Creativity, like genius, is inexplicable, but Lewis’ synthesis of history, biography and psychological research offers a...
In her nonfiction debut, curator and arts consultant Lewis (Painting and Printmaking/Yale Univ.) takes on the broad topic of creativity.
Ranging across an expansive historical landscape, the author considers artists, scientists, writers, entrepreneurs and even an intrepid explorer, investigating the sources of their creativity. Serendipity, failure, daring and grit, she discovers, can all lead to innovation. Often, silence and space offer essential “safe havens” where a person can be alone to ruminate. Although failure can be terminally discouraging, for some, it is liberating. After a spectacular critical failure in 1957, choreographer Paul Taylor ignored negative reviews and, he said, committed himself to “keep heading in my own direction.” He triumphed and eventually won a MacArthur Genius award. “We make discoveries, breakthroughs, and inventions in part because we are free enough to take risks,” Lewis writes. Freedom to take risks, however, also requires persistence to achieve one’s goals. Samuel Morse abandoned his grandiose dream of being an artist and turned to electrical telegraphy. He kept at his experiments for nearly two decades until he finally succeeded in transmitting a message. Lewis identifies Morse’s persistence as “grit.” However, as a psychological researcher told the author, grit requires avoiding just spinning one’s wheels: “Whatever you’re doing, you have to figure out when to give out effort and when to withdraw it.” Related to grit is the quality of surrender: “We surrender not when we give up,” she explains, “but when we give over.” The power that comes from surrender is “a supportive, benevolent current.” Lewis praises the discoveries made by amateurs, those who defy the judgment of peers, and those who set out on untrammeled paths, “seeking out roads that, though hidden, are found on open ground.”
Creativity, like genius, is inexplicable, but Lewis’ synthesis of history, biography and psychological research offers a thoughtful response to the question of how new ideas happen.Pub Date: March 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4516-2923-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.
More life reflections from the bestselling author on themes of societal captivity and the catharsis of personal freedom.
In her third book, Doyle (Love Warrior, 2016, etc.) begins with a life-changing event. “Four years ago,” she writes, “married to the father of my three children, I fell in love with a woman.” That woman, Abby Wambach, would become her wife. Emblematically arranged into three sections—“Caged,” “Keys,” “Freedom”—the narrative offers, among other elements, vignettes about the soulful author’s girlhood, when she was bulimic and felt like a zoo animal, a “caged girl made for wide-open skies.” She followed the path that seemed right and appropriate based on her Catholic upbringing and adolescent conditioning. After a downward spiral into “drinking, drugging, and purging,” Doyle found sobriety and the authentic self she’d been suppressing. Still, there was trouble: Straining an already troubled marriage was her husband’s infidelity, which eventually led to life-altering choices and the discovery of a love she’d never experienced before. Throughout the book, Doyle remains open and candid, whether she’s admitting to rigging a high school homecoming court election or denouncing the doting perfectionism of “cream cheese parenting,” which is about “giving your children the best of everything.” The author’s fears and concerns are often mirrored by real-world issues: gender roles and bias, white privilege, racism, and religion-fueled homophobia and hypocrisy. Some stories merely skim the surface of larger issues, but Doyle revisits them in later sections and digs deeper, using friends and familial references to personify their impact on her life, both past and present. Shorter pieces, some only a page in length, manage to effectively translate an emotional gut punch, as when Doyle’s therapist called her blooming extramarital lesbian love a “dangerous distraction.” Ultimately, the narrative is an in-depth look at a courageous woman eager to share the wealth of her experiences by embracing vulnerability and reclaiming her inner strength and resiliency.
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0125-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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