Kaustab Choudhury’s Reviews > Daily Rituals: How Artists Work > Status Update

Day 60: Jean-Paul Sartre. "Three hours in the morning, three hours in the evening. This is my only rule." That makes the Sartre's life sound relaxed, but misleadingly. His diet over a period of 24 hours included 2 packs of cigarettes and several stuffed with black tobacco, more than a quart of alcohol, 200 milligrams of amphetamines, 15 grams of aspirin, several grams of barbiturates, plus coffee, tea and rich meals.

Day 59: Pablo Picasso. Who hasn't heard of Picasso? But who has heard of the fact that, in the company of people, he would oscillate between gregarious and anti-social? However, painting never bored or tired him. Even after three or four hours standing in front of a canvas, he did not feel the slightest fatigue. “That’s why painters live so long,” he said. “While I work I leave my body outside the door."

Day 58: Erik Satie. The scholar Roger Shattuck once proposed that Satie’s unique sense of musical beat, and his appreciation of “the possibility of variation within repetition,” could be traced to this “endless walking back and forth across the same landscape day after day.” He did so wearing the same colour and style of velvet suits with matching hats, every day. Regularity and rhythm do seem to have a link.

Day 56: Samuel Beckett. His best works were conceived in a period of intense creative activity that Beckett would later refer to as "the siege in the room", which began with an epiphany at the end of the pier one winter. "It was spent largely in his room, isolated from the world, coming face to face with his own demons, attempting to explore the workings of his mind."

Day 55: Marcel Proust. Yet another author whose works I haven't yet had the gall to pick up. "It almost seems as though a writer’s works, like the water in an artesian well, mount to a height which is in proportion to the depth to which suffering has penetrated his heart."

Day 54: James Joyce. An author whose works I haven't yet had the courage to pick up. "A man of small virtue, inclined to extravagance and alcoholism" is how the Irish novelist once described himself.

Day 53: Franz Kafka. One of the biggest names in literature, his life was not as illustrious as his achievements. He often had to work overtime, lived in a cramped apartment with family, and could only write at night. “Time is short, my strength is limited, the office is a horror, the apartment is noisy, and if a pleasant, straightforward life is not possible then one must try to wriggle through by subtle maneuvers.”

Day 52: Henry James. A man of habits, both short-term and long-term. For instance, he habitually started working on a new book the instant he was finished with the previous one.

Day 51: William James. James argued that we must make our nervous system our ally instead of enemy. This is to be done by forming "habits of order". “Recollect,” he noted, 'that only when habits of order are formed can we advance to really interesting fields of action—and consequently accumulate grain on grain of wilful choice like a very miser—never forgetting how one link dropped undoes an indefinite number."

Day 50: Immanuel Kant. One of the most important philosophers. Kant adopted what he called "a certain uniformity in the way of living and in
the matters about which I employ my mind". At the core of one’s character, he thought, were maxims: a handful of essential rules for living that, once formulated, should be followed for the rest of one’s life. But alas, we do not have a written list of Kant’s personal maxims.