Let’s be honest here in saying that we’re predisposed to like author and artist Austin Kleon, because he not only reads newspapers, but they are the basis of his art.
The Austin, Texas-based author’s first book, “Newspaper Blackout,” was a collection of poems that had been redacted, CIA-style, as he likes to say, from actual newspapers.
That experience led him to think more deeply about the nature of creativity and how anyone, regardless of career, could become more creative in their work. Those meditations have been turned into a very simple, straightforward 152-page, 6-by-6-inch book, “Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative” (Workman, $10.95).
Kleon, who will speak Wednesday at the Georgia Center for the Book in Decatur, likes to say it is the advice he wishes he’d paid attention to when he was a teen.
There’s the simple-to-say-but-difficult-to-do stuff like “stay out of debt,” “don’t quit your day job,” “take your lunch to work.” But Kleon’s main premise is the one that’s particularly difficult for creative types to embrace: Nothing is original, and anything you do has roots in something else. The sooner you acknowledge it, the more imaginative and dynamic your own work will become.
And wouldn’t you know it, his book tells you how to get there. We asked him to share some pointers.
Q: You admit you’re not the first to say nothing is original. So when did you actually get comfortable with that notion, that nothing is original? Did somebody try to tell you that when you were younger and you just didn’t listen?
A: I think that’s the definition of youth, you hear lots of things but it just doesn’t sink in. You’re not that well read and you just don’t know very much. When it sunk in for me is when I started doing my “Newspaper Blackout” columns. Over time, people started telling me how unoriginal my work really was and they’d point out someone like Tom Phillips who does similar work with the Victorian novel. Then you find out that Tom Phillips got the idea from William Burroughs. Then you find out that 30 years before that, Tristan Tzara cut up a newspaper, pulled pieces out of a hat and read it as a poem. So as I was tracing the form of newspaper poetry, I came to see that it’s not whether someone has done it before, it’s about what you are taking from all these people and doing with it. What’s “original” is that you’re adding something new.
Q: Describe the physical feeling you felt when you finally realized that it was OK to appropriate in art, or as you put it, steal?
A: Like a fist that was unclenched.
Q: B.B. King had a commercial a while back where he said he always learned from the greats and that it was OK to “borrow a little.” Somehow that sounds much more palatable than stealing. How’d you settle on stealing?
A: I’m a voracious quote collector, and I found all these writers and creators and sports figures who used that terminology, steal. I was just shocked at how many people went ahead and said, “Yeah, I’m stealing.” When you use the word borrow, well, you’re not giving it back.
Q: What role does skepticism play in all of this? Particularly, what if something is popular with everyone or even with the “it crowd,” but you just find it completely bogus?
A: No matter what age we are, there’s always a push to embrace what we think is important rather than what really resonates with us. Turning your back on something that is popular but that doesn’t speak to you is one step in cultivating interesting influences and making your own work all the more interesting.
Q: People seem so buried in their smartphones or buried in a virtual world that they don’t notice the natural world around them, and you say the natural world is a key to creativity.
A: Simply unplugging is so important to anyone who wants to be a creative person. Literally leaving your phone at home and going for a walk around your city. And I think more people should try having breakfast without checking their phone. But it’s hard to do. Our phones are pleasure machines.
Q: Is there a Luddite lurking in you?
A: I owe my career to the Internet. But for me, it’s just making sure that the machine isn’t pulling more out of you than what it gives back.
Q: So is your book kind of high-brow self-help?
A: I think it’s about leading a good life.
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Book signing
Austin Kleon will read from “Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative.”
7:15 p.m. Wednesday. Georgia Center for the Book at the DeKalb County Public Library. 215 Sycamore St., Decatur. 404-370-8450, Ext. 2225; www .georgiacenterforthebook.org
About the Author
