Random
On Genius
When I was 19, I had a late adolescent identity crisis and proceeded to get seven tattoos on my arms in a very short amount of time. I have no idea what I was thinking. On the underside of each forearm, I got the Japanese kanji for “genius.” Yes, I know, it’s ridiculous, but I was 19 and at 19, we do all sorts of ridiculous things without understanding we’ll have to bear the consequences of those choices in, say, our thirties. The idea of genius is really interesting to me and it’s something I feel I’m always trying to reach for, despite my limitations. As a culture, we are fascinated with the idea of genius. Genius this, genius that. In the public school system they try to ferret out little geniuses by calling them “gifted and talented,” even when sometimes a kid’s only gift and talent is managing to keep up. Bright children who demonstrate an aptitude for math or chemistry are fast tracked so they can become the next Doogie Howser who was a child genius who became a doctor as a teenager. Doogie Howser isn’t real, but it’s a sexy idea that someone is so brilliant they not only achieve greatness, they do so at an extraordinarily young age. The bar for genius is not always high. At the Apple store, when you need your products repaired you go to the Genius Bar where, more often than not, you will encounter someone who is decidedly not a genius. Not all geniuses are created the same. Albert Einstein was a genius. He had theories, all things being relative, and they were sound. He also had wild hair but he was a genius, so that was okay because for geniuses, the rules are a little different. I once helped a friend solve a problem and she shouted, “You’re a genius,” and squeezed my cheeks. I am no Albert Einstein. Most parents think their children are geniuses. They scrutinize their progeny for any sign of prodigious ability and if they can, say, sing or dance with remarkable aptitude, they shuttle them into reality television shows like America’s Got Talent, a show that makes it clear that when we say genius we are not always saying the same thing. My niece is six weeks old and in my family, we’re all fairly convinced she’s a genius because she stares with an unwavering intensity that is, frankly, a little creepy. She makes you look away she stares so hard and once during the fourth week of her life, when we were cooing at her like idiots and she was staring at us like the freaks we are, she said something that sounded like, “Hi” while throwing up a baby power fist. My sister in law and I looked at each other, high-fived and I said, “Baby genius, obviously.”
Right or wrong, I often equate genius with greatness. As writers, some of us are always striving for genius or to write something ingenious. Maybe that’s an assumption on my part. Maybe it’s just me and my delusions of grandeur. It’s not like I sit down at my computer and chant, “Genius come forth,” or if I do such a thing, I won’t admit it. Still, I hope that whatever comes out of my fingers might be good, might be great, might reflect a bit of genius on my part. Genius probably isn’t something you can reach for. I suspect genius is one of those unknowable quantities where you are a genius or you aren’t and maybe you haven’t found the genius in yourself yet but if it’s not there, you won’t ever find it. I often hope if I write something great, something truly great, that will be indisputable evidence of my genius, evidence that I am exceptional. Do other people think like this? Would you admit it?
The 2010 MacArthur Fellows have been announced. There are two writers on the list, Yiyun Li and David Simon (The Wire). They are joined by several other fancy, intelligent, and remarkable people who are “geniuses.” They’ll each get $500,000 to do with as they see fit and they get the prestige of being a MacArthur Fellow. I want a MacArthur grant. I’ve wanted one since I first knew what they were. I would use that money for good things like travel and a new laptop. I would gorge on books and perhaps get myself a little pony. That sounds selfish but again, not all geniuses are created the same. I don’t, despite this post, spend much of my time thinking about genius but each year when the MacArthurs are announced I do take a moment to reflect on the yawning distance between where I am and what it would take to receive such a recognition. I think and think and wonder if I have greatness lurking somewhere in me. Don’t we all?
