Customer Reviews

Spark: How Creativity Works

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I don't mean to be unkind here because I appreciate the concept and organization of this book. I wanted to like it much more than I did.

Still, after shelling out good money for the hardcover, I'm ultimately disappointed by what's here. To me, it feels insubstantial, and I wish I had looked through it carefully in a bookstore before purchasing.

Each of the features here (exploring the creative process of several different writers, artists, musicians, etc.) feels quite brief. Some of the profiles are as short as 2-3 pages and come full of journalistic exposition/background.

This is fine in theory, but when I buy a book that promises "How Creativity Works" in its subtitle, I'm hoping for deeper, richer quotations from the profiled artists and less background filler. Do I really need to read, for example, that "[Kevin] Bacon, who starred in films like Footloose, JFK, and Apollo 13, is also renowned as the central character in the trivia game 'Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon...'"

(And, no offense, but can Kevin Bacon really help us understand how creativity works? Don't get me wrong--I really like the guy's work, but this just isn't what I hoped for.)

Even the longer pieces still feel thin and full of sound bites, rather than concerted reflection on creativity. You may enjoy it if you're looking for brief, breezy slices of NPR-style interview. But if, like me, you were hoping for some sustained dialogue and thinking from these artists, you may want to save your money.

I am so excited about this book. It is fascinating to read how successful artsy people excelled.

One of the artists interviewed said, "If you wait for clouds to part and be struck with a bolt of lightning, you're likely to be waiting the rest of your life. But if you simply get going something will occur to you."

I was struck by the fact that overcoming adversity in some way was often the key to creativity.

Chuck Close, a very famous portrait painter, had to overcome prosopagnosia- the inability to recognize faces. Imagine! because he could not recognize individual's faces he became a portrait painter. He drew a grid on photographs and took the face square by square and created these wonderful portraits, and in the process was able to recognize faces from his artwork. And when you think proopagnosia is enough of a detriment for this portraitist, he has a spinal aneurysm which leave him paralyzed from the neck down in a matter of hours.

The tragically beautiful way that Donald Hall, already a great poet, became greater was through the death of his much younger wife, Jane Kenyon. The grief and mourning that Hall captures in his poetry, Without, is something no human being could fake.

When the artist was confined in some way, either by placing his/her own parameters or confined from something beyond his/her control, the art was better.

Ben Burtt, the noise behind Star Wars and Wall-E, limits himself in that the noises he 'invents' come from everyday life and are not simply digitally or electronically produced. The hum of the saber came from the hum of an interlock motor on a projector coupled with the sound from a broken microphone passing by a television set, picking up a buzz from the television.
On and on, I read of these amazing artists who became amazing because they were willing to go through the trials with which their lives had confronted them, and they produced triumphant, glorious art.

Or Ang Lee, a first son of Chinese parents, he was expected to go to college and excel in that way. And yet, he could not push his love of theatre and movies out of his mind. Across the world, James Schamus was growing up watching and loving movies. These two men manage to connect and go on to make incredibly artistic films.

These stories come by way of Public Radio International's weekly broadcast, Studio 360, hosted by Kurt Anderson. Never heard of it before, I am glad to be introduced via this book.

You will be inspired.

I don't often comment here on amazon, but this one really prompted me to let everyone know what they are getting themselves into. First of all, the hardcover is around $25 and for that much I have some expectations. Second, the book promises to tell you how creativity works but instead just reads as if it's a transcript from interviews done on a radio show years ago from a lot of people that you've probably never heard of. I don't like sounding harsh, but I was REALLY disappointed with this book. The introduction seems great, I do believe that Julie has a good background to write about the subject of creativity and has some valuable insight; however, she rarely imparts her own wisdom. Instead it seems like just a ploy to use her past interviews to make some money through book sales. It's not worth your time, you won't gain much at all.

These are a series of biographies drawn from the various guests on NPR's Studio 360 (an awesome show, btw). It's divided thematically,

The first section, Engaging Adversity, is about why people create, what drives them, what needs the activity answers. Donald Hall, for example, writes poems to grieve the loss of his wife.

Modern Alchemy is about how the wizards do what they do. In one article, Beb Burtt explains how he made the sound effects for Star Wars.

