I don't think that I've written a book review before, but hey, they say there's always a first time for everything in life. I'll try to not spoil it in case you want to read it (and I would definitely recommend you to do it so) so I'll try to be more practical (sort of) in this review. I'll cut the crap, so here it is:
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| I tried to be discrete when I took this photo. |
I bought this little book ages ago, but I was busy finishing other books that I had to neglect this one. Written by Austin Kleon, this simple and fun to read New York Times bestseller reminds you all of those easy to do things that we forget along the way. And I say this because when I was reading it, lots of things that were supporting Mr. Kleon opinions came to my mind: advice from friends, stuff you get taught in art school and things I used to do without even fully understanding why I was doing them.
Let me explain a bit further:
STEAL LIKE AN ARTIST is divided in 10 short chapters, but it would be incredibly boring to review each one of them so I will just comment on the ones I find more relevant...
The first one is homonymous to the book's name and its contents reminded me so much of the 13 year old me. Basically, back then I used to be an otaku so I spent hours and hours reading manga and watching anime. It didn't stop there, I also loved all kinds of cartoons, specially Nickelodeon's (Kablam, Rocko's Modern Life, Hey Arnold!, anyone?, I'm sure I'm not alone in this) And I found them extremely funny and witty so I always had a notepad next to me when watching TV. Why? because I used to write down compulsively (and I mean, compulsively) all kinds of things I thought were worth "stealing": a funny joke, certain character's clothing style or personality, anything that I could later incorporate into my own manga I was creating, because, mind you, I wanted to become a mangaka and move to Japan and live the dream. Well, back then I wasn't aware that I was "collecting" (this is how the book lovely describes this activity) things/thoughts/ideas as part of a creative process, but that was what I was doing and the book invites you to do the same (although, I am pretty sure must of people do it in their own unique way).
But it is not enough stealing ideas, you must refine them, make them YOURS.
In my case, I remember being worried about not changing the ideas I stole well enough and that I would end up being prosecuted by the copyright police once I've had become the greatest mangaka of all times (yes, I was deluded back then) once all my thefts have been revealed.
Anyway, talking about exposing our crimes, the book talks precisely about sharing all the things you've been stealing. I've first received this advice from my friend Alex (who you should totally check out,
here). We are lucky to live in this Internet era, so if you want your stuff to be seen, then you must put it out there and it will be seen. To me this is kind of a challenge you see, because I am a very self contained person (this is why my previous post are so short, sparse and I didn't really share much in them, bam!) but I am trying my best to not be that gal (gal... I appreciate how dorky I sounded there).
As I was saying, the book also invites you to just put stuff out there. Doesn't have to be finished, perfect or some other adjective you might been thinking of.
As a conclusion, I would say that the book is good but its main point is anything new. Why am I saying this? well, without sounding pretentious at first, when I was 13, no one thought me that I needed to be a compulsive little thief, I just assumed that I could borrow some of the wittiness I so used to love and use it later. And I'm pretty sure we ALL do this at some points in our lives without being told to, in our own special kind of way. The reason? This is how we learn. For example, babies imitate speech patterns than later internalize and make them theirs, same with habits, etc... we steal by imitating and incorporating those little things into our daily routines, and not because someone thought us we needed to do this, but because it is an innate characteristic in human behavior. Although, it's a bit different in the case of creative process because we forget to do those very simple things (at least I forget) since it is not
exactly a primordial activity.
But anyway, the book itself confirms that "there is nothing new under the sun" and it is a good book, worth having for future reference ;)