Yes. I have thought about this a lot: that is, “genius” vis a vis creative writing. It makes me very nervous when people start calling any fiction writer a “genius.” (Most recently: Jonathan Franzen.) When we say someone is a “genius,” we are setting that person far above all the rest of us. Perhaps this is useful in certain disciplines (engineering, medicine, physics, etc.–stuff having to do with numbers, mostly, and hard science), but why do we want a fiction writer or a poet to be a “genius”? So we can be dazzled by all of his or her linguistic tricks? Yeah, I guess that might keep some of us amused for a while–but, ultimately, we want good fiction and poetry to speak to our hearts and not solely to our heads. I have thought that a “genius” in fiction writing (if we must use that word) is someone who is brilliant at being human. In the book or story or poem that person wrote, he or she was able to uncover his or her humanity and display it to us–and we read the words and we go, Oh, god, yes, I hear you. So is a “genius” in fiction writing is someone who is more human than the rest of us? Can being human be called “genius”? Because being human, in a lot of cases, is being very “low down.” It is often not lofty. When fiction writers write, I think they should strive not for “genius” but for “humanity.” When we sit down to write, we should go: In this piece I am going to try my hardest to be human. Striving for “genius” is frightening, off-putting, intimidating, intangible–how does one even go about it? But striving to be human is something every fiction writer can do. And perhaps full achieving “being human” in fiction writing (and poetry writing) is what we mean by “genius” when it applies to literature–but I’d rather not use that word. It pushes me away; it shuts down my humanity.
can you list some geniuses
how can you tell if someone is a genius
i would call these people thinkers, not genius.
Have you read Elizabeth Crane’s “The Genius Meetings?”
http://www.guernicamag.com/fiction/1194/geniusmeetings/
Hilarious! One of my favorites from Best of the Web.
…I’m not sure I agree school systems always recognize giftedness… seems like they fail gifted students more often than they fast track them. But that isn’t really the point of your post.
Yes. I have thought about this a lot: that is, “genius” vis a vis creative writing. It makes me very nervous when people start calling any fiction writer a “genius.” (Most recently: Jonathan Franzen.) When we say someone is a “genius,” we are setting that person far above all the rest of us. Perhaps this is useful in certain disciplines (engineering, medicine, physics, etc.–stuff having to do with numbers, mostly, and hard science), but why do we want a fiction writer or a poet to be a “genius”? So we can be dazzled by all of his or her linguistic tricks? Yeah, I guess that might keep some of us amused for a while–but, ultimately, we want good fiction and poetry to speak to our hearts and not solely to our heads. I have thought that a “genius” in fiction writing (if we must use that word) is someone who is brilliant at being human. In the book or story or poem that person wrote, he or she was able to uncover his or her humanity and display it to us–and we read the words and we go, Oh, god, yes, I hear you. So is a “genius” in fiction writing is someone who is more human than the rest of us? Can being human be called “genius”? Because being human, in a lot of cases, is being very “low down.” It is often not lofty. When fiction writers write, I think they should strive not for “genius” but for “humanity.” When we sit down to write, we should go: In this piece I am going to try my hardest to be human. Striving for “genius” is frightening, off-putting, intimidating, intangible–how does one even go about it? But striving to be human is something every fiction writer can do. And perhaps full achieving “being human” in fiction writing (and poetry writing) is what we mean by “genius” when it applies to literature–but I’d rather not use that word. It pushes me away; it shuts down my humanity.
i’d love to hear chris higgs respond to this!
I love everything about this comment, Ellen. What you say is really important, that a genius as a writer is someone who is brilliant at being human and showing that humanity in their writing. When I think about my favorite writers, they are always showing what it means to be human.
“I often hope if I write something great, something truly great, that will be indisputable evidence of my genius, evidence that I am exceptional. Do other people think like this? Would you admit it?”
I do think like this and am happy to admit it. Don’t we all strive for that “something truly great”?
“The thesis that the huge quantities of soap sold testify to our great cleanliness need not apply to the moral life, where the more recent principle seems more accurate, that a strong compulsion to wash suggests a dubious state of inner hygiene. It would be a useful experiment to try to cut down to the minimum the moral expenditure (of whatever kind) that accompanies all our actions, to satisfy ourselves with being moral only in those exceptional cases where it really counts, but otherwise not to think differently from the way we do about standardizing pencils or screws. Perhaps not much good would be done that way, but some things would be done better; there would be no talent left, only genius; the washed-out prints that develop from the pallid resemblance of actions to virtues would disappear from the image of life; in their place we would have these virtues’ intoxicating fusion in holiness. In short, from every ton of morality a milligram of an essence would be left over, a millionth part of which is enough to yield an enchanting joy.” Robert Musil
i like ‘brilliant at being human.’
but i disagree with your assumption that humanity equates with feelings (or ‘heart,’ as you put it).
blake said somewhere something about dfw that stuck with me, something like that the man wasn’t as connected with humanity as people like to think with regards to this weird thing ‘heart,’ which is something i would agree with to an extent. and so i guess my point is you can speak to the head while resonating in the balls, to keep this body metaphor going. i don’t like the distinction, never have.
just from the top of my head, eliot’s ‘the wasteland’ is probably something a lot of people would describe as ‘lofty’ in some ways, but i honestly feel like it was one of the most human pieces of writing possible, while still being head-y.
and but what’s wrong with someone shutting down your humanity? sometimes i like the sick boring and twisted things i read that make me feel wrong about being human or bored of being human and want to escape my own brain tubes.
