Saddlebalckwell Letters #1
Intentional and Unintentional Influences
June - October 2025
Part A
Since we’ve been going back and forth for a while now on the idea of this letter series, I figured I’d better get the ball rolling by responding to a comment you made to me recently about the “personable third-person narrator.” Specifically, you were wondering which books influenced my adoption of it in my novel-in-progress that no one reading this will have read, so I thought I’d approach the topic more generally — which I can describe as:
Intentional and Unintentional Influences
Of course, when someone sets about writing a novel or an essay or a poem, there’s always a particular author or work that inspired them to do so. Whether it’s their first work, in which case there is someone who inspired them to write at all, or it’s their thousandth work, in which case there is someone who inspired them to write in this particular fashion. I will ignore subject matter, for the moment, and focus instead on style.
Almost everyone begins by emulating another writer’s style. It’s simply the best way to go about it. When we learn to speak, we begin with mimicry: we copy what our parents say, and then later, what the cartoon characters on TV say. It is the same when it comes to writing. My first work, a series called The Camel and the Mouse (I didn't yet know that there was a famous fable with the same name), published c. 2003 (when I was in the third grade), told the story of a straight-man-and-funny-guy duo attempting to make their way toward some goal whose nature I don’t remember, and their adventures along the way. The jokes were entirely ripped from cartoons, Captain Underpants books, and SNL movies (mostly Wayne’s World and Night at the Roxbury.)
Later, when it came time for me to start writing personal essays, which let’s consider my first “serious work,” I blatantly ripped off our mutual former hero, tim rogers. The primary characteristics of a tim rogers essay were:
- Short sentences (almost every sentence contained exactly one clause)
- Emphasis on mundane details
- A long-winded poetical conclusion
I copied the formula I had derived from reading and re-reading his work, and set about applying it to my own experiences. By doing so, I got my first taste of “success.” I employed this style with almost no modifications for years, using it to achieve not only good grades but near-universal praise from my colleagues in a “creative non-fiction” class at my local community college.
This style, despite my attempts to consciously move away from it over the past decade, forms the foundation of my voice as a writer. Since then, a large pile of influences have been heaped on top, to the point where it would be impossible to extricate them all. Many of them snuck their way into the pile in without my knowledge, while others were consciously shoved on top, momentarily crushing all that lay underneath.
For an example of an unwilling and possibly pernicious influence, I find the voice of Kant speaking through me whenever I attempt to write about philosophy — that is to say, I habitually return to phrases such as, “that is to say.” Kant himself admits to being a poor stylist — and perhaps even a poor communicator of ideas in general — which is what makes this all the more frustrating. Kant’s philosophical works were my introduction to writing about abstruse and perhaps incommunicable ideas regarding metaphysics, so when I approach such a field, his style is what comes out.
Another philosopher comes to mind as a major influence on my style: Friedrich Nietzsche. This influence becomes more present when I write while caffeinated. The bombast and energy of his prose is infectious; he more than any other writer can utterly tear apart an idea by mere emphasis. It doesn’t even matter whether what he’s saying makes any sense or not; you ignore the premises of the argument as you are carried away by the passion and vehemence of the whole thing. When I write with a can of coffee on my desk, I have to go through later and revert dozens of words and phrases I’ve italicized for no apparent reason.
When it comes to the “personable third-person narrator” mentioned above, the man in this regard is Thomas Mann. He carries the style to perfection, approaching his characters with a combination of ironic detachment and genuine affection reminiscent of Tolstoy. But what gives Mann’s narrator such a strong voice is his playfulness: the way he develops epithets, repeats stock phrases, and gently reminds the reader of what we’ve come to know. Not only that, but much like Borges, he often employs the trick of unsurety — gesturing toward the fact that he’s not quite sure how best to approach the story he’s chosen to tell, and walking us through his eventual solution.
What this does is suggest that the story of the novel is not the novel itself; the story seems to exist outside the work, and it’s the author’s job merely to tell it as well as possible. This is, of course, usually a fabrication: the author of a novel is generally both creator and narrator of the tale in question. But this technique — or we could even call it a trick — makes the story feel all the more real.
When writing my latest novel, I had the feeling this style of narration would be the perfect tool with which to approach the character I had come up with: I wanted the reader to sympathize with him, but I also recognize his ridiculousness; therefore, I needed to “let the reader in on the joke,” or else risk the chance that they might disconnect from the character altogether. By suggesting a mutual understanding, the reader can rest assured that they haven’t missed (or overshot) “the point.”
I’m curious what your experience has been with purposefully emulating writers, as well as realizing later that someone’s influence has surreptitiously made its way into your work. While reading the English translation of Qian Zhongshu’s Fortress Besieged, I kept thinking, “This sounds exactly like Saddleblasters,” and I’ve mentioned before that your writing sometimes feels to me like it’s been translated from Chinese or Japanese. I know you read a ton of novels in translation when you were younger, and there’s definitely a distinct style that I feel comes out when translating a certain era of East Asian fiction.