In Which The Universe Brought Us Keith Gessen

The Possessor

by ELENA SCHILDER

I went to see Elif Batuman read mostly because I wanted to know what Keith Gessen looked like. I guess I could have Google-image searched him, but I hate typing the names of people who are of my relative age and demographic into the Safari search field during work. It is an activity that seems, first of all, unprofessional, and second of all makes me feel like I am about to be caught. All of which is to say that I didn’t search for Keith Gessen’s image on the Internet, deciding instead to let the universe bring him to me at McNally Jackson Books.

That week I had been printing out Gessen’s archived New Yorker pieces and reading them on the subway. I read two long articles, one about the Ukrainian elections and one about the murder of a Russian journalist and the accompanying trial. I remember being genuinely charmed by Gessen’s writing, which seemed straightforwardly personal and, at certain moments, suffused with a wonderful cheekiness. I had seen Gessen’s novel All the Sad Young Literary Men in the Strand; for me, and I would assume for others, it was a book whose title promised content too close to home (my own gender notwithstanding) even to skim in a bookstore or using Amazon’s “Look Inside” function. I didn’t want to look inside.

ben kunkel, mark greif, keith gessen, marco roth

That same feeling, of intimacy mixed with claustrophobia, washed over, and over, and over me when I walked into McNally Jackson for the reading. I think it was in April. I was early; the kid who served me coffee and a cookie was surly. I walked around and noticed that the store categorizes its fiction by world region, which seemed like a good idea.

Men and women of a certain ilk – mostly alone, and therefore sort of somber – poured in. Because I, too, was unaccompanied, I began to feel prickly and oppressed by the crowd. I texted my sister: “Hell is bookish people.” Batuman’s book, The Possessed, which I hadn’t read and didn’t own at the time, but which I bought – like a sucker – at the reading, is as good as you have heard it is. Its seven essays, several of which have been published in n+1 – the publication which “discovered” her, hence Gessen’s involvement in the reading – focus on Russian literature (both classic and obscure) and its effects, explicit and implicit, on the author’s life.

The essays are set against an academic background. The relationships they explore deeply are those between teacher and pupil, grad student and grad student, and among attendees of academic conferences. They are autobiographical, but they intend to convey life as it is experienced by someone who is subsumed by texts. The book is kind of about reading one’s way through life – a trap that feels familiar to me, though I often wonder if, say, my kids will even know it was ever a possibility.

In the introduction to the book, Batuman talks about the deep ambivalence toward fiction writing that propelled her into the comp lit department at Stanford and, consequently, into the writing of a book of personal, yet analytic, essays. She describes her experience at a summer writing workshop in New England with all the sass we will come to expect of her:

I wanted to be a writer, not an academic. But that afternoon, standing under a noisy tin awning in a parking lot facing the ocean, eating the peanut-butter sandwiches I had made in the cafeteria at breakfast, I reached some conclusive state of disillusionment with the transcendentalist New England culture of “creative writing.” In this culture, to which the writing workshop belonged, the academic study of literature was understood to be bad for a writer’s formation. By what mechanism, I found myself wondering, was it bad?

Conversely, why was it automatically good for a writer to live in a barn, reading short stories by short-story writers who didn’t seem to be read by anyone other than writing students?

I think most of us who care about literature at all would agree that, with a few exceptions, those short stories derived from other short stories are unreadable, and if only for this reason, The Possessed is like an amazing cold shower. It feels at times like Batuman is washing the “craft” of writing – so exhaustively documented, taught, and debated – clean of the very idea of craft. I couldn’t think of a better answer to the New Yorker fiction section.

What results from Batuman’s inquiry into what would happen “if you went to Balzac’s house and Madame Hanska’s estate, read every word he ever wrote, dug up every last thing you could about him—and then started writing,” is a web of connections between present-day human beings – American, Russian, Uzbek, and miscellaneous others – their historical antecedents, great writers, and the characters born of those writers’ works. It’s a web that Batuman builds carefully, with both a scholar’s touch and a novelist’s imaginative power, and there are moments at which the combination feels transcendent, and like a new kind of literary experience. I don’t think it’s too much of an oversimplification to say that the book operates according to a theory of – and with a deep faith in – coincidences.

timothy archibald In the book's strongest essay, “Babel in California,” we hear Batuman exclaim, in the midst of Babel research that has drifted all the way to Merian Cooper, director of the original King Kong, “’So there really is a path from [Nikolai] Fyodorov [a Russian philosopher] to Cooper!’” To which her companion retorts, “’If there wasn’t, you would find one anyway.’” Her detective’s streak – apparent in her many references to Arthur Conan Doyle, and even more in her attempt to prove that Tolstoy was murdered – is strong and very charming in its insistence.

It is, however, slightly unnerving to realize that, for Batuman, seeking out unity between ideas and causality among events may trump all other projects. At the beginning of the Q & A, Keith Gessen mentioned that one of the great things about Batuman’s work is its ability to paint “grotesque” portraits of minor characters; indeed, Batuman’s cast of translators, semioticians, and egomaniacal grad students is painted with an absurdist’s brush. Watching her at the reading, it was hard not to read an edge of incredulity in almost every one of her answers – she has that air of bafflement that I’ve seen before in academics who, so comfortable among their books, seem bemused by the mannerisms and speech of almost everybody else.

I don’t mean this with even an ounce of disparagement: The Possessed is a great book and in many ways a really hopeful one, as regards the future of both academic and creative writing. But there is something about the way they merge here that, on occasion, made me nervous about the degree of alienation you would have to feel to write so thorough and artful a book about your own experience.

For example, there are pages and pages of dialogue in the book that, I believe, must have been faithfully recorded by Batuman either during, or directly after, it was spoken in real time. There is something a little off-putting about the way in which real people are ripped from their contexts and made to mock themselves on Batuman’s page. Of course, she’s not the first writer to use the technique, nor will she be the last. Her project just makes the jump from life to page a little more self-conscious – which isn’t good or bad so much as it feels odd.

Keith Gessen, it turns out, looks like a writer. Had I been given the task of dressing him for the evening, I might not have paired jeans with a wool blazer and I might have given him a haircut. He asked Batuman whether her book was a novel; when she didn’t give a satisfactory answer (and I’m not sure many of her answers satisfied him that night), he said with quiet self-assurance that he thought it was a novel. A Russian woman in the audience loudly disagreed (in Russian), which led to a colorful argument that would have found an easy place in The Possessed and which, in the ensuing weeks, helped to remind me that I might want to write about it.

Elena Schilder is a contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in Abu Dhabi. She last wrote in these pages about Richard Ford. She blogs here.

"Dragonfly" - M. Craft (mp3)

"Standing in the Way of Control" - Gossip (mp3)

"I've Been Lonely For So Long" - Frederick Knight (mp3)

In Which Science Corner Takes A Journey To The Center Of Your Mind

Science Corner: Motherfuckin' Psychedelic Frogfish Edition

by MOLLY LAMBERT

"When you're happy, known things, familiar things lose their appeal. Novelty, on the other hand, becomes more attractive."

A nursery for the extinct giant shark known as the megalodon — the largest shark that ever lived — has been unearthed in the Isthmus of Panama. 

meep meep morp morp psychedelic frogfish la la la la freaking out ur facespace

Creativity often goes hand-in-hand with mental illness, such as schizophrenia. Now scientists think they know why: The brain responds differently to the "feel good" chemical dopamine in both schizophrenics and the highly creative, a new study suggests. The results showed similarities between the brains in healthy, highly creative people and those with schizophrenia.

The findings suggest that creative types might not be able to filter information in their heads as well as "normal" folks, leaving them better able to make novel connections and generate unique ideas. "Thinking outside the box might be facilitated by having a somewhat less intact box," said study researcher Fredrik Ullén, of the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden.

hey hey hey hey psychedelic frogfish blorp blorp blorp blorp eatin all ur cupcakes

Ultimate Neg: What do you do if you want more sex but your partner is about to leave? How about scaring the fucking shit out of her. The male topi antelope keeps his mate around by snorting deceptively, a pretense that makes her think leaving him will bring her face-to-face with danger, scientists now reveal.

Although justice is supposed to be "blind" a study finds that attractiveness influences conviction and sentence length. Cornell University researchers found that unattractive defendants are 22 percent more likely to be convicted, and tend to get hit with longer, harsher sentences – with an average of 22 months longer in prison.

A "dracula" fish with canine-like fangs, a worm that launches glow-in-the-dark bombs and a psychedelic frogfish are among the Top 10 new species discovered last year.

Scientists have identified areas of the brain that, when damaged, lead to greater spirituality.  The study involves a personality trait called self-transcendence, which is a somewhat vague measure of spiritual feeling, thinking, and behaviors. Self-transcendence "reflects a decreased sense of self and an ability to identify one's self as an integral part of the universe as a whole."

Same Brain Spots Handle Sign Language and Speaking

World's Largest Dinosaur Graveyard Linked to Mass Death. The dinosaurs may have been part of a mass die-off resulting from a monster storm, inspiring the world's greatest illustration (above).

When you have a "Eureka!" moment, not only does an answer seem to suddenly flash into your head, your brain neurons shift gears just as rapidly, a new study suggests. The results, found in rats, pinpoint these moments to an area of the brain called the prefrontal cortex, supporting the idea that learning can involve sudden changes in the brain, rather than a gradual process.

"We found the biggest drop in empathy after the year 2000." Compared with college students of the late 1970s, current students are less likely to agree with statements such as "I sometimes try to understand my friends better by imagining how things look from their perspective," and "I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me." HOW BOUT THAT ECONOMY FOLKS?

"Monitor lizards are fantastic creatures. They are agile, powerful, and the most intelligent lizards of the world."

Trusting women become more skeptical when they are given doses of the sex hormone testosterone, a new study suggests.

Drinking coffee could help to prevent the neural degeneration associated with brain disorders and aging, scientists say. I LOVE COFFEE!

A tubby dinosaur sporting horns each the length of a baseball bat roamed what is now Mexico some 72 million years ago. Horned dinosaurs may have hopped across islands to make their way into Europe, researchers now reveal.

"Brains don't kill people, people kill people"

Crop circle contains Euler's Identity, considered by many to be among the world's most beautiful and elegant theorems.

AND MOTHERFUCKERS ACT LIKE THEY FORGOT ABOUT DREN!!! (GO SEE SPLICE!!!)

A team of scientists says they have succeeded in creating the first living organism with a completely synthetic genome. 

The key to intelligence may be the ability to juggle multiple thoughts or memories.

New Test Reveals Good vs. Bad Sperm 

Human Mind 'Time Travels' When Pondering Movement: The ability to mentally meander through time by remembering the past or imagining the future sets humans apart from many other species, helping us to learn from what came before and plan for what lies ahead (wonder how this fits in with leaning while playing video games).

Remarkably little is known about how such mental time travel works. Thinking about moving forward prompted speculation about the future, while imagining moving backward triggered reflections on the past. Past research showed that our perceptions of time are tightly linked with space. For instance, pondering the future makes us lean forward, while recalling the past makes us lean back.

The dramatic rise in overall intermarriages has been partly driven by a large wave of immigrants from Latin America and Asia over the past several decades, along with a breaking down of longstanding cultural taboos against interracial marriages and the publication of Neel Shah's "How To Date A White Bitch."

Teen Brains wired for risk taking, being embarrassed by parents, saying "whatever" a lot, reenacting Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton's video for "1979." 

Researchers investigated brain changes that occur when humans act courageously — that is, when we feel fear, yet act in a manner that opposes this fear. The results show activity in a brain region called the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC) was associated with participants overcoming their fears

an earthquake moved the border city of Calexico 31 inches, shown above

An obscure compound known as pyrophosphite could have been a source of energy that allowed the first life on Earth to form, scientists now say.

In what urologists say is a growing phenomenon, adolescent boys are playing a game called sack tapping, in which the sole purpose is to strike someone in the testicles. The practice became national news after one victim, 14-year-old David Gibbons of Crosby, Minnesota, had to have his right testicle amputated from being sack tapped in the hallway between classes. Now he is the coolest kid in school.

Brain Quickly Remembers Complex Sounds. The study's results show that auditory memory is as impressive as visual memory, but in different ways, Pressnitzer said. While complex images can be remembered without repetition, audio memory seems to require that repetition take place in order to come into effect.

Naps Clear the Mind, Help You Learn

A girl diagnosed with ADHD as a child or teen suffers from major or clinical depression and anxiety disorders at much higher rates — 20-25 percent — than a boy with ADHD (3-8 percent). Professionals call this "co-morbidity" — when two disorders occur together. A girl with ADHD is far more likely to develop depression or anxiety than a girl without ADHD, or any boy in general. Hey who likes the internet.

About 10,000 gallons of water per minute gush up from the desert floor at an oasis near Death Valley, Nevada, but only after the water completes a slow 15,000-year underground journey,  

Personality Predicted by Size of Different Brain Regions. Those who scored high on neuroticism — which indicates a tendency to experience negative emotions, including anxiety and self-consciousness — was associated with a larger mid-cingulate cortex, a region thought to be involved in the detection of errors and response to emotional and physical pain. Neurotics also had a smaller dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, a region implicated in the regulation of emotions.

Extroverts, those who are sociable, outgoing and assertive, had a larger medial orbitofrontal cortex, a region involved in processing rewards. This goes along with the idea that extroverts are sensitive to rewards, which in our society often involve social interactions and status. Conscientious people, who tend to be orderly, industrious and self-disciplined, had a larger middle frontal gyrus, involved in memory and planning.

What we consider "fair" changes as we age, a new study finds. Young children like all things to be equal, but older adolescents are more likely to consider merit when it comes to dividing up wealth, the researchers say. The shift from the "egalitarian" view of fairness to the more merit-based "meritocratic" view occurred largely between fifth and seventh grade, although it continued to change through high school, with seniors placing the most importance on achievement.

Habitual learning, as it's called, involves two brain circuits — one used for movement and the other for higher, cognitive thinking. As a task is learned, these circuits trade off in terms of their engagement. The movement circuit, which involves a part of the brain called the dorsolateral striatum, becomes more active, while the cognitive circuit, which involves a region called the dorsomedial striatum, takes a dip.

When the room was warmer, participants rated the character as more sociable compared with when it was colder. They also judged the experimenter in charge of instructing the task as more sociable when the heat was on.

Two previously unknown frog species have been identified from two sites in Panama, and they are already under threat from the deadly fungus that has wiped out many amphibian species and is poised to threaten many more. Researchers recognized that frogs (and other amphibians) around the world were dying off in large numbers in 1989. The cause: a deadly fungus called chytridiomycosis that is thought to kill its victims by clogging their skin, essentially suffocating them.

A new study found that homosexual men may be predisposed to nurture their nieces and nephews as a way of helping to ensure their own genes get passed down to the next generation.

A new class of man-made materials could hold the key to creating X-ray-like cameras that can see through walls and clothing. Called metamaterials, these substances could harness terahertz radiation, light with energies between infrared waves and microwaves. Terahertz waves are essentially low-level heat created by the movement of molecules.

46 percent of adults say they have used online searchers to find information about people from their past.

Older people in their mid- to late-50s are generally happier, and experience less stress and worry than young adults in their 20s.

Soft-bodied sea animals did not die off during a major extinction event during the Cambrian period, as previously thought.

Dads get post-partum depression too.

Scientists build living lungs in a lab. There is no language in them.

Normally when you see or imagine someone else in pain, your brain experiences a twinge of pain as well. Not so when race and bias come into play, scientists now find. People respond with empathy when pain is inflicted on others who don't fit into any preconceived racial category, such as those who appear to have violet-colored skin. When both white and black volunteers saw violet-colored hands get jabbed, they responded empathetically.

This suggests that people normally automatically feel the pain of others, and the lack of empathy that volunteers showed for people of other races was learned and not innate. (this is 4 my Na'vis who just lost somebody, ur best friend, ur baby)

"This default reactivity of human beings implies empathy with the pain of strangers," said researcher Alessio Avenanti. "However, racial bias may suppress this empathic reactivity, leading to a dehumanized perception of others' experience." It could make evolutionary sense that we feel less empathy for people who are different than us. "In case of war or even a friendly competition like a football game, it could be adaptive to feel less empathy for people we consider our opponents."

Molly Lambert is the managing editor of This Recording and resident science expert. She last wrote in these pages about Get Him to the Greek. She tumbls here.

"In the Flicker" - Sundowner (mp3)

"DLZ" - TV on the Radio (mp3)

"Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" - The Black Crowes (mp3)

In Which This Is A Miserable Fate For A Painter Who Adores Blondes

Conversation avec Picasso

by PABLO PICASSO

The essential thing in the period of weak morale is to create enthusiasm. How many people have actually read Homer? All the same the whole world talks of him. In this way the Homeric legend is created. A legend in this sense provides a valuable stimulus. Enthusiasm is what we need most, we and the younger generation.

We might adapt for the artist the joke about there being nothing more dangerous than implements of war in the hands of generals. In the same way, there is nothing more dangerous than justice in the hands of judges, and a paintbrush in the hands of a painter.

Just think of the danger to society! But today we haven't the heart to expel the painters and poets from society because we refuse to admit to ourselves that there is any danger in keeping them in our midst. It is my misfortune — and probably my delight — to use things as my passions tell me. What a miserable fate for a painter who adores blondes to have to stop himself putting them into a picture because they don't go with the basket of fruit!

How awful for a painter who loathes apples to have to use them all the time because they go so well with the cloth. I put all the things I like into my pictures. The things — so much the worse for them; they just have to put up with it. In the old days pictures went forward toward completion by stages. Every day brought something new. A picture used to be a sum of additions. In my case a picture is the sum of destructions. I do a picture — then I destroy it. In the end, though, nothing is lost: the red I took away from one place turns up somewhere else.

It would be very interesting to preserve photographically, not the stages, but the metamorphoses of a picture. Possibly one might then discover the path followed by the brain in materializing a dream. But there is one very odd thing — to notice that basically a picture doesn't change, that the first "vision" remains almost intact, in spite of appearances.

I often ponder on a light and a dark when I have put them into a picture; I try hard to break them up interpolating a color that will create a different effect. When the work is photographed, I note that what I put in to correct my first vision has disappeared, and that, after all, the photographic image corresponds with my first vision before the transformation I insisted on.

A picture is not thought out and settled beforehand. While it is being done it changes as one's thoughts change. And when it is finished, it still goes on changing, according to the state of mind of whoever is looking at it. A picture lives a life like a living creature, undergoing the changes imposed on us by our life from day to day. This is natural enough, as the picture only lives through the man who is looking at it.

At the actual time that I am painting a picture I may think of white and put down white. But I can't go on working all the time thinking of white and painting it. Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions. You've seen the sketch I did for a picture with all the colors indicated on it. What is left of them? Certainly the white I thought of and the green I thought of are there in the picture, but not in the places I intended, nor in the same quantities. Of course, you can paint pictures by matching up different parts of them so that they go quite nicely together, but they'll lack any kind of drama.

I want to get to the stage where nobody can tell how a picture of mine is done. What's the point of that? Simply that I want nothing but emotion to be given off by it.

Work is a necessity for man.

A horse does not go between the shafts of its own accord.

Man invented the alarm clock.

When I begin a picture, there is somebody who works with me. Toward the end, I get the impression that I have been working alone - without a collaborator.

When you begin a picture, you often make some pretty discoveries. You must be on guard against these. Destroy the thing, do it over several times. In each destroying of a beautiful discovery, the artist does not really suppress it, but rather transforms it, condenses it, makes it more substantial. What comes out in the end is the result of discarded finds. Otherwise, you become your own connoisseur. I sell myself nothing.

Actually, you work with few colors. But they seem like a lot more when each one is in the right place.

Abstract art is only painting. What about drama?

There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality. There's no danger then, anyway, because the idea of the object will have left an indelible mark. It is what started the artist off, excited his ideas, and stirred up his emotions. Ideas and emotions will in the end be prisoners in his work. Whatever they do, they can't escape from the picture. They form an integral part of it, even when their presence is no longer discernible. Whether he likes it or not, man is the instrument of nature. It forces on him its character and appearance.

In my Dinard pictures and in my Pourville pictures I expressed very much the same vision. However, you yourself have noticed how different the atmosphere of those painted in Brittany is from those painted in Normandy, because you recognized the light of the Dieppe cliffs. I didn't copy this light nor did I pay it any special attention. I was simply soaked in it. My eyes saw it and my subconscious registered what they saw: my hand fixed the impression. One cannot go against nature. It is stronger than the strongest man. It is pretty much to our interest to be on good terms with it! We may allow ourselves certain liberties, but only in details.

Nor is there any "figurative" and "non-figurative" art. Everything appears to us in the guise of a "figure." Even in metaphysics ideas are expression by means of symbolic "figures." See how ridiculous it is then to think of painting without "figuration." A person, an object, a circle are all "figures"; they react on us more or less intensely. Some are nearer our sensations and produce emotions that touch our affective faculties; others appeal more directly to the intellect. They all should be allowed a place because I find my spirit has quite as much need of emotion as my sense. Do you think it concerns me that a particular picture of mine represents two people? Though these two people once existed for me, they exist no longer. The "vision" of them gave me a preliminary emotion; then little by little their actual presences became blurred; they developed into a fiction and then disappeared altogether, or rather they were transformed into all kinds of problems. They are no longer two people, you see, but forms and colors: forms and colors that have taken on, meanwhile, the idea of two people and preserve the vibration of their life.

I deal with painting as I deal with things, I paint a window just as I look out of a window. If an open window looks wrong in a picture, I draw the curtain and shut it, just as I would in my own room. In painting, as in life, you must act directly. Certainly, painting has its conventions, and it is essential to reckon with them. Indeed, you can't do anything else. And so you always ought to keep an eye on real life.