I do not believe the term “genius” in writing applies only to cerebral writers who fail to affect our hearts. I can think of few geniuses greater than Kafka, but he is not known (in translation at least) for his linguistic backflips, but for his uncannily bizarre and moving vision.
I know this isn’t quite what you mean, but I certainly want our artists to be something more than just ordinary people. I want people to be striving for greatness, originality, invention or genius. I don’t find it offputting. To quote the old expression, you aim for the stars to hit the treetops. Even if you don’t reach the level of the geniuses, your work will be better for striving.
I once had a professor who would start her classes reminding us that we are in constant competition with Shakespeare and Nabokov and every other great. Now that is a little terrifying, but it is also true. There is only so much time in this life to read (or do anything else) and your work needs to demand attention, to demand to be read instead of reading everyone else that is out there.
edit: I also agree with drew that humanity is much more than feelings and emotions. The brain is what sets us apart from other animals. To see a mind grappling with ideas is almost always more affecting, to me at least, than seeing someone succumb to feelings.
i think you should change this to: minds (and/or hands(and/or dicks(and/or pussies)))
pussy genius is underrated.
genius is a commodity, and sure, i can admit: i want it.
On the other hand, there is a sense in the term “genius” that it is innate. Either you are one or you aren’t. This might be a bit deflating (even though I disagree with the attempts of people like Gladwell to reduce talent to mere practice and dedication) so perhaps it is simply better to strive to “greatness” than for “genius.”
Musil attacked the debasement of the term genius and in doing so enacted his own genius. He wasn’t merely (or at all) positing genius as commodity in some kind of essential way. I won’t go on.
As for striving and willing the most from art and all there’s nothing better than seeing a child take aim at the moon with a snowball. The wonder is when it hits – and sometimes it does.
I would probably not want to live anymore if I weren’t shooting for genius. Not so much that I need to actually be one as that I need to strive for accomplishments as a creator and human being that might, because they are so good, trick people into seeing me in that light. The adulation of the word itself would be nice but mainly I use those fantasies as a carrot to keep myself from giving up on greatness.
seems like “geniuses” don’t exist
has anyone said that yet
Seems like they do!
Hi Lily,
Since you kindly asked for my response, I will share what first comes to mind…
I disagree with Ellen Parker’s comment on so many levels, I’m not sure where to start…
First, there is no such thing as “being human.” Even the presumption that there is such a thing as “human” toward which we should strive is crazy problematic. Let me put it this way: by human does Parker mean men in general or just white men? Because until the mid-20th century the only “people” who were considered “human” in western culture were white men. Women did not have the ontological status of “human” until very recently in western culture. (see: Schopenhauer, for a solid representation of the common intellectual trend regarding the ontological status of women in western culture circa pre-20th century). And in America, people of color (men and women) did not have that status until even more recently. (see: David Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, a startling argument about the ontological status of people of color – in this book, which I highly recommend, Walker makes the argument that slavery was not the greatest evil inflicted upon the Africans brought to the new world, but rather the fact that they were not considered human – he cites various other societies throughout history in which slavery was prominent, including ancient Greek, Egyptian, etc., and notes that the difference between those slave societies and the one in the US is that in those societies the slaves were treated as humans. Not so in America.) So the idea that a writer should “strive to be human” seems to me outrageous. What does Parker mean by “strive to be human”? What kind of human? (Here I am reminded of Ron Silliman’ notion that there is no such thing as “poetry” only kinds of poetry). But to reiterate, it’s not as if there is a thing called human that we can all agree that yes we should strive for that – or, at least, I do not believe there is, and even if one could make a strong argument for such a thing, I would not want anything to do with it.
And that’s just the tip of my concern iceberg vizaviz the notion of “human” – I’ve only barely begun to list the race and gender issues implicated in such a term, such an idea, such a presumption! There’s also class issues: as if “being human” for Paris Hilton is the same thing as “being human” for my grandfather who worked in an oil refinery. Oh man. Okay, I gotta reel it in on this point.
