Author: Daniel Crouch
Writing is, among other things, an effort in embarrassing oneself. It is an exercise by which we muster up the confidence to put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard) with the aim of saying something both insightful and interesting on a singular topic. And of course when this work of hubris is complete, we look down at our creation and think—well, that’s not exactly how I pictured it. We feel like the thoughts are clear and brilliant in our heads, but when they pour out onto a page, they just don’t have the same gleam. (We wonder if it was really all up there to begin with?)
Part of our struggle roots in the writing we read, in the great authors we’ve come to know. These are the figures that fuel our desire to continue in this embarrassing task, the ones that make us say, “I want to write something like that.” Everything they write gleams. Still, it is these same figures that dwarf our own efforts, that we inevitably compare ourselves to and then struggle to match. And yet we keep writing. We write because we admire what we see on the page and we want to do something similar. These larger-than-life authors are simultaneously our muses and our greatest critics.
I think because of the special role such writers play in our own efforts to communicate ourselves with the written word, it’s worth exploring who some of these authors might be and what makes them special. To that end, I spoke with some of my colleagues in the Writing Center, asking them: What author has influenced how you write?
Matthew Blankenship was quick to pick theological giant C. S. Lewis as the author that has inspired his approach to writing. For Matthew, Lewis is able to distill complex ideas for lay people not educated in the complexities of theology. Moreover, works like The Abolition of Man and The Screwtape Letters are delightful reads. Still, for Matthew, Lewis’s style is “not just fancy writing, but clear and understandable—understandable but not simple.” Thus for Matthew, he wants his own writing to be interesting but clear, operating at the highest caliber but never pretentious.
Lewis had other fans as well—David Willey originally picked the author of Mere Christianity, but I told him to think of something more original. He next thought of Umberto Eco, the author of The Name of the Rose, so I told him to pick something less original. Ultimately, David landed on Oscar Wilde as the writer who he most hopes to emulate in his own work. Staring pensively into the void, David described the way that the nineteenth-century playwright was able to communicate profound and complex ideas in a way that is “amazingly light.” It is this skill of Wilde’s that draws readers in, coming to The Importance of Being Earnest or The Picture of Dorian Gray not only for the ideas and content but simply for “pleasant” reading. David aims to bring this balance of depth and levity to his own writing.
Turning away from abstract ponderings, consultant Jax Franz prefers writing grounded in concrete events, but told with a creative flair. She loves to write creative nonfiction, a genre that was in part popularized by the work of Erik Larson. Larson is a journalist-turned-author who has written staples of creative nonfiction like Devil in the White City, which tells the true story of a serial killer preying on attendees of the Chicago World Fair. The meticulously researched book reads like a novel, but is a work of nonfiction—every piece of the story is either taken from historical records or interviews. The literary devices used by Larson influence how Jax writes journalistic pieces and how she values research, even in fiction.
Zsanna Bodor took time away from her trip to Hungary to ponder this question, arriving at answers not too distant from other consultants. Though she does not often write fiction, her first author was famed mystery novelist Agatha Christie, known for her tightly structured writing propelled by short sentences and sharp dialogue. For her second author, Zsanna chose—wait, there must be a mistake here… again?—C. S. Lewis. The man has fans. Zsanna said of both authors, “As much as I occasionally enjoy a florid, Victorian-style flood of run-on sentences (hello, Dickens), Christie and Lewis taught me how to be concise, logical, and pithy. I return to their works again and again because they are simply excellent communicators—vivid and vibrant, with nary a wasted word.” I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Discussing the influence of other authors with friends of course led to me considering the question for myself: what author do I admire and hope to emulate? While I’d be lying if I said Lewis didn’t cross my mind, I kept returning to the craft of David Foster Wallace and in particular his article, “Consider the Lobster.” Wallace was a thoughtful and prolific writer in his brief time, his writing mirroring Lewis’s in many ways with its insight couched in a light, conversational tone. His article on the 2003 Maine Lobster Festival, originally published in Gourmet magazine and which lends its name to an anthology of his work, is among his most definitive essays as he takes the festival to task over the ethics of boiling a creature alive for the sake of consumer pleasure, replete with philosophy, jokes, and a discussion of lobsters’ sensory neurons. I come back to the article every few years to orient my own work (and a little bit of superstitious hope that his skill will rub off on me).
My interviews didn’t have as much variety as I may have hoped for—or maybe C. S. Lewis is just the best nonfiction writer to ever do it. That’s a real option. But in any case, the unanimity with which each person was drawn to not only the content of their author but to the author’s form demonstrated to me what’s really going on in the task of writing: that on paper you’re preserving a conversation with an invisible reader, and just like a conversation had face-to-face, what matters most is your ability to appeal to another human being. And of course when we put ourselves out there, face-to-face with another human being, there’s always the risk that we’re going to embarrass ourselves. But that seems like a risk worth taking. And maybe we can improve our odds by studying some of the masters.
