[INFJ] INFJ writers

[scortia]

Dante, really? Most of the Divine Comedy was a petty attempt at vengeance.

 

[purplesunset]

Dante, really? Most of the Divine Comedy was a petty attempt at vengeance.

This is why I stay away from, and am greatly annoyed by threads where people try to type celebrities. The opinions can go in any direction, and no one is right. People just use their own biases to type the person.


For example, if we use strict MBTI definitions, Sherlock Holmes should turn out to be an ESXP.

But of course, since he likes to think, he must be an INTX

I had planned to start a long, ranty thread about Sherlock Holmes and MBTI but thought better (or worse) of it.

 

[neptunesnet]

This is why I stay away from, and am greatly annoyed by threads where people try to type celebrities. The opinions can go in any direction, and no one is right. People just use their own biases to type the person.


For example, if we use strict MBTI definitions, Sherlock Holmes should turn out to be an ESXP.

But of course, since he likes to think, he must be an INTX

I had planned to start a long, ranty thread about Sherlock Holmes and MBTI but thought better (or worse) of it.

I think you're right to a point; however, when posters have valid justification to back up their typing (i.e, the author's writing style, subject matter, life story, etc), the discussion gets really interesting. You leanr something new; you're given an opportunity to see the author and his work with different eyes and you may enjoy it with this new perspective. Indeed, it is true that many times we are biased in typing by how well we identify with a piece of literature by a specific author, but I think that can be eradicated with further discussion amongst posters that aids in examining in what ways an author can be this type or that one.

I think you should start the Sherlock Holmes thread, especially if you feel you have some insight on the character that may have been overlooked.

 

[purplesunset]

I think you're right to a point; however, when posters have valid justification to back up their typing (i.e, the author's writing style, subject matter, life story, etc), the discussion gets really interesting. You leanr something new; you're given an opportunity to see the author and his work with different eyes and you may enjoy it with this new perspective. Indeed, it is true that many times we are biased in typing by how well we identify with a piece of literature by a specific author, but I think that can be eradicated with further discussion amongst posters that aids in examining in what ways an author can be this type or that one.

I think you should start the Sherlock Holmes thread, especially if you feel you have some insight on the character that may have been overlooked.

What forum should I put the Sherlock thread in?

 

[neptunesnet]

What forum should I put the Sherlock thread in?

Erh... Arts & Entertainment? Popular Culture & Type? The Bonfire?

Take your pick.

 

[Lotr246]

Here were some of my thoughts I posted earlier on Ulysses:

After reading Ulysses, Joyce is definitely Ni dominant, and I'm inclined to say he's an INFJ. The symbolism of Leopold Bloom as a Christ-figure and the empathy Joyce communicates through his character seem to point towards F. And throughout the novel, Joyce is very concerned with the moral judgments of his society. Bloom acts to point out the other characters' misguided beliefs.

I quoted a passage, too, but I can't seem to find it. It was about when Leopold Bloom is at the cemetery burying one of his friends. He thinks about the heart, and how it's really just a pump. Ni-seeing past the interpretations others have set up. The whole novel explores this. He also thinks about the futility of words/prayers, something along the lines of, not verbatim, 'well for you, but not for him in the ground':

 

[Qre:us]

All my typings are through their writings...

...with very few drawn from addition stories of the writers' personal lives. So, in essence, I'm typing the vibe of their writings.

Here were some of my thoughts I posted earlier on Ulysses:

After reading Ulysses, Joyce is definitely Ni dominant, and I'm inclined to say he's an INFJ. The symbolism of Leopold Bloom as a Christ-figure and the empathy Joyce communicates through his character seem to point towards F. And throughout the novel, Joyce is very concerned with the moral judgments of his society. Bloom acts to point out the other characters' misguided beliefs.

I quoted a passage, too, but I can't seem to find it. It was about when Leopold Bloom is at the cemetery burying one of his friends. He thinks about the heart, and how it's really just a pump. Ni-seeing past the interpretations others have set up. The whole novel explores this. He also thinks about the futility of words/prayers, something along the lines of, not verbatim, 'well for you, but not for him in the ground':

Agreed!

E.g., A portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and I remember the passage, "Pull out his eyes....Apologise" that the little Stephen chants while hiding under the table, after hearing the adults speak about him and that he needs to apologise, or else, the eagles.... I.e., the boy doesn't really understand what eagles are and how they will pull out his eyes (unknown), yet, he understands/doesn't that it's a threat of punishment. It's all confusion but with clarity. It's internally chaotic, his state of mind. Joyce obviously referred to the Bible passage for this line, and, did it in a rhyme form that mimics (invokes) that passage (Old Testement - looked it up in my copy's "guide to understanding all the man's symbolisms and terms", Proverb 30:17):
The eyes that mocketh his father, and despiseth to disobey his mother, the raven of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it.

