When writers are interviewed, invariably they receive this question: Who is your favorite writer? Or, the variant, which was put to Ron Currie, Jr., just last week at a book party for God is Dead, his new book: Which writers influenced you the most? (Raymond Carver, Currie said first, and, by the by, he got an unusual rave in the Atlanta Constitution-Journal a few days ago.)
The answer changes for me as time passes. There was my Doris Lessing period, a time when I couldn't read enough of May Sarton, the winter when I read all of Edna O'Brien, the year when I got this question from a Boston Globe reporter who was asking "business people" what books they were reading: then, Mr. Chekhov.
After years of switching affections, for the past two my answer has remained steady: Roland Merullo. I've posted about Roland's work before. I didn't know his writing until I attended Solstice Summer Writers, a workshop then in its first year, and which I signed up for at the very last minute (several posts below, including this one). I was working on a novel and needed a little strength training.
As things worked out, I was assigned to Roland's section and found his singular commandment about writing corresponding to my own: There are no rules in writing (decent grammar and proper spelling being the exceptions, Mom -- she was an English teacher). After the workshop ended, I read his In Revere, In Those Days and will likely never forget my mad enthusiasm as I thumbed away a message to him while on a train in Sweden, where I was working at the time. There's a tenderness in this book around the life challenge that has been my companion since a very young age, losing people I love unexpectedly, that sends a message to my tear ducts just thinking about it.
