions and descriptions imprint on the reader in ways that dialogue never could.” As a young writer, Oscar Hijuelos chose books from Latin American authors such as Gabriel Garcia Márquez and Julio Cortázar. Later, Hijuelos notes, his reading branched out to include works from European writers. “I was very much under the spell of two rather unlike writers—the Polish/British writer Joseph Conrad and, from Ireland, Flann O’Brien, whose fanciful works were always interesting to me, even if they hadn’t anything to do with my Cuban ancestry,” Hijuelos said. Jeffrey Eugenides similarly saw his reading habits change as he grew as a writer. “In my teens, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses by James Joyce; in my twenties, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera, Nabokov’s Lolita and Pale Fire, and Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Márquez; in my thirties, The Information by Martin Amis; in my twenties, thirties, forties, and forever, Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy,” said Eugenides.

In addition to novels, poetry, especially the works of Japanese and French poets, also had a profound effect on writers. “When I first began to write poetry in college, the poets who first excited and heartened me were Charles Baudelaire, the French genius who was in many ways the inventor of modernism, and Rainer Maria Rilke, the great German poet,” said C.K. Williams. “Baudelaire’s master-work, Les Fleurs du Mal, it turns out, was a powerful influence not only on me, but on Rilke, too, as he recounts in The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, another book that meant a great deal to me.” Along with Baudelaire, Stuart Dybek included several Japanese writers among his favorites. “My two favorite Japanese writers are Yasunari Kawabata and Jun’ichir? Tanizaki,” Dybek said. “I have read everything available in English by these writers, and I never stop reading haiku. One of my favorite of all critical books on writing is Traces of Dreams by Haruo Shirane, and of course I am a fan of Haruki Murakami.” Even in translation, these works are able to hold their meaning and resonate with readers and writers alike.

The variety present in these writers’ selections brings back the question of whether or not country of origin plays a role in readers’ choosing of reading material. While some writers listed works from each G8 country, others listed their favorites from any country. Overall, however, the writers showed little bias from one country to another, justifying their choices based on style and substance rather than the author’s native country. Author Marie Arana’s selections, for example, span a range of cultures, but, she notes, each selection holds a similar power. “I don’t think I would have become a writer if I had not read seminal works by the following writers: Gustave Flaubert (Madame Bovary), Leo Tolstoy (Anna Karenina), Vladimir Nabokov (Speak, Memory), Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid’s Tale), Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice), Italo Calvino (If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler), and Yasunari Kawabata (A Thousand Cranes),” Arana said. “Reading these as a youngster, I was persuaded that good stories trump cultural differences. They hold the key to human understanding.” The authors’ selections in Power of the Word ultimately provide hope for future and current writers, as their depth and diversity show that any author can achieve greatness, regardless of his or her birth or ethnicity.      

 Jessica Chace is a student majoring in English at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. In the summer of 2012, she interned at the American Writers Museum Foundation, where she helped promote the museum’s first online exhibit, Power of the Word: Leaders, Readers and Writers.