PERSONAL
Born December 9, 1933, in London, England; came to United States,
1956; naturalized citizen, 1969; son of Victor (a British civil
servant) and Amelia (Adler) Brilliant; married Dorothy Low Tucker
(vice-president of family business), June 28, 1968. Education:
University of London, B.A. (honors), 1955; Claremont Graduate
School, M. A., 1957; University of California, Berkeley, Ph.D.,
1964.
ADDRESSES
Home and office - 117 West Valerio Street, Santa Barbara, CA 93101.
CAREER
Edgware Gazette, Edgware, Middlesex, England, foreign correspondent,
1951; Hollywood High School, Los Angeles, CA, English teacher,
1956-57; University of California, Berkeley, teaching assistant
and reader in history, 1960-63; Central Oregon Community College,
Bend, professor of history, 1964-65; Chapman College, Orange,
CA, Floating Campus Division, professor of history, 1965-67; Brilliant
Enterprises (publishers), Santa Barbara, CA, founder and president,
1967- . Writer and cartoonist; columnist and reporter for Midtown
Record, San Francisco, CA, 1967-69; professor of history at Santa
Barbara Community College, CA, 1973-74.
MEMBER
International Platform Association, National Association of Television
Arts and Sciences, Newspaper Comics Council, Northern California
Cartoonists Association, Group Against Smoking Pollution (GASP),
Human Understanding of Sound and Hearing (HUSH), Mensa.
AWARDS, HONORS
Graduate scholarship, Claremont Graduate School, 1956; Haynes
fellow, University of California, Berkeley, 1962; Panama Pacific
fellow, University of California, Berkeley, 1963; United Nations
population cartoon competition runner up, 1976; Raymond B. Bragg
award for humanism in the arts and entertainment, 1987.
WRITINGS
Unpoemed Titles, C.O.C. Press, 1965.
The Haight-Ashbury Songbook, H-B Publications, 1967.
Pot-Shots, Brilliant Enterprises, 1968.
I May Not Be Totally Perfect, but Parts of Me Are Excellent, Woodbridge
Press, 1979.
I Have Abandoned My Serch for Truth and Am Now Looking for a Good
Fantasy, Woodbridge,
Press 1980.
Appreciate Me Now and Avoid the Rush, Woodbridge Press 1981.
I Feel Much Better, Now That I’ve Given Up Hope, Woodbridge
Press, 1984.
All I Want Is a Warm Bed and a Kind Word and Unlimited Power,
Woodbridge Press, 1985
I Try to Take One Day at a Time, but Sometimes Several Days Attack
Me at Once, Woodbridge
Press 1988.
The Great Car Craze: How Southern California Collided with the
Automobile in the 1920’s,
Woodbridge Press, 1989.
We’ve Been Through So Much Together, and Most of It Was Your
Fault, Woodbridge Press,
1990.
(Illustrator) Patricia Chamberlain, Being Somebody: Spring the
Mind-Traps that Keep You Fat
and Frustrated with Your Life, edited by Barbara Kyper, Dundas-Devonhills
Associate
Publishers, 1991.
(Illustrator) Ron Garland, Working and Managing in a New Age,
Humanics Ltd., 1992.
Be a Good Neighbor and Leave Me Alone (essays and verse), Woodbridge
Press, 1992.
I Want To Reach Your Mind . . . Where Is It Currently Located?,
Woodbridge Press, 1993.
Also author of column, "Trash from Ash," appearing in
San Francisco Midtown Record, 1967-69, and of feature panel cartoon,
"Pot-Shots," syndicated to more than thirty newspapers,
including Chicago Tribune and Detroit Free Press.
SIDELIGHTS
Ashleigh Brilliant is best known for his widely syndicated captioned
drawings, but he nonetheless says he prefers to think of himself
as a "philosopher-prophet-poet rather than a cartoonist."
Called "Brilliant Thoughts" or "Pot-Shots,"
this distinct literary form came into being as an unexpected result
of Brilliant’s first painting exhibit. While the paintings
themselves garnered only a luke-warm response, their odd titles
aroused much attention. "Soon," Brilliant recalled,
"I was making lists of titles for pictures I had not yet
painted." Not long after, he was illustrating his "titles"
with pen and ink drawings and publishing them as postcards.
