On Creativity

The Norwegian Writer Knut Hamsun once said that he wrote to kill time. "I think that even if he were sincere in stating it thus," Henry Miller notes of Hamsun's remark, "he was deluding himself. Writing, like life itself, is a voyage of discovery." The voyage of discovery on these pages began when columnist Art Buchwald asked Broadway playwright George Abbott what, in his view, was the basic requirement for creative success. Without hesitation, Abbott told him, "An unhappy childhood. The child becomes expert at creating worlds of fantasy." We asked a successful critic if he agreed. "Nonsense," he said. "Every great writer is motivated by bone-hard selfishness, by a terribly strong urge for self-expression and the fruits that it brings: money and fame." With these contradictory opinions in mind, we decided to seek replies from a varied cross section of the writing fraternity to the following question: "Do creative people have any characteristics in common, in their backgrounds or their personalities, that can be identified as wellsprings of that creativity?" The 13 insightful answers on these pages hardly constitute a final answer to our provocative question, but we think you'll agree that they comprise a compelling glimpse into the self-analytical interpretations of creative minds.

Truman Capote,long established as a novelist of rare sensitivity ("Other Voices, Other Rooms") and wit ("Breakfast at Tiffany's"), proved himself one of the world's most gifted investigative reporters with his best-selling "nonfiction novel" "In Cold Blood," a graphic chronicle of the Clutter-family murder case. He also affirmed his credentials as an insightful and outspoken social commentator in a popular "Playboy Interview" published in March of this year.

"I've never understood the term 'creative person.' All people are creative. The difficulty is that most of us are unaware of our creative gifts; through faults of fortune, they lie undreamed of--to be discovered only, if at all, through fateful chance. For instance, as a child I knew a Gulf Coast fisherman who, direly afflicted with asthma, retired to a darkened herb-scented room. He learned to sew; gradually, he began producing scrap quilts of amazing design, a sunshine world of great primitive tapestries.

The spirit hovers somewhere in all of us; many a shoe clerk and bus driver contain, however obscured and thwarted, a capacity for reaching exalted musical regions, for contriving delicate mathematical experiments. But, of course, the professionalized creative mind neither discovers nor makes art by accident, and therein lies the difference. Most artists know what they were born to do (and are prepared to do it) at a far earlier age than, say, the average future lawyer realizes his intentions. And most artists, particularly the precocious breed, have had difficult, isolated childhoods--no doubt partially because of the creative sensibility that sets them apart. In youth, what happens to the potential artist is rather like what happens to the pearl-bearing oyster. An alien sand grain invades the oyster's shell and, once imbedded there, irritates the tenant to the point of obsession, painfully pesters the oyster until it produces a jewel. Talent, and genius as well, is like a grain of pearl sand shifting about in the creative mind: a valued tormentor."

LeRoi Joneshas been recognized as the most powerful of the radical black playwrights in America since 1965, when "The Dutchman" was produced off-Broadway. A new play, called "A Recent Killing," is expected this season, which will also see the publication of a volume of Jones' short plays, as well as one of poetry. The playwright is free on bail, pending appeal of his conviction for illegal possession of weapons during the 1967 riots in his native Newark.

"Creation is the wellspring of Life. What is manifest is constant continuous creation. The Creator is his own Creation, finally. The beings in The being are before actual being potentialities, possibilities. What existed first was an ocean of possibility. The blackness. Out of which all that is is. The Creator is the conscious will, shaping the being of impulse. Directionlike movement. Image is impulse directionlike movement. All is constant movement and change. All is motion. All the senses are directionlike. Motion in a sense. Seeing. The Creator sees. The Creator creates that which he sees. Hears, Tastes, Smells, Touches, Intuits. Receives from the Cosmic Memory. Even a perfect man has 14 senses. The Creator has all senses. Directionlike is a thrust of being, is the Being itself, with memory of its existence creating itself inside itself as memory actually existing as continuous being. We are creators in the same way with not as much material to work with. Internalized is the environment. Outside is brought in and is an impulse given off. Which is the inside going out. Circular. Cyclical. The Creator creates what already exists anyway. What he created existed before he created it as the total static consciousness; in constant flux; there is no other state."

