INFLUENCED BY

A Survey of Writers on Contemporary Writers 

Listening to writers read and discuss their work at Newtonville Books, the bookstore my wife and I own outside Boston, I began to wonder which living, contemporary writers held the most influence over their work.  This survey is not meant to be comprehensive, but is the result of my posing the question to as many writers as I could ask. 

—Jaime Clarke

KAZUO ISHIGURO

© Charlie Hopkinson

ALIX OHLIN: Like many people, I first became aware of Ishiguro’s work through the lovely restraint of The Remains of the Day. His gift at suggesting subterranean emotions, and at lending inarticulate characters depth and dignity, commanded my attention. What’s interesting to me is how he has pushed this gift further—the subsequent books are all different, still elegant but ever stranger, in wonderful ways. The Unconsoled, a dream-like novel about a pianist who arrives in a European city for a concert but cannot navigate the landscape—even of his own memory—is lyrically disorienting and, I think, a masterpiece. I also love how he has played with genre, writing about cloning in Never Let Me Go without employing any of the trappings or tropes of science fiction. Like all his books, Never Let Me Go is deeply sorrowful but very quiet, a tone that Ishiguro has made recognizably his own. 

JAMES SCOTT: Kazuo Ishiguro had a profound effect on me. I think before I read The Remains of the Day, A Pale View of the Hills,and especially Never Let Me Go, I didn’t really understand what people meant when they asked for clarity. I assumed they wanted everything to make sense, which seemed both boring and counter to what I enjoyed in many of my favorite books. But reading Ishiguro, I understood what that clarity meant—a clear purpose, a sense that the author knows exactly what he or she is doing and out of that comes a trust that will allow the plot to go anywhere.

KAREN THOMPSON WALKER: Kazuo Ishiguro, especially with Never Let Me Go, reminds me that sometimes the best writing is the least showy.  I admire how fully he inhabits his characters, his own voice completely submerged beneath theirs.

ALEXI ZENTNER: Men have sobbed. Women have wailed. Children have gasped. Sometimes all on the same page.

Younger writers often have characters carrying on in ways that are loud and obvious. I think that sometimes, the idea is that a great gnashing of teeth is the only way to convey just truly how intense the emotion is supposed to be. The reasoning is that if you are not...