The Sentences of Saul (Sorta)

Dave Eggers makes interesting comments. He needs eight uninterrupted hours or he can't write. He knows how much it costs to ship a cannonball through the mail. He would classify his readings earlier in his career as performance art.

In terms of writing advice, I was taken with an off-handed comment he made at the 2012 symposium. He said that he has been greatly influenced by Saul Bellow's sentences, but you wouldn't think that by looking at his writing.

Counterintuitive a little, no?

When an artist says they have been influenced by another artist, we expect to see signs of it. If a painter says Banksy influences her, there should be more than just a general street-flavor to her work. If a guitarist claims Eddie Van Halen as a model and he doesn't drop in a heavy dose of tapping, we (well, at least I) question that. If a politician invokes Reagan or JFK, they'd better be doing more than biting nostalgia.

So, when an author lists another author as an influence and then seemingly distances themselves from their style, it's worth considering. How can someone be an influence and yet not "show up" in the work of someone who they are influencing?

And yet, this is probably the best piece of writing advice from the evening with Eggers. Let your influences be just that and not patterns you try to manipulate your work into replicating. Take a cue from the annual Bad Hemingway contest. Don't try to be your favorite author. Try to be what you admire in them.

In Eggers' case, he acknowledges Bellow's brilliance at the individual sentence level and aspires to pay that kind of attention to crafting his own. In the age of memes, we may be losing sight of the simple beauty that comes when we take in the art we consider great, strain it through our senses, intellect, and soul, and then produce our response to it rather than our sincerest attempt at repetition.

This is the first of a series of posts with reflections on writing from past participants in the Writer's Symposium by the Sea, an annual event at Point Loma Nazarene University where I work. This year's guests include Siddhartha Mukherjee, Jeanette Walls, and Anne Lamott. For more information, visit here.