The Artist's Way

Devoted as they are to the scholarly appreciation of art,
most academics find the beast intimidating when viewed
firsthand. Creative-writing programs tend to be regarded
with justified suspicion: those people aren’t studying
creativity, they’re actually practicing it! Who knows where
this could lead?
I am thinking particularly of a film-department chair of
my acquaintance, a gifted filmmaker who for many years
had been unable or unwilling to expose himself to the rigors
and disappointments of creating. Channeling his ferocious
creative urges into the lives of his students, he alternately
over-controlled and undercut their best endeavors, seeking
to vicariously fulfill or justify his own position on the
sidelines.
As much as I wanted to dislike this man—and I certainly
disliked his behaviors—I found myself unable to regard him
without compassion. His own thwarted creativity, so
luminous in his early films, had darkened to shadow first his
own life and then the lives of his students. In the truest
sense, he was a creative monster.
It took more years and more teaching for me to realize
that academia harbors a far more subtle and deadly foe to
the creative spirit. Outright hostility, after all, can be
encountered. Far more dangerous, far more soul-chilling, is
the subtle discounting that may numb student creativity in
the academic grove.
I am thinking now of my time at a distinguished research