 Salinger 's writing has influenced several prominent writers , prompting Harold Brodkey ( himself an O. Henry Award @-@ winning author ) to state in 1991 : " His is the most influential body of work in English prose by anyone since Hemingway . " Of the writers in Salinger 's generation , Pulitzer Prize @-@ winning novelist John Updike attested that " the short stories of J. D. Salinger really opened my eyes as to how you can weave fiction out of a set of events that seem almost unconnected , or very lightly connected ... [ Reading Salinger ] stick [ s ] in my mind as really having moved me a step up , as it were , toward knowing how to handle my own material . " The critic Louis Menand has observed that the early stories of Pulitzer Prize @-@ winner Philip Roth were affected by " Salinger 's voice and comic timing " . 