The Cultivated and the Wild deals with nature in art. I particularly liked the section on Julie Bargmann where she goes into ecological wastelands, landscapes them, cultivates them, and heals them.

Going Home is about place, and here the standout is Alexander Payne and his love of Omaha.

Imagination's Wellspring is the section that comes closest to fulfilling the promise of the book's subtitle. Richard Ford tells about how events from his childhood (including a very disturbing incident with the family cat) made their way into his novels.

The remaining sections are: Mothers and Fathers, Creative Parners, Rewaeaving A Shattered World, and, my favorite, Getting to Work.

The only downside is that most of these bios are very short, 3-4 pages. Each feels a little rushed. I find it charming that the book starts and ends with Chuck Close. Overall, very good.

The title is a spin; it sucked me into buying the book, as did the promotions from Public Radio International/National Public Radio.

Who doesn't want to hear the strike of creativity against substance, see the place where many ideas finally ignite a single creative work. That's what "Spark: How Creativity Works" would have been about...if it weren't about the author instead.

Have you ever seen a photograph with the photographer's index finger accidentally in the shot? That's how Spark is. You lose the enchantment of what might have been a lovely shot because all you can see is the author popping in, page after page. There's little space for anything else.

Julie Burstein rightly qualified herself as an expert at the outset, a necessary step. She and her intimate perspective belonged in the intro to the 9/11 piece as she was THERE, a witness. However, Ms. Burstein then continues to insert herself into every intro and into some of the stories as well. She has pride in her work, yeah, but keep it out of my way, as the reader.

The cross section of interviewees was fantastic. Few of the anecdotes inspire. As another reviewer here mentioned, I'd be willing to wager the interviews were more inspirational on the radio than in print.

Visit your local public library. Wait for the paperback, or wait for it to appear at the second-hand bookstore. You might even find it there soon, if you live near me.

Spark is a wonderful book that looks at the diverse inspirations for creativity through conversations with famous and not so famous creative people - all of those interviewed are tops in their field. The book is arranged around common themes such as adversity, home, parents, partnerships, and trauma...and is written at a lively pace that is a real page turner. I could hardly put the book down.

The focus on the creative process provides a twist on the traditional interview style that gave me fresh insights into where creative ideas came from for these people. What I enjoyed most was the way that the author reflects on her own creative process and thus invites us to reflect on our own. The power of these interviews is that they are extremely accessible. They bring us into vulnerable times when the creative spark seems to be out of reach. I often found myself reflecting on my own creative process. The stories encouraged me to be more creative myself.

Even though the people featured are from the arts, movies, television, and music, Spark is inspirational for any person regardless of your field. Whether you bring creativity to your business, your job, a hobby, or your art, Spark sheds light on this complex human process.

Because the book is so tight, I sometimes found myself wanting more. I look forward to future volumes exploring more creative people!

As a person who works in the creativity and innovation field, I was excited to see a book called "Spark - How Creativity Works" on the list of books for review. After all, one of the most difficult things to accomplish in most businesses is consistent creativity. If someone could identify how creativity "works" and could teach others how it works, that person or team would be very wealthy very quickly. Because creativity is such a misunderstood and undervalued capability, especially in the business world.

Spark is a fine book, but isn't what I expected. The authors interview a lot of interesting, creative people and try to understand what makes them creative, or what drives their creativity. These are interesting anecdotes, but the authors don't seem to find any common threads. I'm certain there are many factors that influence creativity, and perhaps many of them are hard to define or capture. But it would have been interesting to have the authors step back and try to synthesize or perhaps generalize what makes the individuals they talked to creative, and what we can learn from that synthesis and apply in our daily lives.

Perhaps it's fair to say I expected a different book with a different purpose than what the authors intended to write. Note that many of the people they interviewed are artists, musicians and writers. The lineup of people they interviewed is excellent, but the different perspectives on creativity were almost a bit frustrating. Or, again, perhaps creativity really can't be defined and neatly boxed. We won't know from this book.

I have read and reviewed most of the books published during the past decade whose authors focus on leadership and/or management of creativity, innovation, and/or collaboration within a business context. I think Julie Burstein's book is one of the most valuable. Others have their own reasons for thinking so. Here are three of mine.

