There’s an interesting upwelling of Polish lit in this pretty good interview from the New Yorker’s books blog:
Who are your influences?
The impact of any particular writer on your own work is hard to discern. I read a lot of Borges, for example, but I don’t necessarily see that reflected in my work, which is a little disappointing. It’s there, or I hope it is, just not operating at a level I’m aware of. Sometimes there’s a lot of Mario Vargas Llosa in what I do (I believe), and on good days, I hope to find some Kapuscinski, some Bruno Schulz, some Tadeusz Konwicki as well. But in the end, these are just guesses. You never really know where anything comes from.
I have to say I didn’t see a whole lot of Konwicki in either of his books, but I’m happy to see the somewhat underexposed (in America) author get a reference in a place other than academia and Philip Roth. It’s interesting, actually, to read Roth — especially The Counterlife and Operation Shylock — in conjunction with A Minor Apocalypse and The Polish Complex, since they share a lot of the same beauty and cleverness and a lot of the same annoying flaws, as well. (Does every nubile young woman really want to get with nasty middle-aged authors?)
Schulz, on the other hand — well, once I tried to read The Street of Crocodiles on a flight, and couldn’t get past the first five pages. I’m a philistine.
