The Writer Writing Is Not at Home

Abstract

In a telling passage from Marvin Bell's column in American Poetry Review (Summer, 1978), Bell quotes Michael Crichton's book on the painter, Jasper Johns. The author asks Johns why he has just made a change in the handle of a spoon in a lithograph on which he is working. Johns answers, Because did. The author asks, what did you see? Johns: I saw that it should be changed. Author: Well, if you changed it, what was wrong with it before? Johns: Nothing. tend to think one thing is as good as another. Author: Then why change it? Johns, after a sigh and a pause: Well, may change it again. Author: Why? Johns: Well, won't know until do it. One imagines the author continuing to ask Why? and Why not? while the painter goes on with what, where, when and how. Later, the author asks, How do you work on a painting? Well, begin at the beginning and go on from there. It is time for writing teachers to begin to take seriously those who create. Johns is not pulling anyone's leg. He is being honest, even at the expense of sounding foolish. Like so many professional artists, he simply and truly does not know why or how he paints the way he does. He does not know where the ideas come from. He is nevertheless clear, that he is responsible for the lithograph; he accepts the fact that it is his. Johns sees that a work of art happens and that an artist creates it-out of no prior knowledge, thought, plan, or expectations. Not that there aren't prior thoughts and plans, but that the work of art does not arise from them; they do not cause the work of art to materialize. Johns is willing to avoid all tenets, dictates, philosophies, and pedagogies concerning the making of this lithograph. He distrusts explanations, reasons, and rationalizations, while accepting the insight which moves his hand across the canvas. It may be argued that Johns at some earlier point had to follow tenets and pedagogies. Perhaps. But my point would be that he became what we would call creative or imaginative by transcending all such rules and by learning to trust the free choice of his hand over the entrapment of his mind by rules of procedure.