the archivist April 29, 2011

How To Steal Like An Artist And 9 Other Things Nobody Told Me – Austin Kleon.

Wow. Lovely. Concise. Visual–or rather, graphic, in the good sense. Some common-sense tried-and-truisms, for sure, but he’s tried them.

It’s funny, I have The Happiness Project blog in my reader, and I want to delete it every time I look at it, because Gretchen Rubin is so painfully, Sensorially literal, and I find her exasperating. She dissects and over-explains as if she were teaching 3rd-graders long division, rather than Internet-dwelling adults to be happy. And her tests of these huge conceptual hypotheses are often lame anecdotes about herself and her husband. AND the fact that she is shamelessly selling the Gretchen brand wherever she can–thought her book is selling well, so some of y’all must like it–just grates. Happiness is both vast and minute, as well as mysterious, but this blog is mostly just pragmatism (and privilege, seeing’s how she’s rich and well-connected). Anyway. Gretchen DOES have good connections to other writers, artists, and cultural resources, so I keep her blog around.

This is what she had to say about the above-linked essay:

* I was very interesting [sic] in this post by Austin Kleon, How to steal like an artist (and 9 other things nobody told me). I don’t agree with every item, but many of them rang true, and it’s a very thought-provoking piece.

And perhaps that is the most effective endorsement of all. Just go read it!

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