Krauss, Nicole (b. August 18, 1974)

A Last Glimpse Into the Mind of Oliver Sacks [from The New York Times Book Review]

December 10, 2017

"To fill oneself with the consciousness of others, and then to forget deeply enough, and long enough, that the collective world can be welded to what is unique and original to oneself--this is as precise and moving a definition of creativity as I have come across."

Disconcerting as it sounds, Sacks, a genius at identifying the strength that springs from fallibility, locates in this imperfection our human gift for creativity. We may forget the source of what we read or were told, but we can absorb and integrate what others express so vividly that we may come to feel these things originated in ourselves. In an essay called "The Creative Self," Sacks takes the idea further still, and suggests that a long period of "forgetting," in which thought and experience become detached from their sources and sift down into the unconscious, is essential to originality. All of us appropriate from others and the culture around us, he writes. "What is at issue is not the fact of 'borrowing' or 'imitating,' of being 'derivative,' being 'influenced,' but what one does with what is borrowed or invented or derived; how deeply one assimilates it, takes it into oneself, compounds it with one's own experiences and thoughts and feelings, places it in relation to oneself, and expresses it in a new way, one's own." To fill oneself with the consciousness of others, and then to forget deeply enough, and long enough, that the collective world can be welded to what is unique and original to oneself--this is as precise and moving a definition of creativity as I have come across. On page after page in this collection, drawing on the rich history of ideas he absorbed over a lifetime, Sacks illustrates how it is done.

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Reading

Nicole Krauss, "A Last Glimpse Into the Mind of Oliver Sacks," New York Times Book Review (December 10, 2017). <Link to NYTimes.com>

12/13/2017