(no subject)

Interesting link to a Guardian article sent to me by Wales. She sent it with this comment:

"This (link below) just shows, the minority is the scapegoat. Whether it's Jews in the impoverished industrial Germany, or Christians in the developing India, or anything else it may be, human nature is always the same. I just hope this doesn't come back to the USA. I hope we don't get this economically messed, cus this is what happens."


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/19/orissa-violence-india-christianity-hinduism


I wonder if this is human nature? Do we automatically turn against the minority in our midst, the person who is not like us? I've seen a lot of social psychology experiments regarding it.
The question is - I guess, to what extent are we sheep and to what extent are we our own person, making choices and taking responsibility for them - without giving that power to someone else?

(no subject)

It's a sunny day here in New York, not so warm perhaps, but not freezing either. May take a walk soon.

Currently attempting to plug in revisions that my editor made to my novel into my computer - so I can read them over and decide if they work or not. Morning was spent watching tv, making gluten-free blueberry pancakes, and a brief trip to a very crowded farmer's market - where I picked up Artisanal Cheddar Cheese, Fresh Skim and Chocolat Milk, and a lot of apples from area orchards.

Irritable today, having not slept well the night before. Edgy and a tad restless.
Watched four tv shows had on the old DVR - Heroes (which appears to be getting progressively worse, didn't think that was possible), Supernatural (which had yet another one of their experimental Ben Edlund episodes, Edlund always writes the experimental episodes and they also have his brother in a guest-starring role - except I actually think this one worked within the framework of the story and emphasized this seasons themes as well as furthered the character's emotional plot-arc), ER (an oddly fitting and emotionally satisfying end to Abby Lockhart's arc - Abby was the Carter replacement in some ways. Initially meant as Carol Hathaway's replacement, she soon took on Carter's role of the struggling medical intern.),and Eli Stone (which threw me because I thought Adam Arkin played his brother last year? Maybe I'm confusing this with another show? It's more than possible. I wanted more musical numbers. And less spiritual melodrama - which always feels a bit heavy-handed and sentimental on tv shows. Would have preferred the Sigourney Weaver character being a bit more, what's the word, metaphorical and less obvious. This was why I gave up on Eli last year - the sentimentality. I like it in moderation - see ER, but if you go over the top, I get a sugar rush.)

Of the four I watched, off-hand, I'd have to say Supernatural was the most creative and interesting. ( Supernatural spoilers )

Feeling a bit guilty for not going to PA to campaign for Obama. But on the other hand, I'm not sure I'd be much help - I tend to get a tad emotional and angry. I think I'd just piss people off. (Have enough troubles reigning myself in on my own journal.) On the plus side, the only Bush administration pick that I had any respect for during his eight year reign, has endorsed Barack Obama. I adore Colin Powell. And I adore what he said. He's absolutely right. McCain's campaign took a wrong turn over the last two weeks, one that was disturbingly and frightenly racist and against everything our country stands for, and there's just no excuse for it.

On Writing Processes: Late Bloomers and Prodigies

I'm afraid I got some bad tuna or something. My stomach is having a conipition fit. Keep jumping to the stool. Not pretty. Am hoping it completes itself before 10 pm. Also thinking I might want to just take yogurt and an apple to work tomorrow or maybe make a quick salad, ditching the tuna nicoise salads I made. Not sure if it was tuna nicoise salad, the five chocolat coated brazialian nuts, the chocolat milk, two small pieces of milk chocolat, or something else. Ugh, I hate my stomach - it gets in the way of my love of eating. Am going to have to give up chocolat, I suspect. Also cut back even further on eating. Drinking herbal tea in the hopes of calming it all down, since I have to go to work tomorrow.

On the writing front - read a rather interesting article by Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker. (I went on a bit of magazine buying spree today). The article is entitled Late Bloomers: Why do we equate genius with preocity?. In the article Gladwell compares two writers and two artists. The writers are Ben Fountain, the forty-six year old, who wrote "Brief Encounters with Che Guevara" (no, I haven't heard of it either) and Jonathan Safran Foer - the nineteen year old author of "Everything is Illuminated" (which I did hear of but had no interest in). The artists are the child prodigy Picasso (whose early works are his best) and late bloomer, Cezanne (whose best work was in his fifties and sixties).

Gladwell quotes a statement from David Galenson, an economist at the University of Chicago.
Galenson did a study on whether age played a factor in genuis. What Galenson discovered was there were two types of creative genuis's - the prodigy, who has everything formatted and planned ahead of time, and the late-bloomer who discovers it over time. He said the late bloomer unlike the prodigy, learns by trial and error and rarely makes a specific preparatory sketch or plan for a painting.

