QUESTION VI
How much of your craft have you learned from reading current authors? The classics?
Answers
Bill Adams: I have to admit that I know no current authors—I never read a magazine story, and exceedingly seldom a book. Used to read a great deal twenty to twenty-five years ago.
Samuel Hopkins Adams: How can one tell? I might guess at half and half.
Paul L. Anderson: Mostly the classics: that's one reason I haven't sold more stuff—too old-fashioned.
William Ashley Anderson: Not much—if any—from current writers, with a few isolated examples—except for those who have already become standard: Kipling, and authors of similar standing in various countries. I believe strongly in the classics and regret very much that they were not very deeply ingrained in me when I was at school, as they were fundamental in literature. I believe just as strongly in the standard works of literature. But I believe a professional author wastes time reading current authors, unless the work has distinct and special merit and is brought to his attention.
H. C. Bailey: I should put the classics (using the word in the widest sense, say from Homer and the Bible to Maupassant and Mark Twain) first. Good models are of any time and all time. From good models living and dead and what I know of their methods I learned any craftsmanship I have.
Edwin Balmer: When I began writing I considered Kipling and Richard Harding Davis and Sophocles about the best writers in the world. I had taken a great deal of Greek in college and took an M. A. at Harvard in Greek and when I finished I could read classical Greek almost as readily as English. I remember consciously admiring and trying to put into my writing some of the sense of quantity which the Greeks used. The first story I ever sold to a magazine was certainly strongly influenced in its wording by Greek models. I still think Greek literature second to none.