Review - First We Read, Then We Write

First We Read, Then We Write: Emerson on the Creative Process by Robert D. Richardson

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I skimmed over this book--it was interesting, but it seemed like the reader had to know and like Emerson in the first place in order to appreciate it. The author is a well-known biographer of Emerson, and I just couldn't share his passion without knowing much about Emerson myself. The ideas in the various chapters seemed a bit disjointed, too, as though the author was grasping for every tidbit from Emerson's journals and letters that might have to do with writing. I was hoping for a more gradual continuum of "this is how reading affects writing." Still, it had a few good points that stood out.

Some quotes I liked: "The way to write is to throw your body at the mark when your arrows are spent" (Emerson)

"There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better or worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till. The power that resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried." (Emerson)

I also got a certain understanding from the idea derived from Emerson's book Representative Men Seven Lectures, that poets (and also writers in general), are representative of the average person, not unreachable hero-people. All artists have some qualities that all people can share. Richardson says that, "This representativeness of great people can fairly be called Emerson's central social and religious teaching." He points out the representativeness of God in the person of Jesus as an example of this phenomenon--Jesus is representative of the suffering of all people, thus we can identify with him. In the same way, a writer mustn't be focused on themselves--they have to have passion for describing the human condition. It is in that way that writers become elevated in people's eyes--not by being above other people, but by laying down their lives for their writing in the belief that there is someone out there who can identify with and benefit from reading them.

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