Cirrus@Austlit

'Patterns of Creativity reflects on the implications of recent neuro-science findings, evolutionary theory and linguistics for ideas about creativity and the practice of creativity.

'Kevin Brophy approaches questions of art and creation from-the-inside, that is as a poet himself. The conclusions about what it might mean to be a creative writer are counter-intuitive. What might it mean to understand the production of art as an evolutionary process with no endpoint and no goal? If consciousness is a minor player in decision-making and problem-solving as recent neuro-science findings suggest, how best might an artist manage conscious intentions while seeking to make original art?

'Brophy argues that consciousness must be managed in new ways if creativity is to be sourced, that much of what we learn in education is learned without consciousness being involved, that a writer must read with a particular agenda, that writing is itself a particular kind of communication beyond speech, requiring specific skills. He argues that the metaphor is not merely a poetic device but is central to the way human thought proceeds and the way communication happens. It is the strange and surprising view-from-within informed by those views science offers to art that preoccupy these investigations.' (From the publisher's website.)

'Just as J. M. Coetzee’s post-2003 books present essays and narrative alongside one another, this book engages with its ideas through both critical and creative writing. Reading Coetzee interleaves critical essays on Coetzee’s works with an autobiographical narrative detailing MacFarlane’s more personal response to her reading and writing. The presentation of elements of the creative with the critical, and the critical within the creative, aims to challenge the traditional boundary between the two. This kind of methodology derives from the idea (and practice) of embodiment: that an idea or philosophy does not ‘float free’, but is tied to the idiosyncrasies, divergences, and subjective ‘travel’ of its speaker or writer.

'Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello, Slow Man and Diary of a Bad Year explicitly address themes which abide more surreptitiously throughout his oeuvre: the divisions and paradoxes which occur the moment pen gains page, the value of literature, and the ethics of embodiment. In revealing the dialogue between writer-self and reader-self, and between author and character, these recent novels invite a rereading of Coetzee’s previous literature. Reading Coetzee explores Coetzee’s preoccupation with the act of writing using his recent books as a lens through which to view his eight previous novels as well as his memoirs and essays.' (Publication summary)