Of his early jobs, newspaper reporting and editing most affected his belletristic writing. As it had for Hemingway, journalism taught Richter concision of expression. His novels each seldom exceed 200 pages in length. On 24 March 1915, Richter married Harvena Achenbach, also of Pine Grove. Their daughter and only child, Harvena, born 13 March 1917, became a poet and short-story writer herself, having her work published in such journals as the
New Yorker and
Saturday Evening Post.
For higher education, Richter substituted extensive reading. "All my life," he said in a radio broadcast, "I have been a reader, and one of my joys, especially as a boy and young man, was to come on a book in which I could lose myself." His favorite authors ranged from the boys' adventure writer Henry Castlemon on the one hand, to the far more complex and mystical adventure writer W. H. Hudson (whom Richter called his "love") on the other hand. Between these extremes were eighteenth-century chemist and physicist Michael Faraday and surgeon G. W. Crile (1864-1943), whose scientific theories influenced Richter's philosophy; Emerson, Thoreau, and John Burroughs , with whom Richter shared an Idealistic bent; and Willa Cather, whose characters and backgrounds often resemble Richter's.
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