It is frankly an embarrassment that I have never sat down to write the list of all the people that channeled me along the twisting path from the first ideas to the publication of Three Lives. I wanted that list to go in the book, but failed, and then I consecrated a page to it on this website, but it still hasn't appeared. And I confess that every time I come near the subject my mind blocks. The list is long - very long - and I will forget somebody important, I will put people in the wrong order, I'll just get it wrong somehow. This is no attitude for a writer. But the gratitude is sincere and enormous. There were so many steps and people there supporting me at every one. Thank you.
Another thing that I'd like to go on this page is a list of other people's writing that I made reference to in the book or that influenced the story or writing style. It might look something like this:
Akutagawa, Ryūnosuke – Rashomon and Other Stories (influential)
Becket, Samuel – Waiting for Godot (inferred)
Brontë, Charlotte – Jane Eyre (inferred)
Bryant, William – “Yet let no empty gust of passion…” (quoted)
Burton, Sir Richard Francis – The Book of A Thousand Nights and a Night (referred to)
Calvino, Italo - Invisible Cities (parodied)
Capote, Truman – Breakfast at Tiffany’s (mentioned)
Cavendish, Richard - Mythology, an illustrated encyclopaedia – (source of information)
Cervantes – Don Quixote de La Mancha (inferred)
Conrad, Joseph - Heart of Darkness – (quoted with words changed)
Dante - The Divine Comedy (burned and used as illumination)
Dickinson, Emily (Quoted, inferred and referred to)
Gaffard, Emmanuel - Paris Souterrain – (source of information)
Greene, Graham - The Third Man – (influential)
Hoffman, E.T.A. – Sandman (referred to)
Hugo, Victor – Correspondence with his editor. (Hugo: “?”; Editor: “!”)
Kurosawa, Akira – Dreams (extracts and images influence the last visions of Tomomi Ishikawa's victims)
Lewer, S.H. of ‘The Feathered World’ assisted by leading specialists – Wright’s Book of Poultry (hollowed out and used to store treasure)
Milne, A. A. - Winnie the Pooh (reference to Christopher Robin)
Murakami, Haruki - Norwegian Wood (influential); The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (influential)
Nabakov, Vladimir – Lolita (mentioned)
Poe, Edgar Allen (mentioned)
Rhys, Jean – Wide Sargasso Sea, Quartet (influential, inferred)
Scarry, Richard - What do People do all Day? (root of all my information on life, and interest in things that happen underground)
Terry White, Anne; Illustrated by Provenson, Alice and Martin - Myths and Legends (root of all my knowledge of myths and legends)
Tsunetomo, Yamamoto – Hagakuri (influential)
Waugh, Evelyn - Brideshead Revisited (reference to)
Welles, Orson – Citizen Kane (reference to)
