What It Means to Write: Creativity and Metaphor - Hardcover

McKerracher, Adrian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0773556338 ISBN 13: 9780773556331

Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2019

Synopsis

At a time when people must work harder than ever to stand out from the crowd, the word creativity can seem vague and overused. But what exactly is creativity? Adrian McKerracher travels from Vancouver to Havana to Buenos Aires, leading readers on a journey to discover poignant new insights into a life of letters. Through encounters with artists of all kinds, famous or obscure, McKerracher traces a socio-cultural history of the meaning of writing, each vignette a meditation on the way that metaphor limits and liberates understanding: creativity is a process, a possession, a relation, an algorithm, a game, and more. But What It Means to Write is far more than an archive of the figurative. Along the way, a labyrinth of chance reunites McKerracher with old friends, threatens him with violence, and invites him to remain forever in a place both real and imagined. His journey from cafés to libraries to late-night living rooms embodies the structure of a bold new methodology for interpreting creativity, demonstrating the tools for working productively with ambiguity and rebuilding meaning, one metaphor at a time. Told in character-driven narrative pulses that reflect on the nature of belonging, understanding, and loving, What It Means to Write is a celebration of the possibilities of both language and silence.

About this title

About the Author

Adrian McKerracher is an independent scholar, writer, and illustrator. He lives in Toronto.

Edition details

• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0773556338
• ISBN 13: 9780773556331
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224