A non-fiction writer follows Faulkner style

David Quammen is a science writer, but he told the New York Times last week that his style depends on a very famous fiction writer: William Faulkner.

I also like his explanation of how he started writing non-fiction. From the NYT story on his new book, "Spillover," about the threat of animal diseases jumping over to humans:

"He was having trouble getting published as a novelist, he said, and at a certain point he decided: 'I’m a white, middle-class male who had a happy childhood in Ohio. The world does not need me to be a novelist.' From reading authors like Stephen Jay Gould, Lewis Thomas, Annie Dillard and John McPhee, moreover, he discovered, he said, that 'nonfiction could be wondrous and imaginative, shapely and literary — it didn’t just have to be explanatory.'

"But his greatest influence as a science writer, Mr. Quammen insisted, was the seemingly unscientific William Faulkner, about whom he wrote both undergraduate and graduate school theses. Though few critics have been subtle enough to notice, he said, smiling, the structure of 'Spillover' was as intricate as that of 'Absalom, Absalom' or 'Light in August.'

“ 'There are four levels braided together like cords in a rope, all moving in the same direction,' he explained. 'Or that’s what the author thinks, anyway. "