What piece of art changed your life? How did it affect you?

Not one work of art, but several, and all by the same author, Dostoevsky. The Idiot and Poor Folk, Crime and Punishment, The Eternal Husband, The Possessed, and several short stories. When I was in my late teens. this was art, I felt, and it made me want to be an artist of some sort. That feeling, after side trips to acting and painting and poetry and play writing. led me to settle on fiction writing. 

Stephen Dixon's latest book is Meyer. A prolific and profound fiction writer, he recently retired from teaching at Johns Hopkins.

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