You Needn’t be a Brilliant Artist to be a Brilliant Art Critic - Martin Puris
Maxwell Perkins was a legend in his own time and in ours. He was a terrible speller, his punctuation was idiosyncratic, and when it came to reading, by his own admission he was ‘slow as an ox.’ He was the editor who told Ernest Hemingway to ‘Tone it down,’ Ernie and lived to tell the tale. He was also the editor who discovered and completed authors the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe.
And as simple as it may sound I can promise you that his advice is the secret of a successful relationship with creative souls — in the advertising business, in the banking business, in the pharmaceutical business, in whatever business you find yourself in.
I want to add one additional thought, a suggestion for some weekend reading. Someone once asked Ernest Hemingway how to become a great writer. His answer was “Read. Read the great writers.”
He even provided a handwritten list: “Here’s a list of books any writer should have read as a part of his education… If you haven’t read these, you just aren’t educated. They represent different types of writing. Some may bore you, others might inspire you and others are so beautifully written that they’ll make you feel it’s hopeless for you to try to write.”
The same advice applies to becoming a capable and thoughtful editor. And here’s the equivalent of a hand written list to start you off: I suggest that you visit the One Club’s Library and Google’s archives, gather together examples of famous Advertising from The Golden Age — some of which you’ve seen during our sessions — read it carefully, read it again, read it again, study the rhythms, study the use of words, imagine the context, understand it. Do all this and you will be well on your way towards becoming a thoughtful and capable editor and a valuable part of the creative process.
Can you do it? The answer is absolutely, unequivocally yes. Remember this: You needn’t be a brilliant artist to be a brilliant art critic — or a Hall of Fame football player to be a hall of fame coach — or a great writer to be a great editor!
Read more on ‘A BIG Idea’
Ignorance is a choice. Here is a list of popular international news websites:
Yahoo! News Google News HuffingtonPost CNN New York Times De Telegraaf NBC News Mail Online Washington Post The Guardian WSJ ABCNews BBC News USA Today LA Times De Volkskrant Le Monde Le Figaro
