Movie Reviews for Writers: Kill Your Darlings

Can I first say that I freakin’ loved this movie? Harry Potter, sorry, Daniel Radcliffe shined in this “based on a true story” narrative the intertwined lives of Allen Ginsberg, Lucien Carr, Jack Kerouac, and William Burroughs. It’s chock full of great moments of acting, dialog, and (most important to this blog) insight about the writing life. 

There are lots of lessons to be gleaned from this film ranging from the importance of a writer’s group of friends and comrades in typewriters, the passing on of a writer’s legacy from Allen’s father to Allen himself, and how far to push against the status quo and how important is that for a writer. 

But the thing I really want to zoom in on is this line that young Ginsberg hears in his poetry class: 

“There can be no creation before imitation.” 

Allen’s dad is a renowned poet of the traditional form and structure and rhyme, and Allen is, well, not. He loves his Whitman and the breaking of the structure to discvoer freedom to say something that to him is more honest. His professor is, in essence, saying that he needs to forsake free verse to write rhyming poetry, but is he really? (Plot point I won’t spoil for you.)

However, even if we simply take him at his word, the statement holds true. All writers tend to begin by imitating the writers who influenced them. Then they tend to imitate the writers to influence them away from those initial influences. Then, if they’re really blessed by the muses, they are able to synthesize all those influences together with a bit of their own personal experience into some amorphous, mysterious literary alchemy we call “style.” 

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