One thing I will say about the idea of “genius” is that the etymological genealogy of the notion of genius is interesting. Note that this word entered the Greek lexicon (and by extension contemporary western usage) via the Persian word Djinn, which in Zoroastrianism was a term used to describe an evil female spirit thought to spread diseases to men. (Djinn = genie) Plato talked about genius as being a demon (daimon) that possessed the poet, which is one of the reasons he gives in “Ion” for the exclusion of poets in his ideal republic (and also because, Plato argued, poets don’t often bathe). It’s curious how the idea of genius has morphed over time from the old way of thinking about it negatively as a kind of madness, a sickness, a possession, to now being thought of as something positive, someone who is above the rest. Perhaps it’s in part due to Matthew Arnold’s depiction of the genius in his book Culture & Anarchy, where he basically says genius is a heaven-bestowed ability to perform a certain function with exceptional excellence. Pretty radically different views on genius: Plato calls it a curse, Arnold calls it a gift.
For me, difference is good, positive, productive, creative; and sameness is bad, negative, destructive, uncreative. Genius, therefore, is good because it separates. Genius is creative. Genius, whether heaven-sent or demon-inspired, is an attribute capable of differentiation, which I see as a positive quality. This notion that we should all be the same, that there’s such a thing as “human” toward which we should strive, is reductive and dangerous. Give me genius over humanity any day!
can you list some geniuses
how can you tell if someone is a genius
Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Plato, Kierkegaard, Einstein, Faulkner, O’Connor, Kafka, Kasporov, Fischer, Shakespeare, Milton, Da Vinci, blah blah.
Do mountains exist? What separates one from a knoll?
guess geniuses don’t exist then
:/
Well, we certainly have an incisive mind displaying shrewed wit and complex thinking on display here.
“And that’s just the tip of my concern iceberg vizaviz the notion of “human” – I’ve only barely begun to list the race and gender issues implicated in such a term, such an idea, such a presumption! There’s also class issues: as if “being human” for Paris Hilton is the same thing as “being human” for my grandfather who worked in an oil refinery. Oh man. Okay, I gotta reel it in on this point.”
hmm i don’t understand this. while there are different paths, the ones trekking are singularly human. i don’t understand this value system that being human is different depending on a person’s opulence or misfortune.
“For me, difference is good, positive, productive, creative; and sameness is bad, negative, destructive, uncreative. Genius, therefore, is good because it separates. Genius is creative. Genius, whether heaven-sent or demon-inspired, is an attribute capable of differentiation, which I see as a positive quality. This notion that we should all be the same, that there’s such a thing as “human” toward which we should strive, is reductive and dangerous. Give me genius over humanity any day!”
genius only works in this example if there is a commonality for it to spring out of. i don’t think i agree with this at all.
Nor do I agree with the statement about humanity.
father ignorance and mother divinity give birth to genius.
i do not consider it a positive attribute.
i would call these people thinkers, not genius.
i think i agree with some of this…
i am suspicious of genius because i am suspicious of sophistication.
i think that there are a lot of “geniuses” (not an essentialized genius) that don’t get recognized as such…maybe because they use vernacular language or don’t fit the surface qualities of smartness. is ariana reines a genius? she is obviously capably of writing “good” poetry, is a translator and went to good schools, but she said she would rather “write poems that an educated person would feel embarrassed to read, poems that sound like Goth girls with feelings, except for sometimes they are “smarter” than Goth girls with feelings are supposed to be.”
i’m kind of an anti-aesthete in that i tend to privilege the way the work engages something, the relational quality of the work, my affective response and the passion or energy of a text rather than its formal qualities… not that they’re necessarily separate.
i hope it doesn’t sound like i am writing this to justify my stupidity… i actually was a one of those gifted kids who was good at math mentioned in the post. when i corresponded with my old elementary school teacher in college she said “i still talk to people about how good you are at math.” i had to break the news–i’m a writer. i abandoned math/sci looong ago, to the disappointment of the adults in my life. post-adolescence, most people thought/think i’m dumb when they first meet or see me and act surprised that i’m not dumb when they get to know me. i think this post addresses the pervasive desire that many of us carry for our intelligence to be recognized by others… i have that, most of us have that…but i feel doubtful that the recognition can happen when such a narrow framework of genius or intelligence exists.
i think dodie bellamy is pretty brilliant… she’s also anti-sophistication:
“Passion in writing or art—or in a lover—can make you overlook a lot of flaws. Passion is underrated. I think we should all produce work with the urgency of outsider artists, panting and jerking off to our kinky private obsessions. Sophistication is conformist, deadening. Let’s get rid of it.”
