A Book Review-Creators: From Chaucer to Walt Disney by Paul Johnson
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A Book Review—Creators: From Chaucer to Walt Disney by Paul Johnson
Richard D. Young
The creative process and its interworkings have been subject matter of numerous books,
essays, studies and sundry other writings throughout history—either directly or indirectly.
Of late, there has been much attention given to the topic of creativity in various genera,
including the sciences, technology, management, and, of course, here and there, in
literature and the arts.
This ubiquity of interest grabbing or attention seeking writings today of course can be put
down as faddishness or even profiteering; nevertheless, creativity is still undoubtedly an
important concept or phenomenon and the more understanding of its nature and
applications, the better.
One recent work given particular attention and a bestseller is, for example, Richard
Florida’s book entitled The Rise of the Creative Class (2004). I have read the book
carefully, at least twice, mining for insights into the creative ethos. Florida’s theory of
creativity is straightforward, though he does go to great lengths to elucidate and clarify
extensively. For Florida, the creative class is basically a segment of society with a special
proclivity for ingenuity and inventiveness. In the United States, there are over 38 million
in the creative class. Their values are individuality, meritocracy, diversity, and openness.
They make good money in their respective professions, of all sorts, and according to
Florida, they are transforming nearly every nuance of modern life. The Rise of the
Creative Class has been reviewed profusely and I recommend it as book that is both
instructive as well as illuminating.
Numerous reviews on another new book about the creative process, from divergent
presses including the Washington Post to the National Review, have sparked much
hullabaloo and drawn my attention, and that of others no doubt, as well. Paul Johnson, a
prolific writer of dozens of books (I believe in the neighborhood of 40 to be more exact),
and who by the way is a contributor of weekly installments to the American Spectator
and monthly to Forbes Magazine, has published this year a book given the title,
Creators: From Chaucer to Walt Disney (HarperCollins, 2006).
I have read other books by Johnson, mostly histories, and his style of writing is highly
understandable and detailed. I especially enjoyed his comprehensive history on
Americans and another one on ancient Egypt.
Creators is the second rendering of a trilogy. The first was written two decades ago and
is titled Intellectuals. According to Johnson, the third, if he lives long enough to complete
it (he was born in 1928), will be called Heroes.
Interested in what traits or characteristics distinguish the creative process generally and
those especially attributable to geniuses of the “creative mind,” Johnson’s Creators was
1appealing to me. Hence, I read the book and now share my thoughts on what Johnson has
to say.
To start, Creators has two special qualities. First, scattered among nearly 300 odd pages,
there can be found a relative abundance, in my estimation, of common characteristics
among geniuses’ creativity that are revealing. Mind you, many of these must be sorted
out with care and attention, but some—if not many—are easily detectable. Second, the
lives and experiences of great creative geniuses, rather anecdotal or chronological in
nature, are appealing and illuminating, and in several cases, outright entertaining.
Whatever form of prose or storytelling Johnson uses to talk about Chaucer, Shakespeare,
Balenciaga, or Picasso, one gets a real sense as to their person and those factors
contributing in some way to their unique and noteworthy creativity.
Johnson reckons that in 13 biographical renderings of personages of creative genius he
can do the job to the extent required to unearth something on the theme of creativeness. I
agree that he succeeds in this endeavor, giving creativity or the creative spirit some solid
meaning that is expansive and diverse.
Further, generally it should be pointed out that as to the idea of “creation,” Johnson
believes that at the end of the day it is a mystifying and puzzling business and, as a
consequence, not a subject for empirical analysis. Nevertheless, its characteristics are
decipherable. Such is the aim of the book when all is said and done.
Reviewing and thinking about Johnson’s Creators, I have culled out a few mentionable
commonalities of creativity. My purpose is therefore simple. What traits are common to
creative genius? My reading revealed six of note. Here they are:
Passion and Enthusiasm.
The incarnation or embodiment of passion for one’s work albeit a painter, an architect, a
writer, a fashion designer or some other artistic profession is a trait that creative genius
possesses. Creators are very passionate people. Their passion drives them relentlessly and
their enthusiasm spurs creativity.
Chaucer loved to write. According to Johnson, “writing was life to him—breakfast,
dinner and supper; meat and drink; the purpose, solace, comfort, and reward for
existence.”
A. W. N. Pugin—an accomplished architect, like Christopher Wren, Louis Sullivan, and
Frank Lloyd Wright—loved his work more than anything or anyone. He began drawing
at the age of five. At fifteen, Pugin received his first commission. At seventeen, he set up
his first business. His passion extended to tables, chairs, cabinets, and virtually
everything that a building or house accommodates. He would work with “boyish
enthusiasm and joie de vivre” anywhere, indoors or outdoors. Unmistakably, reading
Johnson, Pugin’s passion for creativity was omnipresent and profoundly deep.
2Intensity of Concentration.
