My son Ben has begun blogging at Good Reason (“thoughts on philosophy, music, law, and everything else”). An excerpt from his first post:
Perhaps publishers ought to begin selling ‘great books’ with the pages blank. This would remind us that when we reach for an interesting title, we’re not always after great thoughts, but rather, the great challenge of thinking and creating. If you find yourself caught in a cycle of checking out books and returning them a few days later in defeat, ask yourself whether you’re looking to read, or if you’re actually looking to create something new.
comments: 8
Ben makes a very nice point, one which reminds me of these two quotations --
'Write what you are longing to come across, because then it will exist.'
--anne lamott
"I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train."
-- oscar wilde
Thanks, Timothy. I think Anne Lamott has committed what Thomas Merton jokingly called “anticipatory plagiarism” — when you find that someone else has had your idea.
Smart kid. You did well, Michael.
Thanks, Pete. I’m very proud to be his dad. (And my daughter Rachel’s dad too.)
RE: Thomas Merton - funny you should say that! The other related quotation Ben's post made me think of was a Merton one:
"You are concerned enough about this thing that you are making that this has got to be. Here is something that God is calling into being through you, and if you pay attention and you take care, this thing is going to have being, there is going to be a new being in the world through your care and through your love of this being."
-- Thomas Merton, from 'On St. Thomas & work,' in T. Merton, _Seeking paradise_, pgs. 94-95.
I remember that you’re a Merton reader. That passage sounds like a description of work and parenthood both, no?
Oops — it was Robert K. Merton who coined the term “anticipatory plagiarism,” not Thomas Merton.
Oops again — it seems to have been Winston Churchill.
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