There's a lot of interesting ways that language is used to invoke a feeling from the writing, using highly abstract (often, seemingly obscure) symbolisms as parallel to further entrench us into the feeling, and it's very internally driven, yet, the associations all share a common, beautifully elegant thread of "logic". NiFeTi.


Like Joyce, to read Eliot, most people would need a footnote key to understand all the symbolisms after symbolisms laden within it. And, there's an unity, a cohesiveness to the symbolisms, like it seems to get away from you, and in the end, there's this profound revelation of how they're all tied together as one compact entity. NiTi. Hence, why INFJ over INFP.

I disagree with Marquez being an INFJ. I think he's almost certainly an INFP. The unrestrained, spontaneous "story-telling" is more NFP than NFJ; he sees stories in vivid pictures and metaphores, not symbols, and his imagination is directed outwards (Ne), not inwards (Ni). I agree with the rest being Ni-doms, although I'm not sure if all of them are INFJs.

I could be convinced of Marquez as INFP.

I remember a thread like that, but I was under the impression that the general consensus was that he was a Ni-dom, and most likely an INFJ? I've only read a few excerpts from Ulysses, but I vote for an INFJ also. It's not typical for INFPs to write books which are possible to be understood only with an extra key for symbols (Well, a really smart INFJ in our class seemed to understand Ulysses off-hand, but I confess I really can't.)
I agree about Marquez. I haven't read anything by Vonnegut yet so I can't tell.

Bolded, exactly.

vonnegut, garcia marquez, and eliot are difficult reads for me. i thought vonnegut fit as entp pretty well. and i have trouble deciding for both garcia marquez and borges whether it is infj or enfp. what is your confidence level with these typings?

Eliot, I'm pretty convinced about the INFJ. Marquez, I can agree on xnfp, but I don't really see primarly extravertedness as motivation in how he imagines his literary worlds. Vonnegut, what makes you see Ne versus Ni (ENTP versus INFJ)?

 

[Lotr246]

...with very few drawn from addition stories of the writers' personal lives. So, in essence, I'm typing the vibe of their writings.



Agreed!

Like Joyce, to read Eliot, most people would need a footnote key to understand all the symbolisms after symbolisms laden within it. And, there's an unity, a cohesiveness to the symbolisms, like it seems to get away from you, and in the end, there's this profound revelation of how they're all tied together as one compact entity. NiTi. Hence, why INFJ over INFP.



I could be convinced of Marquez as INFP.



Bolded, exactly.



Eliot, I'm pretty convinced about the INFJ. Marquez, I can agree on xnfp, but I don't really see extravertedness in how he imagines his literary worlds. Vonnegut, what makes you see Ne versus Ni (ENTP versus INFJ)?

Yeah! Another convinced of Joyce's INFJ-ness! That is precisely it, what you wrote. Ulysses (as are all of his other works) is just amazing. His prose is so poetic. Have you read it or any of his other works? Ulysses isn't a book to read, but one to experience. I remember waking up in the morning with quotes from the book in my mind. I've never tried Finnegans Wake, though. I must say I'm a little terrified to.

 

[Qre:us]

Yeah! Another convinced of Joyce's INFJ-ness! That is precisely it, what you wrote. Ulysses (as are all of his other works) is just amazing. His prose is so poetic. Have you read it or any of his other works? Ulysses isn't a book to read, but one to experience. I remember waking up in the morning with quotes from the book in my mind. I've never tried Finnegans Wake, though. I must say I'm a little terrified to.

I added a bit more example for Joyce to that post of mine. If you've read A portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, do you agree?

I haven't tackled Finnegans Wake, done Ulysses. That man can give me a mental workout culminating in an intellectual orgasm.

PS - nice avatar.

I've always thought James Joyce,

There is no way Joyce is remotely Fi or Ne.

His writing are drenched in invoking feeling-thoughts, but, there's a detached quality to the way the feelings are projected and invoked (it taps into every-man), almost as if the writer himself, along with the audience, is discovering its nuances as he writes of them, plays with how to represent them. There's no conviction of the "feeling" beforehand, it seems, as I would see in Fi-doms, like, say, Shakespeare, where you can see where the feeling is going, what its intention is. NiFe unravels itself as it goes along, until you reach the epiphany.

Ni versus Ne, Space Oddity summed it up well, in terms of the difference in its manifestations in writing:

I disagree with Marquez being an INFJ. I think he's almost certainly an INFP. The unrestrained, spontaneous "story-telling" is more NFP than NFJ; he sees stories in vivid pictures and metaphores, not symbols, and his imagination is directed outwards (Ne), not inwards (Ni). I agree with the rest being Ni-doms, although I'm not sure if all of them are INFJs.

Some INFJ writers whose type I'm pretty sure of are Dostoyevski, William Faulkner, Angela Carter, Milan Kundera and William Blake. The first thing to notice would be their frequent use of symbols and a great "compactness" of their works; their imagination is directed inwards, it specifies, not amplifies. Also, Kundera plays a lot with all possible associations of certain words/details, which I've been told is also a Ni thing. As opposed to INTJ writers, INFJ writers' works tend to have a great emotional charge.

J.K. Rowling is also an INFJ - one could see it in the way she takes old "ingredients" and makes something absolutely new out of them. Her biography and interviews show her as a total INFJ too.

 

[the state i am in]

i don't think garcia marquez is infp either. i think he's N dominant, i'm just not sure which type of N dominant.

shakespeare is almost certainly Ti-Fe. i would say he's an entp. i'm in a shakespeare course right now and the context drives the emotional resonance not the character's inner experience. he has to be an Ne dominant, his phrases are too easy and endlessly.

 

[Cronkle]

Notes from Undeground is fantastic so far.

:]

 

[Malcontent]

Gustave Flaubert was an INFJ

and JD Salinger obvious INFJ too.

 

[Sniffles]

I haven't read Joyce yet, but I can relate to what he once said in reply to a question of why he didn't leave the Catholic Church: "I may have lost my faith, but I haven't lost my mind."

 

[Cronkle]

Gustave Flaubert was an INFJ

and JD Salinger obvious INFJ too.

Why do you say that?

How, specifically, do they categorize INFJs and the processes they posses?

 

[Killjoy]

Gustave Flaubert was an INFJ

and JD Salinger obvious INFJ too.

I'd say Salinger was INFP.

 

[neptunesnet]

shakespeare is almost certainly Ti-Fe. i would say he's an entp. i'm in a shakespeare course right now and the context drives the emotional resonance not the character's inner experience. he has to be an Ne dominant, his phrases are too easy and endlessly.

I'd have to disagree.

Shakespeare uses Ne most definitely, but Fi absolutely.

Fi doesn't necessarily have to construct all its work from inner experience - although Shakespeare does occasionally (i.e, Hamlet was written after the death of his son) - or create stories based primarily on allowing solid character development to move the plot forward. Fi is capable of engaging, thoroughly understanding, and even actively participating in gasp social interactions and interpersonal relationships. What Shakespeare does frequently in his work is highlight many of the social conventions of his time and instead of embrace them (Fe) he pokes fun at them (Fi) [<<<I could be wrong about Fe and Fi here]. He tends to loathe hypocrisy, esp from the clergy, and the formality of courtiers and others who scheme or desire to be a part of the exclusivity of the royal cabinet. Also, many of his themes center around appearance vs reality and he appreciates authenticity in his characters who have it.

Further, I just can't ignore Hamlet. He was always sincere, even when he was full of sorrow, or frustration. His emotional state seemed to "change" so suddenly that it felt almost as if he were mad instead of merely feigning it. It was one of the few times I'd actually identified that well with a fictional character [Kenneth Branagh's interpretation is the one I keep thinking of. I prefer it even over the live plays I've seen]. Shakespeare's Hamlet in my opinion was one of his best plays because it was his most fluid. He knew Hamlet.

Plus, I think only an INFP could have captured another INFP that well in words and on paper without making him look overly sentimental and pathetic.

...

But then again,

I could see ENTP. I just don't think that he is though.

 

[the state i am in]

I'd have to disagree.

Shakespeare uses Ne most definitely, but Fi absolutely.

Fi doesn't necessarily have to construct all its work from inner experience - although Shakespeare does occasionally (i.e, Hamlet was written after the death of his son) - or create stories based primarily on allowing solid character development to move the plot forward. Fi is capable of engaging, thoroughly understanding, and even actively participating in gasp social interactions and interpersonal relationships. What Shakespeare does frequently in his work is highlight many of the social conventions of his time and instead of embrace them (Fe) he pokes fun at them (Fi) [<<<I could be wrong about Fe and Fi here]. He tends to loathe hypocrisy, esp from the clergy, and the formality of courtiers and others who scheme or desire to be a part of the exclusivity of the royal cabinet. Also, many of his themes center around appearance vs reality and he appreciates authenticity in his characters who have it.

