Marcel Proust
Proust influenced two other writers who mean a lot to me in Beckett and Genet but even more so upon his own merit, I appreciate his desire to tell a story so totally that he will tell and retell the story as his mood and memory changes. Furthermore, he is a keen observer even if he understands that “observation amounts to little,” and that we need experience.
Leslie Scalapino
Fuck your genres. Scalapino shatters what an essay is or what a poem is, and much like Proust, shifted the possibilities for autobiographical fiction/fictionalized autobiography.
Geoff Johns
It goes without say that the DC universe is built by a variety of writers and artists who work hard on specific storylines, characters, and/or teams but Geoff Johns’ vision for Flashpoint and Blackest Night/Brightest Day is gorgeous, mythic. Johns more so than many others knows how to build a universe, multiverse, and now a metaverse all of which is constructed around a deeper understanding of symbolism and archetypes.
Old Dirty Bastard
It’s easy to dismiss ODB for his antics but his politics and emotional being always shines through. He filtered his knowledge and chronicling through his humor and almost DaDaist approach, if my NahNahism has a father to its style, it’s Big Baby Jesus but “can’t nobody imitate [him].”
Alexander Pushkin
He changed Russian literature forever. Every single form of Russian literature, from poetry, to fiction, to opera, to goddamn grocery lists.
Kenning JP García is a diarist. Xe is the author of OF (What Place Meant) as well as ROBOT (TS Eliot’s The Waste Land Re-Imaged). Conscientia@hotmail.com