By Joshua Wolf Shenk
Updated Tuesday, Sept. 14, 2010, at 7:00 AM ET
What makes creative relationships work? How do two people—who may be perfectly capable and talented on their own—explode into innovation, discovery, and brilliance when working together? These may seem to be obvious questions. Collaboration yields so much of what is novel, useful, and beautiful that it's natural to try to understand it. Yet looking at achievement through relationships is a new, and even radical, idea. For hundreds of years, science and culture have focused on the self. We talk of self-expression, self-realization. Popular culture celebrates the hero. Schools test intelligence and learning through solo exams. Biographies shape our view of history.
The Myth of the Lone Genius
If relationships shape us so fundamentally, how—in the study of creativity—could they also be so obscure? Why are we preoccupied with the lone genius, with great men (and, more now than in the past, great women)? Evolutionary psychologists might point to how our ancestors focused on the alpha male of a pack or the headman of a tribe. But there are contemporary explanations.
1 + 1 = Infinity
To take on the myth of the lone genius, we need not only to draw on the best science and history, we also need to focus on the fundamental social unit: the pair. As Tony Kushner writes in his notes to Angels in America, "the smallest indivisible unit is two people, not one; one is a fiction." Buckminster Fuller got at the same idea when he wrote that "[u]nity is plural and, at minimum, is two."
So this is the task of this series, to see how creative relationships work. I start with a few assumptions.
First, we can't answer the question with theory. Though science offers some context and insights, we need to look at real lives and see what lessons they offer and what patterns they suggest.
Second, collaborators exist across fields, and in many forms. I'll look for cases in the sciences, arts, business, and philosophy: Watson and Crick belong here alongside Gilbert and Sullivan, Engels and Marx. Hidden partners need scrutiny, as do the frontman and his sidekick, mentors and mentees, masters and muses. Let's define collaboration broadly, as a mutuality that shapes a body of work.
Third, this project won't come from a single mind. Of course, as with everything I've ever written, I'm dependent on my colleagues. But for a subject so vast, I need to invite new relationships—with each of you. If I'm right, your questions, observations, ideas, and criticisms will not only add to my work—it will change its character fundamentally.
Here are some questions I have for you:
Which relationships do you find most compelling? Which bonds suggest some kind of electrical charge? Where does 1 + 1 add up to infinity? Your cases may be historical or contemporary, high culture or lowbrow, famous or obscure. Please give some detail along with your nominees. What do you think accounts for their success? What do you know about their dynamic?
Second, can you suggest a form of relationship that probably eludes mass attention? For example, it was news to me, when I heard from the food writer Amanda Hesser that every star chef has a crucial partner behind the scenes. (She gave the example of Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich.) The music writer Richard Gehr told about the role that the arranger played in making jazz compositions sing. (He mentioned Gil Evans and Miles Davis.) The Jewish scholar—and surfer—Tony Michaels told me about the role of the "board shaper," who observes and intuits just what a particular surfer needs, and custom-crafts a board that best rides the waves. Al Merrick, Tony said, is a legend in the profession
design is a dialog between need & use during conception, and then becomes a topic of conversation upon completion
