Books/crimes influenced by other books?

External Since: Nov 27, 2007 Posts: 1

Hello,
Our high school son has to come up with a paper based on a book that
was written because the author was influenced by another book. An
alternative would be a crime which was influenced by a book. Any ideas?
Thanks a bunch!
Mommio

External Since: Oct 23, 2005 Posts: 87

>> Our high school son has to come up with a paper based on a book that
>> was written because the author was influenced by another book.

Anon, "Sweeney Astray" (mediaeval Irish story)
Flann O'Brien, "At Swim-Two-Birds".

O'Brien read it in the Irish original, but there is a good translation
by Seamus Heaney.

I suggest this one because both books are quite short and O'Brien doesn't
make a lot of references to any other previous books, though the way he
puts Mad King Sweeney into his own work is clever and complicated. An
added wrinkle is that there's an anecdote in the mediaeval story which
seems to be an embedding of an earlier pagan myth.

> The problem might be in finding a great work of literature that is not
> influenced by another great work of literature. Actually, finding such
> a work and writing a paper to show how everything about it is original
> would be a much greater challenge than the one the teacher set. Would
> Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" qualify?

It's basically a parody of the prophetic books of the Old Testament with
help from the prophetic books of William Blake and Whitman's "Leaves of
Grass".

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