WHEN asked to name the influences on my fiction and nonfiction, it’s become fairly customary, and perhaps a little pretentious, for me to cite the literary gods Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett and George Orwell. And while it’s not untrue to say that these three legends, who broke such fertile ground in portraying the struggle of the alienated Everyman, made me want to be a writer, I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge a fourth artistic influence, one who might not come so readily to mind when thinking of literary inspiration but who is equally important to me: the radio host Howard Stern.

For example, it’s 2 o’clock on a Monday afternoon, and rather than do work, I am listening to Mr. Stern’s show as someone called Tan Mom informs me, quite candidly, of, among other things, her recent attempt at sobriety, her online sexual behavior and her utter dislike of someone called Teen Mom. I have no idea what Tan Mom actually looks like — which is probably for the best — but based on her name, the sound of her voice and the physical details that Mr. Stern occasionally mentions in passing, I have formed a lurid vision in my head. Lurid visions, as we know from our nightmares, are often more vivid than reality.

Here, then, is the first significant overlap between the world of Mr. Stern’s show and the world of the writer laboring at his desk: to achieve, through restricted means, a visual effect on the audience. In Mr. Stern’s case it’s the listener; in my case it’s the reader. Yes, ours are waning skills in industries that have been given up for dead. Still, we eschew progress for the pleasure of our modest tools. We are like primitive beings — or fools — dwelling in a futuristic age of technological ease, where movies and pictures can now be created and exchanged so effortlessly. And yet I would no more want to see an actual picture of Tan Mom than I would, say, a picture of Kafka’s protagonist Josef K., so fully formed these intimate strangers have become in my mind.

Howard Stern, as of last year, has reasserted himself in popular culture as a judge on NBC’s “America’s Got Talent,” appraising our nation’s singers, dancers and aerial balloonists. I don’t care about this. After five minutes of watching Episode 1, I turned it off. It’s Mr. Stern’s storytelling that I’m after, his uncanny ability to create scenes on the go, to locate and draw out drama, to introduce surprise, to leaven pain with humor. Or to put it another way: what I’m trying to do.