Via Bookslut I came across an interview with Brian Evenson, which with his Bookslut interview led me to write an e-mail to him asking about influences.

I wrote:

I read the interview you gave to Largehearted Boy and not long after continued reading the third part of Robertson Davies’ The Deptford Trilogy. It reminds me somewhat of the descriptions of your work; The Deptford Trilogy has its own dark moments, although I think it has a strong undercurrent of right and of morality than what I’ve detected in some of your stories. Have you read it, and if so were you consciously thinking of it?

And yesterday he responded:

I’m glad you came across the Largehearted Boy interview. And yes, I’ve read the Deptford Trilogy, but literally read it fifteen or twenty years ago. I remember liking it–I even wrote a short paper on it for a class I took on Canadian fiction as an undergrad–but remember very little about it. I wasn’t thinking of it consciously, but there’s a good chance that it’s in there somewhere.

I found allusion where there was none, or at least none overtly, but I could see some Davies in Evenson.