"They consider the production of a painting as a process of searching, in which they aim to discover the image in the course of making it; they typically believe that learning is a more important goal than making finished paintings. Experimental artists build their skills gradually over the course of their careers, improving their work slowly over long periods. These artists are perfectionists and are typically plagued by frustration at their inability to achieve their goal."

In the comparison of the two writers - Gladwell describes Fountain as taking sixteen years from the time he quit his job at the law firm, to get his first book of short stories published. While Foer had instant success - Foer was never interested in writing until he took a creative writing class with Joyce Carol Oats, who took him aside and told him she was a fan of his writing. Foer visited the Ukraine once to write Everything is Illuminated. Fountain had to visit Haiti twenty times to write his novel.

What helped Fountain and what Fountain has in common with Cezanne is a necessary ingredient that most of us do not have - a patron who is willing to financially support us until we get our work perfected and published. Fountain's wife - also an attorney, supported Fountain, let him be the stay at home Dad, and allowed him to visit Haiti and supported them both. Cezanne's father and several friends supported him. The prodigy's don't require it - they have their books published instantly. And have instant success. But the late bloomers do.

Other late bloomers - include Mark Twain - who took nearly ten years to write Huckleberry Finn.

Here's literary critic Franklin Rogers on Mark Twain: "His routine procedure seems to have been to start a novel with some structural plan which ordinarily soon proved defective, whereupon he would cast about for a new plot which would overcome the difficulty, rewrite what he had already written, and then push on until some new defect forced him to repeat the process once again." Twain apparently gave up on and revised Huckleberry Finn so many times - it took ten years to complete.

According to Gladwell: "The Cezannes of the world bloom late not as a result of some defect in character, or distraction, or lack of ambition, but because the kind of creativity that proceeds through trial and error necessarily takes a long time to come to fruitation."

The prodigy's creativity is considered "conceptual" and the late bloomers - "experimental".
English art critic Roger Fry writes of Cezanne: "More happily endowed and more integral personalities have been able to express themselves harmoniously from the very first. But such rich, complex, and conflicting natures as Cezanne's require long period of fermentation."

Gladwell states that prodigies are easy, late bloomers are hard. "On the road to great achievement, the late bloomer will resemble a failure: while the late bloomer is revising and despairing and changing course and slashing canvases to ribbons after months or years, what he or she produces will look like the kind of thing produced by the artist who will never bloom at all. Prodigies are easy. They advertise their genius from the get-go. Late bloomers are hard. They require forebearance and blind faith..."

Interesting. A lot of what he says about Cezanne and Fountain, I identify with. The novel I'm currently revising, is in some respects a by-product of the past four novels I've written. And rewritten. And scrapped the plot of, numerous times. I'm the same way with art, cooking, what-have-you, I keep experimenting, searching for it, I don't know what it is ahead of time, to me the fun is in the search, the experiment. Or as Cezanne states - "I seek in painting".
[Not that I'm a Cezanne, or a Twain, no where near, just that I identify with their process, while Fountain and Mozart and Picasso's is foreign to me. I'm envious of it. But I don't understand. It's as if they aren't striving, there's no challenge, no struggle. Why bother? See drawing came naturally to me, not writing - but I chose writing for in writing I could seek to learn, to find, it was more experimental for me. As a result, I don't understand the prodigy.]

Foer is the opposite, he's a prodigy. He just took it up. Took him three days to write Everything is Illuminated. Gladwell states that he has no understanding of Fountain or Twain's process. Foer states - "I couldn't do that. I mean imagine if the craft you're trying to learn is to be an original. How could you learn the craft of being an original?" (I don't think Foer understands that it's not about that for the late bloomer. )

Gladwell points out that one is not necessarily better than the other. They are just different. And we tend to see more prodigies than late bloomers, because many late bloomers get lost in the process - if they don't have patrons. I'm not sure I completely agree with Gladwell. If you truly want to do art, you will find a way to do it. Even if it is late at night or on spare weekends or holidays. Whether or not it is great art or is seen by anyone else - is, I'm not certain, that important. Those of us who are driven to create, whatever it may be, to express ourselves in a creative manner, do find a way. We have to, in order to stay sane. It just may take us a bit longer than Ben Fountain to get our work out there.

Stomach is somewhat better now. Am going to watch Desperate Housewives and finish my tea.