Georges Simenonfinished his first novel at 16. He has written 200 or 500 since then--depending on whether one counts the dozens he wrote under 17 pseudonyms before he was 25, and on the hazy distinction between novel and novelette. His 70 Inspector Maigret whodunits have made him the most admired mystery writer in the world. Though many critics continue to see more quantity than quality in Simenon's work, more and more are recognizing him as a master of terse psychological narration. André Gide pronounced him "perhaps the greatest and most truly novelistic novelist in French literature today."

"I believe that the essential condition to become a creator in the artistic domain, particularly in the novel, is to be able to enter into the skin of people."

Lawrence Durrellwas a jazz pianist in a London night club, an auto racer and a real-estate agent before his escape from England--"that mean, shabby little island," he called it--and encouragement from Henry Miller led to "The Black Book," a cathartic anti-England novel published in Paris in 1938. After 20 years of travel, various appointments in the British foreign press service and several volumes of varied fiction and poetry, the writer whom Miller had hailed as "the master of the English language" produced the lush, complexly intertwined novels of "The Alexandria Quartet" in a matter of months. Durrell currently resides--and produces poetry, fiction and drama--in southern France. He has contributed four short stories to Playboy.

"There are several aspects of this word 'creative' that is so loosely used nowadays ('Creative job offered in advertising agency'). The original Greek was 'krainein,' which means to fulfill--either a prophecy or a promise. Or oneself. A creative work may come out of inner stress or muddle or psychic illness, but if it is a good job well done, it heals both the doer and the receiver. 'One sheds one's sicknesses in books,' says Lawrence; while Proust adds: 'The real masters are those who master themselves.' You can't prescribe for art, on the other hand; there were no signs of morbid unhappiness in Emily Bronte or Jane Austen. And the world is full of neurotics who never try their hand at creating anything."

James T. Farrell,in his monumental "Studs Lonigan: A Trilogy," recorded with uncompromising honesty what he had heard, seen and felt throughout his youth and young manhood in the Irish neighborhoods of Chicago's South Side. His naturalistic style subsequently fell into disfavor with the critics, but Farrell has continued to use it with powerful effect in more than a score of short-story collections and novels, including his latest, "A Brand New Life."

"Whether or not the artist has had a happy childhood is unimportant. Whether he is selfish or unselfish is unimportant. It is only important that he be aware of his experience and that he create original art from it. Tolstoy had a wonderfully happy childhood and from this experience he wrote a trilogy that established him as a genius when he was still in his early 20s. Dreiser's childhood and youth were bitterly unhappy, but Dreiser created enduring works of art from his unhappiness. Art is the transcending of experience."

Isaac Bashevis Singeris the world's foremost Yiddish writer; in translation, his work charms both the critics and a growing international audience. "No psychological terminology or current literary method," one reviewer wrote of such stories and novels as "The Spinoza of Market Street," "Gimpel the Fool" and "The Manor," "has succeeded in rendering such a profound, unified and fully apprehended account of the Divine, the Infernal and the suffering space of self-determination between...." Singer has lived in New York City since 1935 and is on the staff of the Jewish Daily Forward. Playboy has published four of his stories, one of which won the magazine's award for the best Playboy fiction of 1967.

"What is common to all artists is an uncommon curiosity about human character and behavior. They see in every man--sometimes even in animals and plants--a new experiment in a laboratory of individuality. Uniqueness is expressed in man's face, thoughts, words, emotions, gifts, in everything about and around him. The artist himself produces individuality, the source of which is his peculiar way of seeing the world. While education, a home and other conditions enhance or impede creation, talent comes basically through the genes. It is often--not always--accompanied by compassion and by rebellion against the cruelty of nature."

William Styronwas already regarded as among the most powerful younger novelists in America when he wrote "The Confessions of Nat Turner," which won last year's Pulitzer Prize. The novel, recounting, in the words of its leader, the only American slave rebellion of any consequence, was the most talked-about book of the year--and the subject of a recent compilation of pro-and-con criticism by black authors. Two earlier novels ("Lie Down in Darkness" and "Set This House on Fire") and a novella ("The Long March") established the Virginia-born writer's prestigious reputation.

