Hardly unique to them, surely?

[oursin]

It's hard to imagine how such disparate personalities got on for long enough to create a literary movement.

This sentence comes from a review in the London Review of Books on a book about the Beats and India.

Except it's one of those lines that could be applied in many different circumstance, to pretty much any literary or artistic (and come to

Comments

Hey, Kids, Let's Put on a Literary Movement!

[wordweaverlynn]

Creating a literary movement doesn't require the kind of cooperation essential to staging a ballet or invading Iraq. As far as I can tell, all you need is a critical mass of writers, a place or places they can meet, a house organ (one reason you need an editor or two), and sufficient assorted editors, patrons, and camp followers to attend to the writers' needs.

The writers themselves should have a reasonable amount of ability -- enough to keep one another competitive. Their chief responsibilities are to pontificate, overindulge in stimulants, quarrel, gossip, review and revile one another, copulate with each other or with each others' spouses, and threaten/attempt suicide. At least two or three must also write something and get it published. The acknowledged genius among them may or may not do so.