Further, I just can't ignore Hamlet. He was always sincere, even when he was full of sorrow, or frustration. His emotional state seemed to "change" so suddenly that it felt almost as if he were mad instead of merely feigning it. It was one of the few times I'd actually identified that well with a fictional character [Kenneth Branagh's interpretation is the one I keep thinking of. I prefer it even over the live plays I've seen]. Shakespeare's Hamlet in my opinion was one of his best plays because it was his most fluid. He knew Hamlet.

Plus, I think only an INFP could have captured another INFP that well in words and on paper without making him look overly sentimental and pathetic.

...

But then again,

I could see ENTP. I just don't think that he is though.

my shakespeare teacher is enfp. he reads into shakespeare all kinds of things i don't see (tho he's one of my favorite people i've met in ages). my first paper will be on 1 henry iv. i will be examining hal's authenticity. prince hal seems like an entp. definite usage of Fe and the language of the other and Ti plotting/precision, opportunism, etc. shakespeare's humor and comedy feel way more entp to me than infp or enfp. he's gotta be an Ne dominant. he's so less tied to values and instead invested in this overarching view of humanity that pierces through the social values of the time. not to change them but to reveal his perceptions of human drama. this feels more Ti to me than Fi, although admittedly i do not have the shakespeare biography and i don't have access to his personal values. to me it feels more oriented towards what is true and what is not true than what is subjectively true for him. the drama speaks for itself and all evaluations can find meaning in it and identify with it, for it's human drama free of any particular constant point of view, rationale, judgment, etc. the true statements are the "all the world's a stage and the men and women are merely players." this does not feel Fi dom to me.

i also think the greatest shakespeare critic (and a brilliant rhetorician), kenneth burke, was probably an entp. he just gets what shakespeare is doing as far as composition that is not about feeling at all. but about a different kind of truth about the human story. sometimes i wonder if balzac is an entp too, he strikes my fancy in similar ways.

 

[hokie912]

Milan Kundera is another writer that tends to be unquestioned in his INFJ-ness.

Why?

Because!

No, really, I think his writing and Dostoevsky's exemplify Ni-Fe. Kundera takes a simple idea and explores it further, going deeper and turning it inside-out in a way that, rather than being random, curls back around and fits into the theme of the narrative. His preferred topics are love, beauty, existence. He focuses on teasing out the psychological motivations of his characters and relating them to universal truths. And, finally, he regards his characters with a sometimes detached, almost (but not quite) cynical wit I tend to associate with INFJs. Plus, based on his personal life it sounds very much like he is one.

The Ne writers I've read are more imaginative in general, giving stories scope and dimension, but tend not to take a single idea and explore it to such depth. It really depends on what you're in the mood for.

 

[neptunesnet]

my shakespeare teacher is enfp. he reads into shakespeare all kinds of things i don't see (tho he's one of my favorite people i've met in ages). my first paper will be on 1 henry iv. i will be examining hal's authenticity. prince hal seems like an entp. definite usage of Fe and the language of the other and Ti plotting/precision, opportunism, etc. shakespeare's humor and comedy feel way more entp to me than infp or enfp. he's gotta be an Ne dominant. he's so less tied to values and instead invested in this overarching view of humanity that pierces through the social values of the time. not to change them but to reveal his perceptions of human drama. this feels more Ti to me than Fi, although admittedly i do not have the shakespeare biography and i don't have access to his personal values. to me it feels more oriented towards what is true and what is not true than what is subjectively true for him. the drama speaks for itself and all evaluations can find meaning in it and identify with it, for it's human drama free of any particular constant point of view, rationale, judgment, etc. the true statements are the "all the world's a stage and the men and women are merely players." this does not feel Fi dom to me.

i also think the greatest shakespeare critic (and a brilliant rhetorician), kenneth burke, was probably an entp. he just gets what shakespeare is doing as far as composition that is not about feeling at all. but about a different kind of truth about the human story. sometimes i wonder if balzac is an entp too, he strikes my fancy in similar ways.

I hear you, state. But I can't not think of him as INFP. Something about it feels off.
Let me think on it a little more - although I can't guarantee a change of mind.

 

[Lotr246]

Graham Greene

W. Somerset Maugham