Back to the bibliography for my book. Today: David Galenson, “Old Masters and Young Geniuses.”
Folks, this is an important book. Notice I did not say “riveting” or “thrilling” or “entertaining”. It’s short and academic, not for the beach. But let me say it again: It’s important.
Galenson has looked into the life cycles of creative types. [...]
Entries Tagged as ‘impostor’
November 26, 2008
Peaking early or climbing slowly
November 10, 2008
Kipling’s If
It occurred to me that, rather than constantly refer to the poem that contains the line that inspired my book, I should just give it to you.
Here, then, is Rudyard Kipling’s If, in text and in video, read by Dennis Hopper. I’ve highlighted the lines that popped into my head that day when I had [...]
November 10, 2008
Postscript on McCain
Read David Grann in The New Yorker on what I consider an epic, a Greek, a heart-rending tragedy: the transformation, under pressure, of a great man, John McCain.
This is a man who was once “more at peace when he was losing” and who, above all, was afraid only of one thing: losing his honor.
Thinking in [...]
October 17, 2008
Sarah Palin: Monty Python could have written this
So says no less an authority than John Cleese. Palin (Sarah, not Michael), he says, is “a nice-looking parrot” that has been trained to utter a few phrases beautifully, without understanding what they mean…
October 15, 2008
Uncle Lulu
That guy with the cigar on this West German stamp from 1987 is my great-uncle, Ludwig Erhard, or “Onkel Lulu” in our family.
Why is he on this blog?
Well, I’ve been posting a lot about writing and language and style recently, all of which of course has a lot to do with the writing of my [...]
October 9, 2008
A bit more on Amy Tan
Well, I’m still researching Amy Tan–and I’m still being deliberately coy about exactly which aspect of her life will make it into my book–and I keep coming across all these other interesting things she has said.
From the same interview as in the previous post, here she is talking about success and failure, making them sound [...]
October 6, 2008
Our election, Napoleon, and that map again
Remember that famous and superb map of the impostor success that I wrote about the other day? Well, it depicted Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, and how it went from triumph to disaster, which is one of the twin themes I explore in my book. There is a famous picture of Napoleon’s retreat. And now The [...]
September 26, 2008
A map of the impostor Success
Above is one of the most famous–perhaps the most famous–map and chart of all time (via the Wikimedia Commons). It is too small in my post, so please click through to the image. Its French caption begins:
Figurative Map of the successive losses in men of the French Army in the Russian campaign 1812-1813. Drawn up [...]
September 23, 2008
Churchill on well-disguised impostors
My book is about Kipling’s notion that success and failure, or triumph and disaster, can be impostors. That does not mean, of course, that all triumphs and all disasters are always impostors. But to say that wittily, we really need ole Winston.
Churchill, as it happens, lived a life that in many ways illustrates Kipling’s impostors, [...]
September 16, 2008
Pyrrhic victories
You’ve heard of Pyrrhic Victories, which are defeats disguised as triumphs–in other words, Kipling-esque impostors of the sort that I will be describing in my book. But do you know why they are called that?
It’s thanks to Pyrrhus, who is well worth five minutes of your time.
Pyrrhus was the ancient world’s equivalent of a dumb [...]
September 15, 2008
When success ends in suicide
Thanks to Stephanie for suggesting that I look into David Foster Wallace, a literary wunderkind who just hanged himself.
There might be the obvious angle of a very successful person … killing himself.
Then there is the genre of suicide in general–Hannibal poisoned himself, besides lots and lots of other interesting people.
Stephanie, were you thinking of a [...]
September 1, 2008
The suffering of Frida Kahlo
I popped into the Frida Kahlo exhibition currently at the San Francisco MOMA. Mainly, to see her piercing paintings–and boy, do they pierce–but also, at least in part, as research for my book.
A friend of ours, Erika Lessey Chen, had suggested Kahlo to me a year ago as a possible life-story to look into. I [...]
August 27, 2008
Biden and Demosthenes: A tale of two stammerers
As I was watching Beau Biden (video below) and his father Joe at the Democratic Convention today, I was struck by a stunning parallel between Senator Biden’s remarkable life story and that of the ancient Greek orator Demosthenes.
Both were stammerers in their youth. Both were taunted for it with cutting nicknames–”dash” for Biden, since he [...]
August 22, 2008
Which Bhagavad Gita?
“With no desire for success, no anxiety about failure, indifferent to results, he burns up his actions in the fire of wisdom. Surrendering all thoughts of outcome, unperturbed, self-reliant, he does nothing at all, even when fully engaged in actions.
There is nothing that he expects, nothing that he fears. Serene, free from possessions, untainted, acting [...]
August 11, 2008
The Narcissism of John Edwards: Impostor Success or Failure?
In my first preview of one of Kipling’s two impostors, triumph, I casually nodded to hubris as the most obvious mechanism that turns success into disaster, then went on to give another example that I thought was a bit subtler.
And now John Edwards forces me to come back to hubris. In case, you’ve been behind [...]
August 7, 2008
Kudos to other Hannibal lovers and thinkers
I’ve always noticed that, although Hannibal is ever so slightly less of a household name than, say, Alexander or Caesar (or should that be because, rather than although?), he seems to have the more passionate, sophisticated and thoughtful following.
Read, for instance, 100falcons on the subjects of Hannibal’s most ingenious trick, his famous boyhood vow to [...]
August 4, 2008
Two great Russians
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has died, and his happens to be one of the lives I’ve been researching for one chapter of my book. (Lots of reversals between disaster and triumph, obviously, including some non-obvious and subtle ones.)
This won’t make sense out of context, but I’m pairing him not only with Hannibal but also with another great [...]
July 28, 2008
Impostor Success, Part I: The Nobel Prize and pontificating windbags
After that digression (not the last, rest assured) about books in general, back to the book. I still haven’t introduced my main characters–Hannibal, Fabius and Scipio–but instead I’ve given two examples, Steve Jobs and J.K. Rowling, of failure being an impostor. Let me now give you an example of Kipling’s other impostor, triumph–because the book [...]
July 22, 2008
Impostor Disaster, part I: Steve Jobs
Back to the book: Remember, the whole book is a long story woven around Rudyard Kipling’s poetic insight that triumph and disaster are impostors. I want to lead up to the main character, Hannibal, with a few other examples, and today Steve Jobs comes to mind. I saw him on a stage last month, launching [...]
