W.Gibson Interview

[Ian Livingston]

Right and quite so, I'm sure. Also, if you read more than a handful of
novels, watch more than a few movies, and maybe engage a few other
types of information and illumination, you'd have to cite all those as
well, making citing one's influences a daunting task.

On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 9:10 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6089/the-art-of-fiction-no-211-william-gibson
>
> "But I don’t think that writers are very reliable witnesses when it
> comes to influences, because if one of your sources seems woefully
> unhip you are not going to cite it. When I was just starting out
> people would say, Well, who are your influences? And I would say,
> William Burroughs, J. G. Ballard, Thomas Pynchon. Those are true, to
> some extent, but I would never have said Len Deighton, and I suspect I
> actually learned more for my basic craft reading Deighton’s early spy
> novels than I did from Burroughs or Ballard or Pynchon."
>



-- 
"Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all
creeds the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the
trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments
of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates
than the simplest urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant