Responding to Genius

The word genius gets thrown around way too often these days. Genius is a word that should be reserved for the truly exceptional, the rarest of works or thoughts.

And yet, a couple of weeks ago I finished reading a book, that without a doubt in my mind, was a masterpiece, penned by a genius. That book was Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (Amazon affiliate link). I’ll admit to never having read anything by Wallace before, and to really not knowing anything about him other than maybe his name. As such, perhaps tackling a 1000 page book, with 100 pages of end notes (that yes, you MUST read) was not the ideal introduction to his work. This, especially when you consider that I’m not a huge fan ofne of my favourite novels, and it obsessed me during the time that I read it in a way that was unl long novels, and I’m a sucker for the brevity of Hemingway. Nonetheless, this has become oike any other novel.

This isn’t a book review, so why am I telling you this? Because I’m not interested so much in the book itself, but in the way people respond to genius. At various times, to various works, I’ve responded to genius in one of two ways.

The first was to be inspired. This is generally what happens to me when I witness something that I consider genius in a field other than writing. It inspires me to head to my desk and start playing with words and crafting stories. It’s an emotional response to the positive feeling I get from observing the work.

The second way I’ve responded to genius, and this, generally, is for pieces of writing, is to get mildly depressed. Unlike the first response, where the positive feeling I got inspired me, this appreciation of the greatness of a piece of writing makes me feel inadequate in comparison. “I’ll never be able to write like that.” This is a childish response, but again, it is emotional and not rational. Nonetheless, it leads to a dent in confidence, and a writer with no confidence will have a hard time putting words to a page.

So, in order to avoid these two extremes, I’m searching for a 3rd alternative, and I may have accidentally stumbled upon it while reading Infinite Jest. You can either accept that genius is innate, or you can believe that it can be achieved through hard work. I choose to believe the latter because it means there’s hope that one day I might produce something that might be considered genius. When faced with two options, might as well go with the one that gives you hope.

This means that the logical response to a great work is actually to study it to find out what makes it so great so that you can learn from it. Unlike, the two previous responses, this isn’t emotional; it’s a rational response. Also, it doesn’t necessarily preclude the first two responses. Nonetheless, if faced with the option of being in awe of something and then being entirely incapable of producing my own work, or taking some kind of action that might allow me to benefit from that awe, I think I’ll go with option B.

Normally, I don’t re-read books. My general feeling towards re-reading is, “There’s too many other great ones out there to re-read the ones I already know.” However,t at some point soon, I’m going to be re-reading Infinite Jest, this time as a student. David Foster Wallace may have left us, but he did leave great material for us to learn from, and I intend to do so.

How do you respond to works of genius? Do they inspire? Depress? Neither? Drop a note in the comments, and let’s talk about it.