"I can speak only for myself when I say that I believe that a powerful source of my own creativity derives from my passion for music. Without Bach and Mozart, I am certain that I would never have written a word. This leads me to a parallel conclusion about creative people that may not be demonstrable but which I feel to be true. And that is that most real artists receive magnetic inspiration from art forms that are not their own. Many composers I know are zealous readers of poetry; certain fine painters of my acquaintance have confessed that they are frustrated musicians. At the same time, I have known few novelists of any worth whose sensibilities were not dynamically reinforced and fed by the other arts. So, although it may be only a generalization, I would like to venture the idea that a true talent contains the component of the artist manque--the poet striving for the condition of music, the composer as geometer, the novelist whose most poignant configurations may be merely echoes of a Turner seascape or a Bach cantata."

Abe Burrowswrote his first script--for a radio show--in 1938, after stints as a premedical student and an accountant. Since then, he has authored or co-authored such Broadway successes as "Guys and Dolls," "Can-Can," "Silk Stockings" and "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying," which garnered a 1961 Pulitzer Prize.

"It seems to me that all creativity comes about because someone senses some void in man's knowledge. The creative scientist responds to the gaps in our knowledge of physical laws--and we get a theory of relativity or a model of the DNA molecule. The creative inventor fills a void in technology with the telephone or waterproof mascara. Creative businessmen see gaps and fill them with every sort of enterprise--from a bank to a dog-walking service. The writer also responds to a void: the lack of true human communication. I believe the writer first becomes aware of this in his childhood. Children think; children feel. But they quickly discover that it's impossible to communicate these thoughts and feelings to adults. Most children have given up trying by the time they join the adult world. But a few children bide their time. They store up their thoughts in the form of fantasies, dreams and daydreams. Then at some time in their lives--if their minds survive this repression--they discover Art, a safe outlet for their stored-up thoughts and feelings. Fiction, drama and poetry all provide an effective--and acceptable--means of communicating whatever has been growing or festering in their minds. The key word here is 'acceptable.' Truth is seldom acceptable or digestible. I think it was Mrs. Roosevelt who once said it was possible to tell the real truth about actual events only by means of fiction. So the creative writer finds that art form which gives his audience or his readers an insight into his thoughts--and perhaps into their own. I try to do it with humor."

Norman Podhoretzwas recognized before his majority--by such teachers as Lionel Trilling at Columbia and F. R. Leavis at Cambridge, perhaps the two leading critics of the day--as a young man certain of literary success. In a spate of artful criticism, in his successful editorship of the influential intellectual monthly Commentary and in this year's "Making It"--a candid and controversial account of his rise through the New York literary establishment--Podhoretz has more than fulfilled their confidence.

"The ancients believed that the source of creativity was in the Muses--by which, I take it, they meant to express their understanding of the involuntary nature of the creative impulse. The modern metaphor embodying the same idea is the unconscious mind, over which, by definition, we have no control. The ancients resorted to incantations and prayer to stimulate the creative flow; and we have our own superstitious ways of attempting to tap those underground springs that seem to gush or run dry, not at all as we please but only in accordance with their own mysterious laws. The point is that creativity is a gift, a kind of grace. It represents a miraculous coming together of the uninhibited energy of the child with its apparent opposite and enemy--the sense of order so painfully imposed upon what finally grows, if it ever does, into the disciplined adult intelligence. When there is no such coming together, we get 'happenings' on the one side and listless mandarinism on the other. And that, of course, is most of the time."

Henry Millerwas 43 when "Tropic of Cancer" was published in 1934 and his long fight with the censors began. In the decades since--with "Tropic of Capricorn," the several volumes of "The Rosy Crucifixion" and dozens of other books, stories and articles, including two for Playboy-- Miller has continued to celebrate man over politics, the heart over cold intellect and joy over gloom. A special citation from the Formentor Prize Committee in 1961 called him "one of the most important literary figures of the 20th Century."

