Abhishek Kulkarni

In every field, things get so specialized. The generalist -- and artists are often, by necessity, generalists -- winds up feeling a sense of futility. At the moment I'm trying, for example, to write about Kobo Abe, the Japanese novelist. I'm reading him, as I have to, in English. There are Japanese souls who have spent the last few decades pondering him. Am I going to come up with anything new or special? Well, my hope is yes. I cling to the optimistic belief that the haphazard and the hopscotch, the creature that sips among many flowers, may actually come up with something. It's finally an irrational belief, in most cases, an unrealistic goal. But one holds to the sense that just sipping broadly enough, from enough flowers, strange and fruitful pollinations will arise.
Brad Leithauser, MacArthur Fellow In conversation, March 4, 1988, Amherst College