In someone else, John Hughes gives new voice to twenty-one famous men – writers, artists and musicians – who have influenced his imagination and his outlook on life. In this non-standard homage, Huges has written a series of what he calls ‘fictional essays’. Each piece delves into aspects of an individual’s thought and creativity, but Hughes does this through the prism of his own world view, his imagination, his preoccupations. The title recalls Rimbaud’s declaration, ‘I am made up of all who have made me’. When Hughes writes about his fictional version of Marcel Proust or John Cage or Mark Rothko, he is simultaneously writing about himself.

While Hughes’s premise is intriguing, the results are mixed. Not unlike a musical album of B-sides and offcuts, there are plenty of gems, but also a few duds and fragments, and some fine ideas that never quite gel. In combination, the essays imply a world in which all knowledge and imaginative thought is somehow connected. In Calvino mode, Hughes writes: