"Middlesex" and "Midnight's Children"

Midnight's ChildrenRushdieLiterary influence is like genetics, too. Rushdie got some of his fireworks from Günter Grass and Gabriel García Márquez. García Márquez got things from Kafka and Faulkner. So, with Middlesex, you could say I inherited traits from all these ancestors, not to mention good old Homer. But some of my stuff bears no relation to these writers. Different gene pool entirely.

Influence isn't just a matter of copying someone or learning his or her tricks. You get influenced by writers whose work gives you hints about your own abilities and inclinations. Being influenced is largely a process of self-discovery. What you have to do is put all your influences into the blender and arrive at your own style and vision.Now take Rushdie. He came from exotic origins, Bombay, (exotic to the English, anyway) and went to Cambridge. With both these writers, there is belonging and not belonging. In my own case, I was sent to a private prep school in Grosse Pointe, a place that made me more aware of my supposed "ethnicity" than I had been in public school. This marked me. I think it's no surprise that I might be influenced by a writer like Roth who writes very much about being American but also about being Jewish. I also happen to admire his books.

But I don't want to take this similarity business too far. I love Henry James but I'm not much like him. Maybe that's the Grosse Pointe in me, though. After all, I went to black-tie affairs when I was 16. We smoked pot behind the bushes in our tuxedos. Very Jamesian.