I'd agree with you about growing up after reading him. But that could possibly because his stories were pretty 'raw'. The characters he wrote about were solid. He didn't write about things he didn't know, he wrote about what the people he saw daily, migrants he worked alongside, families and individuals hanging out in the bars around town etc. His stories were about life. I don't think I changed after reading him, I did appreciate that he wrote about places and types of people that I knew. People that my parents grew up with. Families that worked hard, when my older siblings worked in the field, etc it gave me a more solid foundation of the county I grew up in. Living there, it made all his stories even more interesting.