-Dodie Bellamy, Barf Manifesto
i really like this quote from dodie.
Thinkers is descriptive. There are uninteresting thinkers. These are GREAT thinkers (well the ones who are thinkers in that list), which is to say, geniuses in that field.
I think everyone has genius. Sometimes we stray from it.
Chris: Thanks. I agree with some of Ellen was saying, though I agree more with your assertions. I like that you turn to the etymology of genius. It reveals more about “genius” than our conception of it. I’m reminded of the end of Foucault’s Madness & Civilization, where he lists great writers and thinkers (Nietzsche, Van Gogh, Artaud) and the role of madness in their creations, which were genius (not his word) in part because of their madness. This echos the concept of demon. I also applaud yr point about how the term “humanity” become universalized through privilege and power. (You’ll have to excuse me: I’ve been reading for a Gender & Globalization class all day.) When we say humanity or even human, what springs to mind is decidedly Western, or at least measured through a Western lens.
Whereas I like the idea that a writer ought to strive “to be human” while writing, I’m not quite sure what that means. To have the time to sit and write puts me in a position of privilege. (Not to mention the act of publication, which for many–not all–is what would put them in the position to be called “genius,” if only by virtue of exposure. It is a rarity today–or ever–that a writer who does not publish would be called a genius in her/his lifetime. Yes, there are exceptions. I am well aware.) I think Ellen–and correct me if I’m wrong–means that one ought to aim to sit and write with empathy, which is different than humanity, though I may be splitting hairs at this point.
But can one’s humanity be shown through writing? Are there not people who write beautiful words but are real assholes? Are there not people who author empathetic books but are real assholes? Whereas I want to believe that I would love the geniuses who’ve written the books I love, in truth, I’d probably dislike Nabokov, I’d probably dislike Bolano, I’d probably dislike Stein, I’d probably dislike Woolf. Perec, however, I’d drool myself silly over.
Hey Jereme,
I guess my question would be, what do you mean when you say “the ones trekking are singularly human.”? What does “singularly human” mean? Are you suggesting that “being human” is strictly a biological condition? That’s problematic for a host of reasons, but chief among them is the issue of culture’s influence on the construction of what we consider human — which is partly what I’m pointing out about Ellen Parker’s comment: we can’t take the idea of “being human” for granted, or accept it’s definition uncritically. That’s sort of the premise of post-enlightenment thought writ large, right, to challenge the unified or totalizing concepts of a given metadiscourse (here I’m thinking of Lyotard).
In terms of genius needing “a commonality for it to spring out of” — I think you are right, in this particular historical moment. And for that very reason, I see it as a problem. There is a way in which difference relies on sameness, at this particular historical moment. These two forces are in tension, for sure. And at this particular historical moment, sameness is the dominate force. But could there be a possible future in which difference overtakes sameness as the dominate force? Where heterogeneity is valued above homogeneity? I think so. I hope so. That’s what I’m writing towards anyway.
ps – I think I used the phrase “particular historical moment” too many times in that last paragraph, sorry!
exactly the problem with the word “genius” lincoln.
Hi Ellen, I also just wanted to say that I think yr comment is very provocative and intelligent and I mean no offense to you or your argument whatsoever. That yr comment has sparked such discussion is a testament to what a provocateur you are!
Christopher, let me take a moment to discuss some of your points.
the ontological status of “human”
I think you’re confusing the changing, and empirically occlusive, nature of “status” with that of its raw material in the case of “‘human'” (material not simply other “status”, as though it were ‘”status” all the way down’, but rather the pea at the bottom of the mattresses).
The “status” of the planet Earth in the West did not include sphericity for well over a millenium before Copernican heliocentricity gradually, then suddenly, became its “status” there. This “status” had no effect on the roundness of the ground late-antique and mediaeval Westerners walked, rode, and sailed on – say what one might about a) the filter of “status” being inextricable from one’s sensitivity to the ‘thing’, and b) the intelligibility of the ‘thing’ depending, therefore, on that filtration.
