From Geoffrey Philp:
The deal is to name 25 writers who have influenced you, and then tag 25 people.
Hear ye the gospel according to Fragano: “Influence” does not mean the same thing as “enjoy a lot.”
(Just to note — this is going to be cross-posted with Scavella’s Blogsphere so I can cross both my writing networks)
As with everyone else, before, in no particular order:
- T. S. Eliot – for blowing my mind
- Kamau Brathwaite – for blowing my mind again
- Ngugi wa Thing’o – for inspiring me to write plays
- Chinua Achebe – for Things Fall Apart and A Man of the People
- Toni Morrison – for just being
- William Shakespeare (no, for real) – what I said about Morrison
- W. B. Yeats – for channelling ghosts and writing great verse
- C. S. Lewis – for Narnia and concision
- Bronislaw Malinowski – for participant observation, the Trobriand ethnographies, and theory I can believe in
- Claude Levi-Strauss – for Tristes Tropiques
- Victor Turner – for the ritual process, for liminality
- Edmund Leach – for the structural circles of language
- Marcel Mauss – for the gift
- Maurice Bloch – for ritual violence
- Marion Bethel – for singlemindedness
- Winston Saunders – for Horse
- Lanford Wilson – for The Rimers of Eldritch
- Obediah Michael Smith – for his epiphanies
- Earl Lovelace – for the Dragon
- Ian Gregory Strachan – for Just Doing It
- James Baldwin – for language and the courage to leave
- George Lamming – for blowing my mind
- August Wilson – for all of them. All of them.
- June Jordan – for teaching me essays could be interesting
- Virginia Woolf – for influencing my style even though I hate to read hers
My 25 tag-ees:
- Eddie Bethel
- Helen Klonaris
- Lynn Sweeting
- Angelique Nixon
- Harry Rutherford
- Hedgie
- Nic Sebastian
- Rob Mackenzie
- Rik Roots
- Jee Leong
- Aditi Machado
- Dave Bonta
- Dick Jones
- Scotty
- Mary Paddock
- Heather O’Neill
- Bruce Lowe (wake up!)
- Titilayo
- Eemanee
… I can so count.
25 is a long, long list.
Add yourself if you want to. Comments are open, wide wide open.
{ 1 comment }
That list is harder to compile than it first looks…
Here’s mine…
Interesting challenge, Scavella – thanks (I think)
Comments on this entry are closed.