I like the Frenchies: Camus, Sartre, Celine, Genet, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, etc. They know what they're doing. As far as the UK/US rift goes, I'll definitely go with the Americans. I consider the English to have an extremely insular attitude towards their literature and that has held them back. The Americans, however naive, have always been constantly curious about what else they can try and that demeanour has delivered us writers such as Charles Bukowski, William Burroughs, Bret Easton Ellis, Henry Miller, etc.
If we are going to stain it with names, my writing has entered categories like impressionism, realism and surrealism. Think Bukowski and Burroughs drinking cocktails brewed by Aldous Huxley in a bar built by Albert Camus in the sunflower patch of a garden tended by Hermann Hesse.
:)