Let me criticize your relativism in this way: how can one know that “there is no such thing as ‘human nature'”? That any particular claim to the ontological status of ‘human nature’ is debatable is no argument that, therefore, there’s “no such thing” – to the contrary, the lineaments of that debate might indicate that there is “such a thing” to talk about, as well as the ontologically positive status of its “status”.
the etymological genealogy of the notion of genius
No.
jinni (s; pl jinn) is Arabic, not “Persian”. It comes from a Semitic verbal root meaning ‘to hide’. The jinn are a supernatural species of entity that, like humans, has free will, and interacts with humans in beneficient or malicious ways. jinn, the ancestor of the English word ‘genie’, is not the root of the word “genius”!
Rather, “genius”, ‘spirit or talent for great understanding or skill; person who has this spirit or talent’, comes from a Latin word, genius, with a solidly Indo-European root, *gen/*jan ‘to beget; to give birth’. A genius (pl. genii) is a tutelary deity, ‘a god manifested in or guardian of a specific thing or process’. (All the Roman gods are genii.)In late Latin and the Latin ebonics of mediaeval Romance-language genesis, genius comes to refer to the (Christian) good and bad spirits who affect human decision-making, and so ‘a person who affects the fortunes of another’.
That the Semitic (classical Arabic) jinni came to be mixed up verbally and conceptually with the (equally classical) Latin genius in the latter Middle Ages?? I don’t know. But “genius” is certainly an Indo-European word, nomadically cool as a deterritorializing etymology might be!
“Ion”
The “exclusion of poets” from Plato’s provocative ‘republic’ happens in books 3 and 10 of The Republic, not the Ion. It’s my argument that this “exclusion” is almost uniformly badly misunderstood.
At 607 c-d (in book 10), Socrates says, “Nevertheless it should be said that we at least, if poetry that aims at pleasure and imitation has any argument to bring forward to prove that it mus have a place in a well-governed city, should be glad to welcome it, for we are aware of the charm it exercises[. … Because we are charmed by poetry – especially that of Homer, t]herefore it is right that it should come back from exile after making its defence in lyric or any other meter.” (transl. Grube)
It’s my argument that Plato’s Socrates constitutes Plato’s defense, his argument for, the world-disclosive function of (both oral and written) literature in “a well-governed city”.
What’s up Chrissy Higgs!
“I guess my question would be, what do you mean when you say “the ones trekking are singularly human.”? What does “singularly human” mean? Are you suggesting that “being human” is strictly a biological condition? That’s problematic for a host of reasons, but chief among them is the issue of culture’s influence on the construction of what we consider human — which is partly what I’m pointing out about Ellen Parker’s comment: we can’t take the idea of “being human” for granted, or accept it’s definition uncritically. That’s sort of the premise of post-enlightenment thought writ large, right, to challenge the unified or totalizing concepts of a given metadiscourse (here I’m thinking of Lyotard). ”
i don’t take being human for granted. one does not need culture to be human but one does need to be human to inflict or receive culture.
for me, culture is synonymous with majority thought. one should be able to be a human without the dogma of the majority.
both our desires lurch toward a garden of genuine individuals. skeptically, i think we are both dreamers.
so in essence what i am saying is being “human” is not a condition of culture/society and shouldn’t be taken in to consideration.
culture can only sap a true individual.
“In terms of genius needing “a commonality for it to spring out of” — I think you are right, in this particular historical moment. And for that very reason, I see it as a problem. There is a way in which difference relies on sameness, at this particular historical moment. These two forces are in tension, for sure. And at this particular historical moment, sameness is the dominate force. But could there be a possible future in which difference overtakes sameness as the dominate force? Where heterogeneity is valued above homogeneity? I think so. I hope so. That’s what I’m writing towards anyway. ”
the part of this i don’t understand is the manner in which you are calibrating your “eye”? far enough creates meaninglessness, and too focused results in unimportance. haven’t we always been in a state of particular historical moment? hasn’t there always been some commonality or system to spring out of?
What’s interesting about this conversation is that I think the actual aesthetic Ellen cultivates in her magazine FRiGG (one of the most underrated on the web, in my opinion) is real varied, and although I understand some of Chris’s response to her in context, how I have experienced her notion of “human” is a lot more complex, variegated, situated, conditional, etc. than the sort-of classical human construct Chris is describing. I think Ellen’s notion of “human” is actually a lot more like Dodie’s — in fact, I shared a Dodie quote in Ellen’s room at the Zoetrope Virtual Studio once and she loved it. Ellen likes passionate, grisly, embodied, but also does not shy away from intellect, artifice or formal experiment when it produces an affect she digs or that digs into her.
