Twenty-five writers
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.