Human Being, planet Earth
The above is overly elaborate, but hits every essential in four words. I love writing, but not about me. Other than as an author, I'm drying-paint dull. No less for that, I'll stumble through some trivial poop and mention a few of my influences. Influences matter.
I don’t give a double hoot who Stephen King is. I don’t care what he had for lunch, who he will vote for, who his friends are. He writes interesting stories, and that’s what I want from him. My life is already overfilled with details; I don’t need details about his life.
I’m not a celebrity. Let Tom Cruise and Beyonce live that life. I’m a writer who likes to go to a restaurant with friends (including my dear friends Tom Cruise and Beyonce) and not be recognized as someone I’m not. In a restaurant I’m a diner, not a writer. When with friends I’m a friend, not someone seeking selfies. I’m not interested in making public statements or being photographed.
Other than in my writing, I avoid politics; I take no sides. I shun all entreaties to engage in anything less than interplanetary matters, let alone presidential competence or which is the “good” political party. I’ve devoted the past two decades of my life to outrageously improving Humanity’s future, and that’s a fulltime job.
Curmudgeon. Nobody uses that word anymore, but that’s me. Crusty, opinionated. But upon my deathDay, if I have removed a few teaspoons of insanity from the pond of what everybodyKnows, that will be enough. I’ll die happier than I lived.
Most of my friends are dead. Many of them have been dead for decades, some for centuries.
My most laudable influences include authors. (My less laudable influences include coffee, savage games of Parcheesi, the Surinam sea toad and some unmentionables.)
The books I most enjoy reading were written by authors I most admire. My pantheon of influential fiction writers include more than the following few, but these have had more influence in my life than has any living person other than my parents. I consider them my friends, although my deadest friends are even duller conversationalists than I am. Here are some of my respected novelists, listed alphabetically:
John Barth, Paddy Chayefsky, Michael Crichton, Charles Dickens, F Stephen Foster (paying attention?), Ernest Hemingway, Hermann Hesse, Aldous Huxley, Ken Kesey (his work in the 60s), Stephen King, Sinclair Lewis (not to be confused with Lewis Sinclair), George Orwell, Ayn Rand, J. D. Salinger, John Steinbeck, Mark Twain, Alice Walker.
All of these people have contributed to my art, my craft, my feelings and my thinking. However, one of them deserves a special mention: Sidney Aaron “Paddy” Chayefsky pushed back my horizons. Although nobody has ever heard of him, he gave me the courage to believe that I could help this ol’ world become a better place. Worth noting: he is the only person to have won three solo Academy Awards for Best Original Screenplay (Marty, The Hospital and Network). Not bad.
While the above list is too short by hundreds, my list of influential nonfiction writers is even more brief:
Albert Einstein, Erich Fromm, R.D. Laing (his early decades), Carl Sagan.
Over time I should elaborate on these lists. And somehow spotlight my superheros.
A Necessary Apology
I want to expand my lists of influential writers, since I want to give you the chance to read anything or everything I’ve read.
Nobody who knows my social life would say I’ve been “lucky” in life, but I’ve been excessively lucky in my opportunities to read great writers. I’ve read around 10,000 books, which isn’t particularly unusual. For one thing, I’m older than Methuselah, but all you need to do is average 4 books per week from your 5th birthday until your 55th birthday and you’ll realize that my 10,000 books proves I’m lazy.
Maybe 5000 of those books were “good enough,” maybe 5000 were not, but there were 100s of books that kept me riveted to their content. Sharing with you the authors of those 100s is worth my time, but I have so much else to do–e.g. maintaining this darned website–that I won’t get back to my list until at least 18 years after I die.
Thus, an apology.
