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Mentors, Muses & Monsters: 30 Writers on the People Who Changed Their Lives

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Whether you believe writers are born with their talent or develop it, they all have important influences that shape their art and their destinies. For this collection, editor Elizabeth Benedict solicited 30 contemporary writers (Joyce Carol Oates, Julia Glass, Mary Gordon, Jane Smiley and others) to describe the formative individuals who, for better or worse, helped shape their writing lives. While most of the "mentors, monsters, and muses" were teachers, editors, and the like, some contributors pointed not to actual people but to other writers' work as their most compelling influences. Thus, the powers that mold their literary careers become as varied as the writers themselves.

Jay Cantor, in his selection called "Fathers," affectionately recalls taking a class at Harvard with Bernard Malamud who became a mentor to him. Cantor's own father wanted his son to become a doctor and was never receptive to his son's literary aspirations. Cantor describes how Malamud encouraged him to become a writer: "What Bern's moral imperatives offered me was a way to turn the thing I wanted to do into the thing that I was kind of in a way required to do. He helped me make the enterprise of writing moral, the sort of thing a grown-up should do."

I think one of the most compelling pieces in this collection is Cheryl Strayed's "Munro Country." Strayed hero-worshiped Alice Munro as a writer and once received a personal letter from Munro praising a story Strayed had sent her, unsolicited. Munro's letter said, referring to the story, "... I wouldn't have changed a hair on its head." Strayed had such ardent longing and admiration for Munro that she sounded like a child seeking her lost mother. At long last, Strayed traveled to see Munro at a public appearance and reading in Manhattan at a New Yorker Festival, although Munro did not know she was coming. Strayed sat transfixed and weeping in the audience during the reading. While she stood in line to greet Munro, she rehearsed all the things she might say. Then, when her time came to greet the author she realized that she would not speak to her, that the entire relationship and all the longing had been built up inside herself and had no real bearing on the flesh and blood woman sitting in front of her. Strayed wrote, "... there was both too much and nothing to say. I gave her a small wave and then shifted my eyes and walked away."

If you enjoy literary biography, this collection is a treasure for learning how writers become who and what they are.

What an engrossing read for people who love fiction.

Have you ever wanted to know more about how authors you admire formed their sensibilities? Who their big influences and teachers were? And indeed, how influence itself works?

Then you will love this book. The authors clearly cared deeply about their subjects, and write with poignancy and insight about their mentors.

From the high school girl who shamed Michael Cunningham into reading Virginia Woolf, to Jonathan Safran Foer's charming account of his relationship to a great Israeli poet, the book is filled with great essays by great writers.

This collection must satisfy the essential holiday reading needs of critics, clerics, caesars and even curmudgeons. Few of them will be able to read through these pieces without smiling or catching his or her breath in a moment of pleasure and admiration, maybe with a tear. Each of us has a figure or two to whom we owe more than we can thank, more than we can even say. Who better to try than people who make their living expressing the ineffable, the sublime, the quotidian? Some of these are just plain fun or even funny (like Maud Casey's marvelous, joyful piece on her parents), some poignant, complex and revealing (like Mary Gordon's on Lizzie Hardwick and Janice Thaddeus), some virtuso performances (like Neil Gordon on Bob Silvers and the NYRB). For me, almost every one of them hit a rich, vibrating but authentic note, telling me something about the writer, the mentor/muse, the process of becoming and maybe something about myself. Get this book. Open it almost anywhere. Read the piece on which the page opens. I bet you can't read just one.
I wonder who all those Smiths are that the editor lists as her mentors and muses. I yearn to read the essay about them.

There are central figures in everyone's lives who are the cornerstones of who they have become. "Mentors, Muses, & Monsters: 30 Writers on the People Who Changed Their Lives' is a collection of essays from many writers as they reflect on these individuals who have changed the course of their lives. Thirty different perspectives offer very different stories and shows the impact of positive and negative influences can drastically have. "Mentors, Muses, & Monsters" is an intriguing and top pick for those who want to understand inspiration and the people who provide it.

This behind the scenes look at writer's best, worst, and most important influences is a both touching and at times funny read. Writers and readers will enjoy this.