Influences

• Books: All of Nabokov's novels but especially "Lolita," William Carlos Williams's "Spring and All," Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself," Camus' "The Myth of Sisyphus," Steinbeck's novels, of course. Milton, Shakespeare, Kafka, Sartre, Ginsberg, Woolf, Joyce, Austen, Orwell, Carver, and so many more.

  Films: the Maysles brothers' "Grey Gardens," Errol Morris's "Gates of Heaven," Joe Berlinger's & Bruce Sinofsky's "Brother's Keeper." Not to mention Cassavetes, Scorcese, Coppola, Kubrick, and Fred Zinnemann
  

  Other: Mark Twain, Clark McKowen (a college prof), Bertrand Russell, Marianne Moore, Christopher Hitchens, Samuel Beckett, violinist Nadia Salerno-Sonenberg, John Donne, Emily Dickinson, Stereolab, and Beethoven (particularly his "Moonlight Sonata").

What I'm Reading

• On my bedside table: Down by the River, by Edna O'Brien, The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, Goldengrove, by Francine Prose, Oh the Glory of it All, by Sean Wilsey. . . On my waiting list: Nothing to be Frightened of, by Julian Barnes, The Bishop's Daughter, by Honor Moore, The Life of Samuel Johnson, by James Boswell, The Heretic's Daughter, by Kathleen Kent

Web Links

• Veronica Chater's Home Page
• This American Life
• Publishers Marketplace