The Creative Process: Reflections on the Invention in the Arts and Sciences (Paperback)

by Brewster Ghiselin (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
This unique anthology brings together material from 38 well-known writers, artists, and scientists who attempt to describe the process by which original ideas come to them. Contributors include Albert Einstein, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Amy Lowell, Rudyard Kipling, Max Ernst, Katherine Anne Porter, Henry Miller, Carl Gustav Jung, Mary Wigman, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Henri Poincar and many others.

From the Inside Flap
"Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. To perform this difficult office it is sometimes necessary for him to sacrifice happiness and everything that makes life worth living for the ordinary human being."--Carl G. Jung

"I began in absolute chaos and darkness, in a bog or swamp of ideas and emotions and experiences. Even now I do not consider myself a writer, in the ordinary sense of the word. I am a man telling the story of his life, a process which appears more and more inexhaustible as I go on. . . . It is a turning inside out, a voyaging through X dimensions, with the result that somewhere along the way one discovers that what one has to tell is not nearly so important as the telling itself."--Henry Miller

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Product Details

• Paperback: 259 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press (November 22, 1985)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520054539
• ISBN-13: 978-0520054530
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #424,077 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A "must" read in one's life and quest, May 29, 1999

By A Customer

I'm very touched to find this book again as i browsed through the net, 25 years after i first bought it in a flee market in New York. The essay by Henry Miller, literally blew my young artist mind back then. It inspired me to follow on his crazy steps. I quit my civil service job(without official leave) and went to Paris ,where I lived for ten years. I read and re-read that essay on creativity and it just kept giving me the courage to step further into the unknown, thus changing my life completely.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Timeless Insights Into the Nature of Creativity, October 28, 1998

By A Customer

Like a previous reviewer, I read this book when it was simply "The Creative Process". I was just a kid and bought the paperback version when they were much less expensive. I still have it and it is falling apart now. It is a book to keep. A previous reviewer mentioned his (her?) favorite parts. I can only add mine to that list: Mozart describing the "completeness" of his musical idea; Thomas Wolfe's "Story of a Novel" in which the writing of a novel is as gripping as the novel itself; R. W. Gerard, whose "Biological Basis of Imagination" breaks down the barriers between Gestalt Psychology, Biology, and esthetics; the concreteness of Stephen Spender's poetry; glimpses into the tactile imagination of Henry Moore; Max Ernst on the art of the collage. Lots of content in a small package.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Top book. Buy it., December 1, 1999

By A Customer

This book is a survey of the creative process over artists and scientists across different fields and times, including Mozart, the mathematician and philosopher of science Henri Poincare etc. The book gets to the heart of what life is all about.

This review refers to the first edition of this book: more may have been added in the reissue.