What the Dog Saw Part 4 of 4: Late Bloomers
February 18, 2010 by dr. lam
The story of Ben Fountain, the celebrated author, is fascinating. He quit his day job as an attorney in Dallas at Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, to write full time, leaving his wife to go on to become partner in the same firm. Fountain became famous for his collection of short stories entitled, Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, which the Time Book Review called “heartbreaking”. He was listed on almost every major bestseller list and won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN award. All of this sounds like the typical story of a struggling writer whose precocity is recognized and takes the literary world by storm.
Not exactly. Fountain quit his day job in 1988. It was not until 2006, 18 years later that he got his breakthrough with Brief Encounters. A novel that he wrote and put into a drawer took him 4 years to write. Our idea of genius is inextricably linked to precocity. Someone who at a tender age creates his masterpiece like Orson Welle’s Citizen Kane at 25 years of age or Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick at 32 years of age. However, is this always the case?
The best example of understanding how this may not always be the case is looking at Picasso and Cézanne. Picasso was celebrated from the get go. He was given a generous stipend when arriving to Paris and won acclaim at the age of twenty and continued to marvel the world as he matured. Cézanne on the other hand tore up pieces on and off again until his maturity. His aborted painting of his dealer, Ambrose Vollard, is a typical example. He had the dealer show up at 8 in the morning and worked feverishly until 11:30, with 150 sittings during that time before abandoning the project. Picasso, on the other hand, said “I can hardly understand the importance given to the word research.” Picasso knew what he wanted and painted it. In fact, paintings from Picasso in his midtwenties are valued at four times what his later work sells for; whereas for Cézanne the opposite is true: paintings in his sixties are valued at 15 times what his paintings from his early years are worth. He was a late bloomer.
David Galenson, an economist at the University of Chicago, wrote in his study “Old Masters and Young Geniuses: The Two Life Cycles of Artistic Creativity” believes that younger artists who achieve fame start at a “conceptual” level. They have a concept and they execute on it. Other artists that slog toward a result are “experimental”: they constantly revise a work until they get it right. That might take years to achieve. They are the Cézannes and Fountains of this world.
In contrast to Ben Fountain, the writer Jonathan Safran Foer wrote his masterpiece, Everything is Illuminated in 2002 while he was an undergraduate student at Princeton. He took a class by famed author Joyce Carol Oates and tried his hand at creative writing, being encouraged for a second semester by Oates’ comment that she was a fan of his writing, which of course shocked him. She said he had the most essential element of a good writer, energy. He then took a summer retreat to Europe after his sophomore year to visit where his grandfather came from in Ukraine. He wrote 300 pages in 10 weeks of a book he was not even planning to write and it became his famous first outing, Everything is Illuminated.
Gladwell then recounts how Fountain was able to survive all of those years in obscurity without a real job so to speak. It was his wife Sharie who worked and continued to believe in his artistry. She was his muse and patron. Similarly Cézanne was encouraged by Emile Zola, taught by Camille Pisarro, and supported by Ambrose Vollard and his own disbelieving but wealthy banker father, Louis-Auguste. Without patrons, “experimental” artists may never see the light of day.
This chapter for me was fascinating since I love art, artists, and artistry. It is amazing to see this dichotomy between two types of artists and it makes sense. I fashion myself more of a conceptual artist, as I tend to have a strong vision that starts my quest toward a goal. I then execute on it. In fact, one of my favorite artists Sol Lewitt is the father of conceptual art, as the concept is king. I love to see how Gladwell wove this amazing story from start to finish. It reveals a lot about the rich tapestry of humanity and complexity that lies within each of us.
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7 Responses to “What the Dog Saw Part 4 of 4: Late Bloomers”
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wow…thats very interesting!
Captivating!
I loved it!
Great! This gives me some hope!…LOL Stop laughing guys!
I think that the proper elements have to be there in order for the unique talents of an individual to be brought out in a way that is recognized by others as significant. I think everyone is capable of bringing something unique to humanity when the elements come together, that is, if the elements ever come together. Great point about the types that are perfecting their work before it gets recognized. I think that is one explanation. I think opportunity, experience, talent, determination, effort, history, “luck,” money, etc, play factors into how well someone’s unique contribution to the world is accepted and recognized by others.
Hey, Dr. Lam, maybe some of your fantastically unique artwork will be recognized one of these days.
my artwork is only recognized in my own mind. lol!
You just wait, Dr. Lam….one of these days!
Dr. Lam, one of these days your amazing artwork will be discovered.