The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place; from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web. That is why we must not discriminate between things. Where things are concerned there are no class distinctions. We must pick out what is good for us where we can find it - except from our own works. I have a horror of copying myself.

The painter goes through states of fullness and evaluation. That is the whole secret of art, I go for a walk in the forest of Fontainebleau. I get 'green' indigestion. I must get rid of this sensation into a picture. Green rules it. A painter paints to unload himself of feelings and visions. People seize on painting to cover up their nakedness. They get what they can wherever they can. In the end I can't believe they get anything at all. They've simply cut a coat to the measure of their own ignorance. They make everything, from God to a picture, in their own image. That is why the picture-hook is the ruination of a painting — a painting which has always a certain significance, at least as much as the man who did it. As soon as it is brought and hung on a wall, it takes on quite a different kind of significance, and the painting is done for.

Academic training in beauty is a sham. We have been deceived, but so well deceived that we can scarcely get back even a shadow of the truth. The beauties of the Parthenon, Venuses, Nymphs, Narcissuses are so many lies. Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don't start measuring her limbs. We love with our desires — although everything has been done to try and apply a canon even to love.

The Parthenon is really only a farmyard over which someone put a roof; colonnades and sculptures were added because there were people in Athens who happened to be working, and wanted to express themselves. It's not what the artist does that counts, but what he is. Cézanne would have never interested me one bit if he had lived and thought like Jacques Emile Blanche, even if the apple he painted had been ten times as beautiful. What forces our interest is Cézanne's anxiety — that's Cézanne's lesson; the torments of Van Gogh — that is the actual drama of the man. The rest is a sham.

Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the songs of a bird? Why does one love the night, flowers, everything around one, without trying to understand them? But in the case of a painting people have to understand. If only they would realize above all that an artist works of necessity, that he himself is only a trifling bit of the world, and that no more importance should be attached to him than to plenty of other things which please us in the world, though we can't explain them. People who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree. Gertrude Stein joyfully announced to me the other day that she had at last understood what my picture of three musicians was meant to be. It was a still life!

How can you expect an onlooker to live a picture of mine as I lived it? A picture comes to me from miles away: who is to say from how far away I sensed it, saw it, painted it; and yet the next day I can't see what I've done myself. How can anyone enter into my dreams, my instincts, my desires, my thoughts, which have taken a long time to mature and to come out into the daylight, and above all grasp from them what I have been about - perhaps against my own will?

With the exception of a few painters who are opening new horizons to painting, young painters today don't know which way to go. Instead of taking up our researches in order to react clearly against us, they are absorbed with bringing the past back to life — when truly the whole world is open before us, everyone waiting to be done, not just redone. Why cling desperately to everything that has already fulfilled its promise? There are miles of painting "in the manner of"; but it is rare to find a young man working in his own way.

Does he wish to believe that man can't repeat itself? To repeat is to run counter to spiritual laws, essentially escapism.

I'm no pessimist, I don't loathe art, because I couldn't live without devoting all my time to it. I love it as the only end of my life. Everything I do connected with it gives me intense pleasure. But still, I don't see why the whole world should be taken up with art, demand its credentials, and on that subject give free rein to his own stupidity. Museums are just a lot of lies, and the people who make art their business are mostly imposters. I can't understand why revolutionary countries should have more prejudices about art than out-of-date countries!

We have infected the pictures in museums with all our stupidities, all our mistakes, all our poverty of spirit. We have turned them into petty and ridiculous things. We have been tied up to a fiction, instead of trying to sense what inner life there was in the men who painted them. There ought to be an absolute dictatorship...a dictatorship of painters...a dictatorship of one painter... to suppress all those who have betrayed us, to suppress the cheaters, to suppress the tricks, to suppress the mannerisms, to suppress charms, to suppress history, to suppress a heap of other things. But common sense always gets away with it. Above all, let's have a revolution against that! The true dictator will always be conquered by the dictatorship of common sense...and maybe not!

1935

The literary ideas of a painter are not at all the same ideas as the literary ideas of a writer. The egotism of a painter is entirely a different egotism than the egotism of a writer. The painter does not conceive of himself as existing in himself, he conceives himself as a reflection of the objects he has put into his pictures and he lives in the reflections of his pictures, a writer, a serious writer, conceives himself as existing by and in himself, he does not at all live in the reflection of his books, to write he must first of all exist in himself, but for a painter to be able to paint, the painting must first of all be done, therefore the egotism of a painter is not at all the egotism of a writer, and this is why Picasso who was a man who only expressed himself in painting had only writers as friends.

- Gertrude Stein