----- Original Message ----- From: "Anthony Dauer" <
anthony.dauer@verizon.net>
> I fail to see why being influenced by an author
would be detectable in
> their writing.
You're right. For all I know Wade Miller's "Deadly Weapon"
was influenced by Jane Austen. Reads more like "The Maltese
Falcon", though.
>Being influenced doesn't equate to copying that
author.
Did anybody say it did?
> Reading Chandler and then writing your own detective
fiction is being
> influenced by ... hell, reading Chandler and hating
him and then writing
> your own story because you know you can do better is
still amounts to
> having been influenced by Chandler.
Perhaps Pelecanos's "Hell To Pay" is inspired by a Barbara
Cartland romance novel he didn't like.
>There's nothing disturbing in that
> that I can see.
Well, reading Chandler is one thing. Had you read my post
carefully you'd have seen that what I found disturbing was
the influence he had on PI writers who hadn't read him, as
posited, thus, by Jack Bludis:
"Any PI writer not influenced by Chandler never read him, but
was probably influenced by imitators."
>Authors are influenced by everyone they
read
Not true. I was completely unaffected by a very poorly
written book I read aloud to my four year old niece. You may
find that hard to believe, but I'm not lying. Honestly. Many
other books I've read recently have been just as unmemorable.
Seriously, I suspect that very few writers are influential,
in any measurable sense, on authors who have confidence in
their own voice.
> but that
> doesn't amount to copying them or that anyone is
likely to know from
> reading them just who the author has read unless
it's the author's bio
> they're reading.
You've lost me. Who mentioned copying?
Al
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