Comments on: Not So Much of a Scandal in Bohemia

By: Mique

Mique — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 02:02:30 +0000

I’m not sure that there is any real relationship between creative genius and bohemianism and/or public eccentricity, beyond the superficial. From what I can see, with comparatively rare exceptions, there are people with artistic pretensions whose bohemianism and eccentricity is far too studied and self-conscious to be anything more than a pose. They display their bohemianism and eccentricity as a strategy to gain recognition/acceptance by and within the community of like-minded artistic poseurs. Again, with rare exceptions, the genuine article is, in my limited experience, well above or oblivious to that sort of posturing.

By: Cheryl

Cheryl — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 20:00:23 +0000

John – Inter-Library Loan. I’m sure they have it in Australia!

I was actually able to find the book in our university system, although at a site a good few hundred km from where I am. I may be able to get it through the internal document transfer service, although they and I have a history – they seem to be convinced that since I am physically on campus, I must use the main library and not the one in the same building and on the same floor as my workplace! They’ve got this odd idea that I’m still at the same location I was many years ago, although they’ve been repeatedly informed of the fact that I’m not.

Robert – still not convinced. There are brilliant people who are generally quite nice people, unless you get them started on their pet subject or professional rivals. And there are lunatics and downright eccentrics who can’t manage to organize their own food and clothing. You can’t claim madness is an essential part of genius when only a few geniuses appear to be mad and most mad people are quite clearly not geniuses.

By: robert_piepenbrink

robert_piepenbrink — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 18:18:41 +0000

Point taken, but Nozick didn’t say “literary” novelists. It did occur to me (today) that I knew something of the life of 75-90% of the novelists in the Bookcase of Exile, and that very few were academic success stories of the type Nozick described–but also that very few of them were the political type described. Of course, Jane’s description effectively makes the literary novelists government employees, dependent more on taxpayer money (through a cutout or so) than on sales to the general public. And a government employee endorsing the growth of government is not a phenomenon which requires further explanation. (I was thinking more of the poets as being on the edge of vanity publishing, publishing in tiny subscribtion journals. Or is there a support network for leftist poetry too?)

I should note that “my” intellectuals aren’t notably “socially irregular” for that matter. Again, it might be worth having one person pick out the intellectuals while another one judges social irregularity.

As for Cheryl’s point, working where I’m best qualified–military history–I’d say nine times in ten or more, you need a good solid professional. But every now and then all a professional will do is lose very slowly with a minimum of fuss. If you have to win under such circumstances, you need a real genius–someone capable of kicking over the table and starting a fresh game. And those people do tend to be original to the point of eccentricity or madness. Sadly, there are a lot more madmen than geniuses.

And I refuse to be drawn into a discussion of 20-weight oil and romantic fantasies. “Dignity, always dignity!”

By: jd

jd — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 18:12:52 +0000

I’m beginning to think that Jane owns stock in Amazon. :)

The public library here does not have any books by Tom Wolfe. The university library has a few but not Mauve Gloves.

Ah well, Amazon to the rescue. And I applied a gift certificate so it didn’t cost me.

By: Lee B

Lee B — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 15:00:20 +0000

But the lube job wouldn’t fulfill any romantic fantasies! That’s no fun.

By: Cheryl

Cheryl — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 13:06:32 +0000

Necessary or expected? I’d say ‘expected’ – at least since Byron etc. There are certainly too many people who have either crippling or flamboyant mental and emotional traits and no creative genius at all for me to doubt the rather specious claims that genius and madness are inseparable. They may be for a few individuals; I don’t think they are as a general rule. Their presentation is encouraged by our culture, though, which tends to assume that unless someone has thorougly epater-ed the bourgeousie with behaviour that makes them, what’s the phrase, mad, bad and dangerous to know? they aren’t true geniuses. There’s some appeal to the lifestyle that drowns out questions about whether or not the doomed genius could have achieved even more had he gotten his demons under control, or why so many people who aren’t geniuses at all demonstrate exactly the same behaviour.

I’ve been watching a lot of old DVDs recently, and I notice sometimes that a name comes up again and again – there are talented composers and actors (and presumably writers, painters and other artists) who spend long creative lifetimes at their crafts without dramatically self-destructing. I don’t think it’s necessary to be mad to be a creative genius even if some creative geniuses have been mad.