The Cult of Chomsky

In college, I certainly knew the name 'Noam Chomsky', though why I knew it, I wasn't sure. I worked security, patrolling the dark, deserted halls and subterranean passages which made the campus a labyrinth of shadows and half-heard sounds each time night enclosed it. My fellow denizens of the twilight realm included my nemeses: hobos, bike thieves, wall tagging skateboarders, drunken hedgebound copulators--and also my allies, my kine, those fellow security personnel who waited out the long shifts at their desks.

So I flitted from one to the next, patrol this building and visit one, then moving on to the next, spending a little time with each before returning them to their isolation. I still recall walking down a dim and lengthy hallway and hearing a clipped, minute voice echoing down it, reduced by boombox speakers to a buzzing, inhuman tone. When I arrived, my compatriot made to pause the recording, but I held up a hand and asked "what's this?"  

"Noam Chomsky," she replied, "the world's most famous intellectual".

Originality and the Fount of Inspiration

Last time, we talked about the source of creativity, now let's look at what I mean by 'originality'

Muse at Mt. Helicon

When I'm judging the quality of something I have read (or even something I have written), I find I have to contend with the idea of 'originality'--what is it that makes something original, or unoriginal? Is originality even a desirable trait for an author to have? Is true originality even possible?

Certainly, we might construct an extreme argument and say that, since all human thought comes from what we learn, from notions that have inspired us, that therefore, every idea has some source and hence cannot be considered 'truly original'. If we defined 'original' as 'something that springs fully-formed from nothing and is not related to anything that came before' then no, there could be no original thought. But it is silly to define originality as some impossible severing of man from influence or history, when in fact those are indispensable parts of the crucible in which original ideas are formed.

Creative Barriers: Where Good Ideas Come From

Sinatra-Fighting, Jellybean-Hating Old Cuss

All writers get asked the question "where do you get your ideas?" Even nobodies like me hear it. It's become a cliche among authors, to the point that Harlan Ellison started telling people that he writes to a 'fine Idea Service' in Schenectady, New York, which, for a modest fee, provides him with new ideas upon request.

But of course, the very question misunderstands how the brain works: ideas don't just descend from nowhere, there is no store of them sitting out there, untouched, just awaiting discovery. Ideas are forced into existence by sheer necessity. Whenever you wonder how someone 'became so creative', it might be beneficial to sit back and ask yourself what 'creativity' actually means. To say that someone is creative means that they are capable of coming up with novel solutions to problems. When they are confronted with something that needs to be done, they find a workaround. This means that, in order for us to be creative, there must be some sort of conflict staring us in the face: there must be some conundrum that needs solving.

What Makes A Good Writer?

As you may or might not have noticed, my Goodreads profile contains the somewhat confrontational statement: "No author who rates their own book five stars could write a five-star book". It's something I get asked about with some regularity, along with the question 'how can I become a good writer?' Luckily for me, my job is rather simplified by the fact that both questions share a common answer.

Now, I'm not claiming I am a good writer--indeed it's very humbling when people choose to come to me and seek advice--but I have spent quite a bit of time reading and thinking on the topic of becoming a good writer--in hopes of getting there, myself, one day--and it's hard for me to think of an act more directed at becoming a good writer than writing to other writers about the properties of good writing as I understand them.

International Triage: The Morality of Charity

Bouguereau's Charity

Charity is big business, but not all charities are created equal, and not all charities, despite the best intentions, actually end up doing good. Yet most people want to help out in some way: we empathize with the pain of others, we sympathize with the unfortunate positions they have been put in, but very few actually do anything about it.

Sure we might feel bad, but rarely does that translate into action, and even when it does, the actions we take are rarely the most effective. But then, the real motivation for many people is to make that feeling go away, to feel as if they have done something, but not to look too closely into what has actually been achieved, because trying to confront such a terrible, insurmountable problem is quite a task to set before yourself.

So we do the little things: we recycle, we turn off lights, we send some money to an organization. It lets us think of ourselves good people, it alleviates the guilt we feel when we see the late night commercial with the starving African children, but these techniques are often marketed to do just that: to make us feel complacent, as if we have already done something good.

Worldbuilding -- Part III: What Fiction Does Well

Last time, we talked about the unfortunate habits of some authors, when it comes to worldbuilding. Now let's talk about why such perfectionism can make it very difficult to write good fiction.

While reading Bernard Knox's fascinating introduction to the Fagles translation of the Oedipus plays, I came across the following quote:

“If through no fault of his own the hero is crushed by a bulldozer in Act II, we are not impressed. Even though life is often like this—the absconding cashier on his way to Nicaragua is killed in a collision at the airport, the prominent statesman dies of a stroke in the midst of the negotiations he has spent years to bring about, the young lovers are drowned in a boating accident the day before their marriage—such events, the warp and woof of everyday life, seem irrelevant, meaningless . . . it is the function of great art to purge and give meaning to human suffering, and so we expect that if the hero is indeed crushed by a bulldozer in Act II there will be some reason for it, and not just some reason but a good one, one which makes sense in terms of the hero’s personality and action. In fact, we expect to be shown that he is in some way responsible for what happens to him.”

A quote which quite aptly sums up much of what I think is wrong with the modern realism movement, and particularly, the motivations behind 'gritty' fantasy.

On Escapism

Part of a series on defining terms.

I occasionally enjoy the offerings on Longform, a site that collects longer pieces of journalism which the editors find particularly interesting, and for the most part, I agree. But recently, they featured a piece by Joe Queenan about being an avid reader which opened with this statement:

“If you have read 6,000 books in your lifetime, or even 600, it’s probably because at some level you find “reality” a bit of a disappointment.”

As an assertion, I find it both absurd and insulting. Yet it's something I have heard before, particularly in reference to genre works like sci fi or fantasy, where the term 'escapism' is likely to rear its head. It's a loaded word, to be certain--which makes it important to define precisely what we mean by it, and why it has nothing to do with why I read.