{"id":33046,"date":"2012-03-23T01:25:50","date_gmt":"2012-03-23T01:25:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/2012\/03\/23\/on-originality\/"},"modified":"2012-03-23T01:25:50","modified_gmt":"2012-03-23T01:25:50","slug":"on-originality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/2012\/03\/23\/on-originality\/","title":{"rendered":"On Originality"},"content":{"rendered":"

neil-gaiman<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

There are \u00a0about 5,300 ASK messages right now sitting in the queue. Which is why yours hasn\u2019t been answered, I expect.<\/p>\n

One question I keep seeing over and again, even more than \u201cWhat MFA program should I do?\u201d (I do not answer this, because my answer would probably be: \u201cI have no idea. I never did an MFA program. I just wrote stuff.\u201d) is, over and over, a variant on \u201cHow can I possibly be original? The stories I want to tell have already been told.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because sometimes you do not have to be original, as answers have already been given, I will answer with a quote from an essay by John Barth<\/a>, who points out that worry that we are not new is, well, not new:<\/p>\n

Once upon a time, perusing a book about the Egyptian Middle Kingdom, I noted that some twelve centuries before Homer, in about 2000\u00a0B.C.E., the scribe Khakheperresenb was already voicing what I like to call Khakheperresenb\u2019s Complaint: \u201cWould I had phrases that are not known,\u201d the scribe laments, \u201cin new language that has not been used not an utterance which has grown stale, which men of old have spoken.\u201d I used to comfort my students (and myself) with the reflection that for all we know, two or three millennia of sea and sunrise metaphors might be like the first few million stars in our galaxy\u2014a mere drop in the bucket!\u2014while at the same time acknowledging that Khakheperresenb\u2019s feeling of having arrived late to the party is not to be dismissed.\u00a0\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

If I could time-travel back to the Egyptian Middle Kingdom, I would console Khakheperresenb with the familiar paraphrase of Walt Whitman: \u201cDo I repeat myself? Very well then, I repeat myself.\u201d Or Andr\u00e9 Gide\u2019s comforting remark, \u201cEverything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.\u201d Originality, after all, includes not only saying something for the first time, but re-saying (in a worthy new way) the already said: rearranging an old tune in a different key, to a different rhythm, perhaps on a different instrument. Has that been said before? No matter: on with the story!<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

neil-gaiman: There are \u00a0about 5,300 ASK messages right now sitting in the queue. Which is why yours hasn\u2019t been answered, I expect. One question I keep seeing over and again, even more than \u201cWhat MFA program should I do?\u201d (I do not answer this, because my answer would probably be: \u201cI have no idea. I … <\/p>\n

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