In this collection, 11 important male fiction writers in America in 2001 discuss the origin, process and achievement of their own fiction. Interviewees include Robert Olen Butler, Charles Johnson, Thom Jones, Barry Hannah, Stephen Dixon, Russell Banks, Rick Moody and Chris Offutt.

Trucks' The Pleasure of Influence is a collection of conversations with eleven of the most important male fiction writers in America today. In this collection Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler, National Book Award winner Charles Johnson, National Book Award nominees Thom Jones, Barry Hannah, and Stephen Dixon, as well as Russell Banks, Rick Moody, Chris Offutt, Stewart O'Nan, Steve Erickson and Gordon Lish candidly discuss the origin, process and achievement of their own fiction in a manner that should appeal to readers, writers and scholars of modern American fiction.