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 John
Casey
You ask what books changed my life. And then how one
work in particular influenced my writing. I can't answer
the question. In response to a similar question I found
that shortest answer was "childhood reading."
And then I couldn't help but write a fifteen-page description.
And that could have gone on and on, leading to teenage
reading which mixed which mixed self-improvement with
pleasure and curiosity-Raphael Sabatini and P.G. Wodehouse
in the same pile as Stendhal, Moliere and Anatole France,
along with a yard of scene fiction. Then the straits
of college-required reading mixed theater infatuation.
Then books that gave comfort in distress (Kipling's
stories, Don Quixote, Moby Dick, Chekov
stories) and books that were risky enchantments (Proust,
Joyce) or puzzles that lingered (The Book of Job, some
works by Borges or Nabokov) or gave kaleidoscope turns
to material I thought I knew (e.g. E. L. Doctorow's
The Book of Daniel, an extra dimension to the
Rosenberg case I studied in law school).
Jose Donoso once said to Carlos Fuentes that Carlo
Fuentes seemed to be poaching some of Donoso's stuff.
Carlos Fuentes said, "Oh Pepe, we're all writing
the same book." After that charming and true answer
they went out for supper.
That's the book we hope we're still reading and writing.
John Casey
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