It is true, though, that I think Ellen does not like stuff that feels to her like intellect for intellect’s sake — she would probably disagree w/ the hardline Chris Higgs aesthete position that fully devalues “content” because the primary function of art is beauty. …I am reminded again of Dodie — there is a statement somewhere in Barf Manifesto abt straight male experimentalists who devalue “content,” where she’s like, “Oh? Is that why some ‘experimental’ writing is so boring?” I’m totally paraphrasing.
Hans Bethe, speaking of Richard Feynman, claimed that there are two kinds of “genius”: those who are remarkably quicker and more dependable at doing things with their minds (and/or ‘hands’, I’d add) than most people, but who don’t do things that lots of non-geniuses can’t, more slowly and less reliably, do; and those who do things with their minds (and/or ‘hands’) that even other geniuses can’t do and hadn’t imagined that anyone could, which latter performance transforms how people think about that ‘doing’.
i think you should change this to: minds (and/or hands(and/or dicks(and/or pussies)))
pussy genius is underrated.
‘Hands’ (in scare quotes) was a synecdoche for the whole of the “body” and an analogy for each of its other parts, jereme.
Always good for an excuse to type “dicks” and “pussies” in otiose clarification, too!
What is the problem?
Every person equally expresses what it means to be human.
this relates a lot to a short post i made on dodie about this question of experimental aesthetics:
http://serbianballerinasdancewithmachineguns.com/post/1015516946/dodie-bellamy-experimental-aesthetics-and
Am I alone here? I do not think that being “a genius” in itself is all that extraordinary, in a sense (despite the fact that it implies extraordinary achievement). I think every person has the potential (whether you want to call it genetic predisposition or whatever) for surpassing insight/creativity in some activity or another, it’s just somewhat rare for that capacity to fully manifest itself. Mostly this is because of material conditions–few people live their entire life in a nurturing enough environment for the expression of genius. And even those few are often impeded by fortune, disinterest, mental illness, disease, whatever. . . I don’t know. I can understand why fully expressing one’s genius would feel good and is an admirable enough goal, but I don’t really think it matters, at all. The world does not give two shits for our “genius,” and we’re dead and forgotten soon enough anyway. At most I’m 50 years away from being a corpse. woohoo.
That said, I certainly wouldn’t turn down being “a genius.” I also wouldn’t turn down being unimaginably rich. Probably feels pretty good.
“Striving for “genius” is frightening, off-putting, intimidating, intangible–how does one even go about it?”
I think the point is that geniuses have the ability to answer that question.
Tyger–Or the ability to realize that they’d never need to answer that question.
Does anybody else think deadgod is really Christopher Higgs? It seems like deadgod always comments in reaction to Higgs. Also, deadgod and Higgs sound very similar. Higgs already has the Mooney persona, why does he also have the deadgod persona? It’s weird that Higgs writes something and then corrects himself under a persona. Maybe this is an extension of his book. Is Marvin K. Mooney called deadgod in that book?
creating gods and peasants where there are none.
i am going to answer the same way i answer whenever someone tells me “sam pink” isn’t sam’s real name: WHAT THE FUCK DOES IT MATTER?
That seems possible. I can absolutely imagine Chris Higgs arguing that “Clean Babies” is best taken literally.
And possibly livegod is chris higgs calling attention to deadgod.
Sometimes it’s fun to sleuth.
A sock puppet with tin ears for a tribute band? Yay.
Taking clean babies any other way would be unforgivably bad manners.
I love this post, Roxane.
As writers, some of us are always striving for genius or to write something ingenious. Maybe that’s an assumption on my part. Maybe it’s just me and my delusions of grandeur.
You definitely have company. We need our delusions of grandeur. They’re like fuel. They keep us moving.
The definition of genius has evolved a few different ways over the past century, or so, but it’s useful to keep in mind the difference between creative and intellectual genius. There are plenty of people who have the most efficient minds in the world who make their livings in Trivia circuits because they can’t find anything to do with it. Einstein, despite being a dirty, rational scientist, exhibited what would be called creative genius.
Creative genius, likewise, doesn’t imply intellectual genius, though stranger things have happened.
Who cares if Mozart, at 6, could outplay Europe. At 20 he could out-write it.
Would athletic genius count as creative genius?