An upbeat guide to the creative process.
A versatile entertainer shares encouraging advice.
Actor, comedian, screenwriter, and producer Cleese, co-founder of Monty Python and co-writer and star of the British TV comedy Fawlty Towers—among many other achievements—draws on his long, accomplished career to offer a slim compendium of random musings on creativity. He is convinced, he writes, that “you can teach people how to create circumstances in which they will become creative.” Contrasting “quick, purposeful thinking” with ruminating, based on Guy Glaxton’s Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind, Cleese admits he was surprised to discover the power of the unconscious in creative processes. The unconscious is “like the language of dreams. It shows you images, it gives you feelings, it nudges you around without you immediately knowing what it’s getting at.” Although, like many people, he was taught to privilege analysis and critical thinking, he came to believe that creativity flourishes in “an atmosphere of uncertainty and gentle confusion.” Creative people, he has found, “are much better at tolerating the vague sense of worry that we all get when we leave something unresolved.” Among many pages of helpful hints, Cleese suggests that people are most likely to be creative doing something they know and care about, but they should avoid complacency. When they are sure they know what they are doing, “creativity plummets. This is because they think they have nothing more to learn.” They shouldn’t be afraid of fallow periods, which can serve “as preparatory to the fertile ones”; nor of panic, which the author has found energizing. As for asking for help, Cleese writes that he always shows his work to others, alert to their responses, but not necessarily adopting their advice for how to fix something: “you and only you must decide which criticisms and suggestions you accept.” While many of Cleese’s observations and suggestions may seem obvious, his candor is endearing.
An upbeat guide to the creative process.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-385-34827-0
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
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