“The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination”, by Daniel J. Boorstin

 

811 pages, Random House, ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0394543956

I reviewed The Discoverers: A History of Man’s Search to Know His World and Himself by Daniel J. Boorstin on May 21^st, 2019, so it was inevitable that I would get to The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination sooner or later (The Seekers is on my radar, too). The late Daniel J. Boorstin was a professor of history at the University of Chicago and the 12^th Librarian of Congress – and somewhat old school, considering that he praises Western history and thought to the hilt. Unlike The Discoverers, which was an original work of history, The Creators is rather a collation and summation of other sources about Western culture. Composite books of this sort can evoke different reactions in the reader: if one has read up on the subject at hand and has at least a passing familiarity with it, then you won’t learn much new about it; if one has not read up on the subject in question and is coming to it as a beginner, then much of what you read here should prove to be interesting and even revelatory, and perhaps whet your appetite for more. Forewarned is forearmed, as they say.

That is the overall vibe I get from The Creators: that it is a rather glorified reference work on the history of ideas, the evolution of music, the development of writing and the progress of painting in the West (the East and all other points on the compass are really not delt with).  However, if one reads The Creators seeking insight into the lives, personalities and motivations of the Creator in question they will be sorely disappointed, for Boorstin’s focus is more on the end results of these artists – the music created, the paintings painted, the works written – than on the men behind them. Oh, don’t get me wrong: the self-contained essays on these giants of the Western Canon – Dante, Shakespeare, Proust, Franklin, Kafka, to name just a few – are as good as you would expect from Boorstin. But while Boorstin is an excellent essayist and gatherer of knowledge, I rather suspect that he was out of his depth in attempting to describe the creative drive of these artists. While the motivations, shortcomings and egos of each subject is examined, they are done so without much input onto their effect on the whole of their work.

If The Creators whets the appetite of a prospective scholar to seek out and discover more on a particular subject then more power to them; indeed, if that was Boorstin’s purpose in writing it then he succeeded. But it is not an end unto itself, and those seeking a more in-depth analysis on any of the people or topics covered therein would do well to look elsewhere.