"I believe we are all born creative and that this creative spirit would manifest itself much more freely were it not for our archaic notions of education. Those who are able to emerge as creative individuals owe it to their stubborn, steadfast devotion, their complete unswerving dedication to their chosen role. Inspiration is open to all, but the successful realization of one's aims depends upon discipline, obsessive perseverance and absolute belief in one's own self and in what one is doing. The urge to create may spring from good or bad conditions. In the so-called civilized world, with a few notable exceptions, the great artists seem to have thrived on misery, whether self-induced or otherwise. Utopia, whether for the creative individual or the common man, always remains just around the corner."

Allen Ginsbergassumed undisputed leadership of America's literary underground with the publication in 1956 of "Howl," which shocked San Francisco police but earned high praise from established critics and poets. A two-time contributor to Playboy, he is, perhaps, the sole survivor of the early Beats to have won fraternal acclaim as a leader of the hippies. Since a 1963 pilgrimage to India, abstruse metaphysical insights have characterized Ginsberg's multileveled writings--as reflected in his statement below.

"Creativity: Sanskrit, to make. But why make anything? The Maker's incomplete; his universe, which is himself, is not yet perfectly realized. Realization comes because imperfection causes desire, an ache, and desire aches till realization comes. Nothing changes except realization. That is, awareness; so now the Maker's aware, realized, complete, perfect, peaceful and empty, and his universe the same. He did this by outward manifestation of his incompletion, his desire, his imperfection. He made models of his perfectly complete desire. Working out the models, detailing imagined forms, he arrived at what already existed perfectly complete. He examined what is and is not; he realized both. Thus he completed his consciousness. Poet God was so perfect there was nothing to know; but he made an experiment to see if there was anything more, created imaginary universes that ran their courses like dreams to the finish, and Poet God realized he was dreaming up models of what is not. Having done that, he realized what never happened, and the last model was a sigh of relief. Human artist works the same way in image of Creator. His visionary glimpse of emptiness leads him to manifest models of emptiness till the art creator realizes emptiness is its own model. In 'Gratitude to the Unknown Instructors,' Yeats said:

What they undertook to do they brought to pass; All things hang like a drop of dew upon a blade of grass."

John Updikehas bent his stylistic legerdemain to the explication of small, private moments in the real world of the small-town American Protestant middle class since his first appearance, at 21, as a New Yorker short-story writer. Last spring's "Couples"--his ambitious, explicit and unafraid chronicle of the quest for spiritual and sexual contact among a set of young modern exurbanites--remains a best seller eight months after its publication.

"For one thing, creativity is merely a plus name for regular activity; the ditchdigger, dentist and artist go about their tasks in much the same way, and any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better. Out of my own slim experience, I would venture the opinion that the artistic impulse is a mix, in varying proportions, of childhood habits of fantasizing brought on by not necessarily unhappy periods of solitude; a certain hard wish to perpetuate and propagate the self; a craftsmanly affection for the materials and process; a perhaps superstitious receptivity to moods of wonder; and a not-often-enough-mentioned ability, within the microcosm of the art, to organize, predict and persevere."

Arthur Millerbecame one of America's few indisputably important playwrights with "Death of a Salesman," which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1949 and created, in Willie Loman, an American tragic archetype. In "The Crucible," "A View from the Bridge," "After the Fall" and "The Price," his current Broadway success, Miller has continued his earnest study of the tangle of responsibilities enmeshing man, woman and their society.

"A remarkable number of writers of talent have had in common the experience of a parent's destruction, either at puberty or before. Destruction by physical death or spiritual overthrow. The matrix of the artist, his quest for form, consists of his need to reconstitute the lost or debilitated authority not by substituting himself as such, but in a symbolic harmony through which his mixed feelings of pleasure, anxiety, grief and victory are brought into the light in a permissible way. See Tolstoy, Hemingway, Agee, Stendhal, Dickens, et al., et al. This, of course, throws no light on talent, let alone genius, which, with good luck will remain mysterious. In other words, a case can be made for art as a response to the death or spiritual bankruptcy of the father; but since many non-artists experience the same disaster, we are back where we started: What in the artist creates the artistic response?"