Concentration is quite possibly the apex of the great creator. The ability to stay absorbed
for long periods of time, even to the point of even agony and pain, is a common
characteristic among Johnson’s creators. Here too is a concentration of the greatest
intensity or force, one that the creator illustrates by blocking out virtually everything not
connected to the creative act or undertaking. Thus for nearly all of Johnson’s creators,
perhaps with the exception of Jane Austen, ignoring one’s surroundings, appetites, and all
other preoccupations of worldliness is part of one’s creative working ethic and practice.
In Johnson’s view, to mention but one example, Cristobol Balenciaga’s “work absorbed
him totally.” He was not only a fashion designer engrossed in the design of fashion,
according to Johnson, he “was strong and powerful as well as ambidextrous; he could cut
and sew with either hand” without distraction and presumably with perfection.
Conversely, Christian Dior—though a creative genius—enjoyed socializing and living
the good life. He could produce fashion designs or rough sketches with dedication and at
a frantic pace, but Dior’s concentration, its strength, was of a different kind then that of
Balenciaga.
Hard Work and Compulsion.
Similarly, nearly every creator in Johnson’s book was hard-working, extremely hard-
working. Durer, Shakespeare, Turner, Hugo, Tiffany, Picasso, and Disney were
constantly carrying out their craft. Albrecht Durer was considered among his peers as lost
without work. Louis Comfort Tiffany by his own admission was frantic about getting
things done. He organized the Tiffany Glass Company of Brooklyn in 1885 and other
workshops and worked at all hours of the day and night to the point of exhaustion. His
“army of craftsman” made prodigious gains in terms of output.
Jane Austen, a woman in a time of different and conservative values, worked with
brilliance but was constrained. Finding privacy to work, that is to create, was always a
factor. Austen had a small sitting room that she shared with her sister Cassandra in her
younger years. This was a privilege and fortunate circumstance in her formative years.
Later, Austen was by circumstance obliged to live in small quarters and writing had to be
done in communal rooms and, when possible, even hallways.
Another factor inhibiting her potentiality (even compulsion) to work more immensely
was her gender. First came household duties; followed by social duties. This was most
especially accentuated by being the daughter of a clergyman and associated expected
conventions. As Johnson puts it, “writing came to the end of the queue.”
Transformation of experience into creation.
Jane Austen did have a wide social circle extending beyond her immediate family.
Austen therefore wrote about what she observed among family, friends and
3acquaintances. Her experiences became the foundation and inspiration for her plots and
characters found in her most recognized works such as Sense and Sensibility and Pride
and Prejudice. Johnson remarks that Austen was “superbly observant from an early age,
and as she grew older increasingly sharp.”
A.W. N. Pugin was well traveled. Throughout his life, he made close study of the gothic
style and made a huge number of drawings upon which to draw inspiration later in his
architectural designs. His taste for medieval buildings, artifacts, and other trappings was
essential to his creative actions believes Johnson. His creations, while inspired by
medievalism, “were of his own vision.”
Originality and Productivity.
Originality is hard to come by in the truest sense given humans—homo sapiens—have
arguably inhabited the earth only approximately 10,000 years. Civilization as we know it
has been said to have existed for a far shorter time. So the fact that originality is credited
to several geniuses over the past six centuries, as covered by Johnson’s book, is
remarkable.
In Johnson’s interpretation, T.S. Elliot is the personification of creativity and originality.
As a model or archetype, Johnson points to the freshness and novelty found in The Waste
Land. Ezra Pound, Elliot’s friend and unofficial editor, was the first to recognize its
inventiveness and its landmark expression of as a new kind of poetry—bold, powerful,
terse, and unusual.
As with originality, productivity is unmistakably a universal trait among Johnson’s
selection of creators. The scale of creativity, as depicted by Johnson, extends to all 13
persons in his Creators. Durer, Shakespeare, and Hugo were especially three industrious
persons of creative brilliance.
In addition to being a hard worker, for example, Albrecht Durer was intensely productive.
His sheer output is amazing: 346 woodcuts; 105 engravings; 970 surviving drawings out
of literally thousands; and scores of portraits, illustrations, etchings and the like. He was
described as a person who could not stand to be idle for more than a “bare few minutes.”
Busyness was also a trait of William Shakespeare. He wrote 39 plays, dozens of poems,
and hundreds of sonnets. According to Johnson, when not working on writings,
Shakespeare busied himself with all the accruements of the theater and stage
presentation. These included musical scores, settings, wardrobes, and original gadgetry
that the Globe made famous such as trap doors and unique stage lighting implements or
inventions.
Victor Hugo was fertile as well. His works were not only many, but also exhaustive in
detail and scope. By the time of his demise at the age of 83, he had published 10 million
words. He wrote nine lengthy published novels; more than a dozen notable plays. His
4poetry was considered formidable though no precise record or accounting is known of its
exact prodigious extent.
Finally, there was Picasso. He, says Johnson, was “restless, experimental, and
productive.” His creations—paintings, sculptures, sketches, etc.—exceeded 30,000.
Picasso was a man whose time had come. He replaced fine art—that
is paintings composed of 10 percent novelty and 90 percent of
skill—with fashion art: images where the proportions were reversed.
About the Author
Richard Young, B.A. and M.A., is Director of Governmental Research for the Institute
for Public Service and Policy Research at the University of South Carolina.
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