A favorite literary anecdote concerns the efforts of Irish
author James Joyce to complete his final opus "Finnegans Wake." The book, filled with elaborate multi-lingual puns and stream of
consciousness, proved rough going for Joyce, whose health and eyesight
were failing. He was aided by young admirers,
including Samuel Beckett, who was willing to take dictation from the
master.
I remember this anecdote from way back in my college days, and found it repeated on the Web site
anecdotage.com:
Once or twice Joyce dictated a bit of "Finnegans Wake" to Samuel
Beckett, though dictation did not work very well for him; in the
middle of one such session there was a knock at the door which Beckett
didn't hear. Afterwards he read back what he had written and
Joyce said, "What's that 'Come in'?" "Yes, you said that," said
Beckett. Joyce thought for a moment, then said, "Let it stand."
I thought of this moment after a creative mistake crept
into my copy. Describing the early futility of the Tampa
Bay Buccaneers, I made fun of their old uniforms. The color of
those classic unis is most often described as "creamsicle
orange." Now for kids my age, a Creamsicle is a classic frozen
treat, first cousin to the Popsicle and Fudgesicle (pronounced fudgicle).
As I typed the phrase, two mistakes appeared. First, I
unconsciously misspelled the word, adding a 'k': creamsickle. Then my finger must have slipped because when I reviewed the text, it
came out "creamsickly." I corrected it immediately, then stopped
and mulled it over. "Creamsickly orange?" Why not?
"Let it stand," I retorted when my editor, Scott Libin, asked me if I
had meant to write it that way.
I can think of one other such mistake, when instead of writing
"gazillion dollars," I wrote "godzillion dollars." This mistake
gave the phrase the connotation of a monstrous amount of money destroying everything in its path, so I
let it stand.
I lean toward the conclusion that such mistakes are not mistakes
at all, but flares sent up by the unconscious side of the brain. I'm not talking about Freudian slips or simple malapropisms, but
something even deeper, a bubbling cauldron of creativity that shoots up
a stream of hot goo when we least expect it.
Have any of you, faithful readers, been seized by such creative mistakes? If so, let us know.
