But far from recklessly abandoning their literary heritage, most writers were at great pains to acquaint themselves with their traditional literature.
Modern Irish literature is often connected with its rural heritage through writers such as John McGahern and poets such as Seamus Heaney.
But though I am aware of this personal emotional heritage, as a writer I have to construct the emotional architecture of my characters – you can't just chuck in a few so-called "popular cultural references" for effect.
And by drawing on our amazing theatre heritage: most TV writers here start out in theatre and that's where our actors become so skilled, too.
He also said he would open a conversation about the great heritage of UK writers and illustrators, and promised to turn up at branches of Waterstones for impromptu drawing session.
A judge's ruling that Franz Kafka's unpublished work should be made public raises the question: Who has the right to the Jewish writer's heritage?
By the time Leon Forrest died, in 1997, the 20th century was ending and all the experiments begun by Joyce, Woolf, Proust, Faulkner and the rest had become the international heritage of the fiction writer.
The opening story, "Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice", grapples directly with his own heritage, with a young writer called Nam urged by his friends to turn to his father's experiences in Vietnam for literary inspiration.
People can be too precious about their "heritage", about their "tradition" – writers especially.
Over the centuries, the territory of what is now Uzbekistan has produced great scholars, poets, and writers whose heritage has enriched the general culture of humanity.
Scotland, my schooling had at times implied, at times openly professed, was a small, cold, bitter place that had no political clout, not much cultural heritage, joyless people and writers who were all male and all dead.
