What makes them great?

Got in just before four a.m ( Read more... )

As always, when you get a bunch of writers together, conversation caromed speedily, often hard to follow as conversations split off--both equally interesting--then recombined again. We talked a bit about "cutting edge" and who might be considered "cutting edge" currently writing in the genre now, and something someone said led to my asking, "How ( Read more... )

Nabokov on genius and madness:

. . . A madman is reluctant to look at himself in a mirror because the face he sees is not his own: his personality is beheaded; that of the artist is increased ( Read more... )

I looked up “genius” and found that the usually reliable Webster’s Seventh Collegiate (my habitual first choice) is pretty mushy on this one: extraordinary intellectual power esp. as manifested in creative activity; a person endowed with transcendent mental superiority, specif, a person with a very high intelligence quotient. At “gift”, under ( Read more... )