First, she reviews research on breakthrough creative/innovative thinking that revealed business lessons previously shared in sources she duly acknowledges. She supplements that valuable material with what was revealed during more than one thousand interviews conducted for Studio 360. In a series of chapters with a rigorous discussion of a major theme in each, she focuses on 3-6 exemplars in each chapter (a total of 35 "individual case studies") who have much of value to share about how creativity has worked for them. For example, "Engaging Adversity" (Chapter 1), "Imagination's Wellspring" (Chapter 5), and "Reweaving a Shattered World" (Chapter 8). The variety of perspectives provided in each of the nine chapters invests the narrative with a multidimensional texture appropriate to the complexity of the nutrition, gestation, ideation, and refinement process. Business leaders would be well-advised to master the skills of a world-class gardener.

I also admire how skillfully Burstein inserts relevant digressions (footnotes, anecdotes, clarifications, etc.) to supplement the primary narrative. The reader learns about, for example, the death of Donald Hall's wife and how he dealt with it within and beyond his art; why "the forces of gravity are integral part of Richard Serra's monumental steal structures" (each weighs several thousand pounds but each is free-standing, "designed to balance on a slim edge"); and how an encounter during a highly contentious faculty meeting at the University of Pennsylvania led to a "creative partnership" between architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown that spanned 50 years during which they married and raised a son. As Burstein demonstrates time and again, breakthrough ideas (however brilliant) have their greatest impact when anchored in human experience.

I have other reasons, to be sure, but will offer only these two. However, I presume to suggest to those who read the book that they be alert for Julie Burstein's observations and suggestions with regard to (a) the barriers to the creative process and how to overcome them, (b) how important it is to engage adversity with courage and then conquer it with cunning, and (c) why throughout the entire creative process, passion and determination tend to be more important than inspiration. When asked if he was always painting, Henri Matisse replied, "No. But when my muse visits me, I better have a brush in hand."

I enjoyed Spark! It is always interesting for me to hear about another person's journey...especially since no two are exactly alike. This book shares the journey of many people who have that creative spark in various areas. Some people gained that spark from sorry, tragedy, bad experiences in their past and then some are just born that way. Others were sparked by something fun, pleasant, or enjoyable. Each story documented has it's own unique path that just might open a locked door to your own creative spark.

Yep. I do. I love this book. I'm an artist and was fascinated to find out how other creative people work out their ideas.

Julie Burstein's interviews in "Spark, How Creativity Works Inside the Minds of America's Greatest Writers, Fimmakers, Musicians & Artists" has truly inspired me to jump into the well head first, no looking around, and let come what may on my canvas or paper. Or out of my old toaster.

What caught my eye was seeing the name Chuck Close as one of the people who talks about his creative process. Close is such an inspiration to me. I have Multiple Sclerosis and gave up working on my art when I began having too many problems controlling and using my hands. When I picked up a book about Chuck Close at a local library, I was shocked to find out he was now a quadriplegic who is still doing kick *** art. If he was a quadriplegic and able to paint, then why couldn't I? I still had quite a bit a mobility albeit my fine motor skills were something to be desired and my muscles seem to have an annoying habit of stiffening up on my. Because of Chuck Close, I asked my neurologist to send me to Occupational Therapy to relearn how to use my hands so I could draw and paint again. Chuck Close is the artist I'd love to meet so I could thank him for continuing to paint so I could continue to paint.

Reading about Richard Sierra left me homesick for Pittsburgh. The whole time I was reading I thought of one of his large works which stands outside The Carnegie Museum of Art, the times I walked around it, and the times I stood inside of it. You can't just look at Sierra's work. You must experience it.

So many creative people with so many different stories of how their lives and their creativity are interwoven. When we view or listen to their work, we are doing so because they have allowed us to share an intimidate part of their soul. To show or perform your work in public strips you of all barriers and bares your very essence to the world. These brave individuals have shared a few of the secrets of how they do what they do to mesmerize us with their creativity.

And I say, but a few or their secrets only because we creative types really don't know how it all happens. It just does. But there is always something that does SPARK the beginning of the process. It lights the fuse that explodes the bomb leaving us with such wonders as Yo-Yo Ma's rendition of a Beethoven Sonata as Ma draws his bow over the heartstrings of all who hear him play.

Bravo, Julie Burnstein! Encore! Encore!