{"id":2618,"date":"2014-11-18T20:30:11","date_gmt":"2014-11-19T02:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/?p=2618"},"modified":"2014-11-18T20:30:11","modified_gmt":"2014-11-19T02:30:11","slug":"on-talent-and-the-cult-of-craft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2014\/11\/18\/on-talent-and-the-cult-of-craft\/","title":{"rendered":"On talent and the cult of craft"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Millions posted an essay\u00a0by Michael Bourne titled <strong>&#8220;Magical Thinking: Talent and the Cult of Craft,&#8221;<\/strong> which prominently features John Updike.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It is, of course, impossible to write a good book without a deep appreciation of how language and stories work, but it doesn&#8217;t follow that successful writers have simply worked at it harder than less successful ones or that their understanding of the craft of fiction is any more accurate,&#8221; Bourne writes. &#8220;What successful writers have that their less successful counterparts do not is talent.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This inconvenient fact offends our sensibilities because it is elitist and because it means that for all but a very lucky few of us, literary greatness remains beyond our grasp.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.themillions.com\/2014\/11\/magical-thinking-talent-and-the-cult-of-craft.html\">full article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Millions posted an essay\u00a0by Michael Bourne titled &#8220;Magical Thinking: Talent and the Cult of Craft,&#8221; which prominently features John Updike. &#8220;It is, of course, impossible to write a good book without a deep appreciation of how language and stories &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2014\/11\/18\/on-talent-and-the-cult-of-craft\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-person-singular"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2618"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2619,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2618\/revisions\/2619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}