Comments on: A Lesson from Dickens

By: William Landay

William Landay — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 15:56:03 +0000

I think there is something to the idea that creativity feeds on unhappiness. The link may also be that unhappiness is the great subject of drama, so those creative people with deep experience of unhappiness have something to write about. There is no drama in a happy protagonist, nothing for him to do. He needs a little misery to stir him to action. When Tolstoy said (not to turn this into a quote-athon) “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” he really meant, “Happy families are dull; only unhappy families are worth writing about.”

By: Palimpsest

Palimpsest — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 20:37:08 +0000

Though unhappy children do not always grow up to be writers, or creative in any way.
It is perhaps possible that the seed of creativity – if one has it – feeds on “unhappiness”. I think it was Samuel Beckett that said that habit paralyses, while the suffering of being results in the free play of every faculty.

By: William Landay

William Landay — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 23:31:43 +0000

A possible answer to my own question: “Sensitivity to beauty, natural and man-made, seems linked to pain. The carefree and in love rarely garden.” Alain de Botton on Twitter, http://twitter.com/alaindebotton/status/7564407022

By: William Landay

William Landay — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 01:34:44 +0000

I think this must be true, Lito, so many authors say it. It rings true with me certainly. I especially like Graham Greene’s phrase that an unhappy childhood is an author’s bank account (paraphrase). But why is this, exactly? Do unhappy children learn more empathy? Do they look for ways to express themselves? What, precisely, does unhappiness in childhood teach that is so useful to writers?

By: Palimpsest

Palimpsest — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 08:21:07 +0000

An Unhappy Childhood is the best early training for every writer (says Mr Hemingway).