Topical Guide 231
Mark Dorset
“Inspiration”
FROM EXHILARATION came inspiration. All I mean by that is that the exhilaration I felt at having stood up to Mr. Summers put me in a state of mind that encouraged the development of an idea that came to me at about the same time. Inspiration is, I think, nothing more than the name we give after the fact to the arrival of those of our ideas that turn out well. On this subject, Porky asked me not long ago, “Where the heck do our ideas come from, after all? What makes them take one form rather than another? You know how it is some days—nothing seems to go right: the computer-controlled microwave deep-fat fryers I ordered will not boil oil no matter how high I set the thermostats, and every time I try to call the manufacturer I get an answering service. My mind isn’t working any better. Every idea I get is like a cold French fry. On other days, the sun shines, life is glorious, people are lined up twelve deep outside Kap’n Klam shops all over America, and my mind leaps and darts. Even bad ideas shimmer in the sunlight like foamy wavelets, you know what I mean? But get this: the interesting ideas, the ideas that are worth pursuing, are as likely to have been dragged out of the sludge of one of those dull days as to have come gliding in on the surf of one of the brilliant ones. Now I ask you this: on which days am I inspired?”
Little Follies, “The Young Tars”
All laughed, except Guido himself. He asked for the typewriter and, fluently, as if he were writing under dictation, with broader gestures than practical typewriting demands, he wrote down his first tale. He was about to hand the little page to Luciano, but then he thought better of it, took it back, replaced it in the machine, and wrote a second; but this one cost him greater effort than the first, and so he forgot to keep simulating inspiration with his gestures, and he had to revise his words several times. So I believe the first of the two fables wasn’t his and only the second truly issued from his brain, of which it seems to me worthy.
Zeno, in Italo Svevo’s Zeno’s Conscience (translated by William Weaver)
Unfortunately nothing is so difficult to represent by literary means as a man thinking. A great scientist, when he was once asked how he managed to hit upon so much that was new, replied: “By keeping on thinking about it.” And indeed it may safely be said that unexpected inspirations are produced by no other means than by the expectation of them.
To no small extent they are a success due to character, permanent inclinations, unflagging ambition and persistent work. How boring such persistence must be!Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities
Foreshadowing
First, I made “A Tar does things by the manual” the foremost Trait, and from there on everything fell into place, though it still took an awful lot of work. I spent every night working on the manual, trying as hard as I could to make it exactly what I wanted it to be by the next meeting, including the only one of the Tales for Tars that seemed to me anywhere near ready for the Tars to see, the one I’d found myself working on most often, the one I called “Mutiny.”
Little Follies, “The Young Tars”
See also: “Inspiration” and Transformation TG 78
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