He picks up on three themes: first, that mastery is the “slow carpentering of fragments into a harmonious whole”. The expert creates the illusion of something unified by learning each tiny step – whether those steps are the small melodic ideas of a jazz pianist or the rhythmic pattern of a boxer’s jabs.
Second, mastery is about humanity, not perfection. “We never really love an artist’s virtuosity, or if we do, it feels empty,” Gopnik writes. “We love their vibrato, their … way of entangling their learned virtuosity within their unique vulnerability.”
Third, it’s not about “life rules, but real lives”. Gopnik thinks mastery can be found everywhere, from his mother’s kitchen to his driving teacher’s car. “We always overestimate the space between very good and uniquely good,” Gopnik says: we know the names of the Michael Jordans and the Leonardos, but there are countless people who are nearly, if not quite equally, brilliant. And even if most of us won’t become household names, “we are all more varied and capable than we are often allowed to seem”.
— Matthew Cantor, from “The Real Work: On The Mystery of Mastery” by Adam Gopnik book review – the art of expertise” (The Guardian, March 4, 2023)
Notes:
- Adam Gopnik bio
- Portrait of Adam Gupnik by photographer Alana Paterson in NUVO
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