Decades later, Brilliant’s "Pot-Shots" have been
collected into several books with titles like I May Not Be Totally
Perfect, but Parts of Me Are Excellent and I Have Abandoned My
Search for Truth and Am Now Looking for a Good Fantasy. Over the
years Brilliant has evolved a strict definition of what a "Pot-Shot"
is. None can rhyme, and all must be kept within his self-imposed
limit of seventeen words -- one for each syllable in a haiku.
(He actually realized early on that he seldom used more than sixteen
words at a time, but allotted himself one extra -- for emergencies.)
As Brilliant explained to Independent Press-Telegram critic Candy
Cooper, he writes within an uncompromising framework and avoids
local cultural references because "Pot-Shots have always
been a deliberate attempt to reach out to the world."
"Pot-Shots" have been appearing in newspapers across
the United States since 1975 and can be found on items such as
tote bags, coffee mugs, and t-shirts, a fact which prompted Rocky
Mountain News writer Robert Denerstein to refer to Brilliant as
"a one-man, multimedia cottage industry." According
to Cooper, however, "Brilliant is a man alternately grateful
and revolted by his success at hitting the funny bone of the American
public. He was aiming at the brain." A member of Mensa an
organization for people with high IQs, Brilliant (his real name)
is described by Cooper as a writer who "longs for the praise
of scholars, and the recognition of a serious writer." Brilliant
himself likens his "Pot-Shots" to Japanese Haiku poems
and said he would "like to win the Nobel Prize in Literature
. . . for creating a new genre of poetry." In fact, Brilliant’s
publisher, Woodbridge Press, has nominated him for a Pulitzer
Prize. Although he lost, he nonetheless feels "Pot-Shots,"
like haiku, illustrate a way to "reduce literature to its
pure essential." He described "Pot-Shots" as "very
concise descriptions of reality," and thinks that they are
simultaneously simple and complex. He explained: "It’s
however you choose to interpret it -- like a poem."
In an interview with Denerstein, Brilliant stated: "I don’t
have any more insight than anyone else," adding "I just
have the ability to express things. The reason people admire what
I say is that it’s really what they think." The result
of this, according to Lloyd G. Carter of the Los Angeles Times,
is that Brilliant is "lionized by his fans." This popularity
is evidenced by the "amazing amount of praise and fan mail"
he receives that he "cherish(es) more than money." It
is also apparent from the attempts by others to use his copyrighted
"Pot-Shots" on merchandise without his permission. When
a "Pot-Shot" appeared on an unlicensed t-shirt, Brilliant
successfully sued the company for 18,000 dollars. Said Brilliant:
"It seems crazy, thinking of words as property, but the only
thing I have to sell is this work. It’s my only property,
and I must insist on a claim to it."
Brilliant also lays claim to being the highest paid author in
the world -- per word. In 1982 he received $15,000 from Hallmark
Cards in the form of a non-refundable advance for a proposed series
of greeting cards featuring "Pot-Shots." As Brilliant
explained in a press release, "after they made the deal and
paid the advance, their plans changed, and they dropped the whole
project." Three cards, however, "somehow got through"
and, as a result, Brilliant calculates his pay as $468.75 per
word, an amount which beats the previous record of $15 per word
held by Hemingway. Recently, Brilliant has claimed yet another
title, that of "world’s most-quoted living author,"
as gauged by Reader’s Digest’s "Quotable Quotes"
feature; according to the magazine, Brilliant is the second most
popular source of quotable quotes, edging out Will Rogers but
still trailing Mark Twain.
Although Brilliant has said he would "like to be a thinker
in residence on some college campus," he admits to not having
received many offers. Instead, he will continue writing his thoughts
because, as he told Carter, "This career of mine other people
seem to think is worth doing so I keep doing it."
BIOGRAPHICAL/CRITICAL SOURCES:
Periodicals
Chicago Tribune Book World, January 11, 1981.
Independent, December 10, 1986
Independent Press-Telegram, July 2, 1980
Los Angeles Times, January 29, 1984; May 1, 1988.
New Zealand Herald, March 31, 1973.
People, March 16, 1992.
Rocky Mountain News, April 25, 1980.
Scene (Santa Barbara), December 4, 1987.
Terra, winter 1990/spring 1991.
Times Literary Supplement, March 20, 1987.
Toronto Star, July 24, 1992.
Wall Street Journal, January 6, 1992. ###