And now the third response to my influences post. The subject is Nathan Tyree.

1) Pick one of the pieces you chose and describe the thing about it that seems particularly innovative about it.

2) Tell me what changed about your writing because of that innovation.

Here are his responses:

1) Naked Lunch was the first thing I read that was truly experimental. I was sixteen, and all the novels I had read followed the same rules, the same strictures of what a novel was. Burroughs seemed to be saying “fuck the novel”, he seemed to be spitting in in they eye of society. Naked Lunch wasn’t a novel; it was an insult- a savage cry. Everything I read after that had to be seen through a different, distorted lens.

2) I stopped being afraid. NL made me realize that you learn the rules so that you can break them with glee.