Do you know Something?
Bongi D D M Radipati | Monday August 21, 2023 06:00
Because they know it: a Southern African stage performer will hold an audience enthralled as he or she breathes life and gives substance and emotion to forms of art; as if he or she is merely going through a routine; an East African athlete will dominate long distance running competition everywhere; a West African soccer player will bedazzle spectators with the theatrics of his feet in each game he plays; and with impish glee; a North African youngster will manage to switch effortlessly between several languages and thus innocently convey his or her multiculturalism.
Then imagine yourself being like these Africans.
It is almost inevitable that your imagining so could demoralize you with self-doubt. But it should not. Adam Gopnik, a humanities critic, writes in his new book, that we are often capable of some level of mastery, even if it may not be remarkable or impeccable. In some understanding that is the mystery of mastery and the reason why you should read the book.
Additionally, you ought to read the book as it makes it tantalisingly easy to grasp mastery.
Gopnik discloses that the inspiration for his book was his attempt to bridge the gap between what others call the ‘knowing that’ of critics such as him (who review the mastery of others) and the ‘knowing how’ of real masters (who perform the masterful acts.) Then he admits that as he grew older, he realised that it was important that we came to understand how masterful individuals perform their mastery. The book thus reflects the ostensible subjects, being the masterful individuals and Gopnik, and the real subjects, being us. It does this through curiosity, a sincerity and a tenderness, all of which are sustained simultaneously and throughout. Its title, “The Real Work,” is derived from a technical term that magicians use to describe the accumulated mastery by one of them which allows him or her to perfect a trick that isn’t necessarily his or hers.
Gopnik tackles the mastery of others in seven performances and disciplines and is thereby tutored. (Seven signifies completeness in many contexts.) He learns that mastery happens through the dismantling of prior techniques and the invention of new ones in a series of small steps.
Unsurprisingly, he also learns that it requires prolonged practice, intuition and the separate steps taken by a masterful individual which then become a sequence of his or her acts. Revealingly, he is shown how mastery is not about how masters have perfected their crafts but about the humanity of their skills as they perform with vulnerability and imperfection. And finally, he realizes that mastery exists in our midst if only we paid attention to those around us. In my view, the book’s least expected lesson is also its most profound. It is that “it is very hard to do a difficult thing; it is very important in life to learn to do a difficult thing; and once you have learnt to do a difficult thing, you will always discover that there is someone else who does it better.” This is a lesson about purposeful living and humility which is as relevant for us as parents as it is for our children.
The Real Work: On the mystery of mastery by Adam Gopnik (Liveright, 2023, USD30; Amazon USD24; Exclusive Books BWP531)
Recall that sometime in the 1980s, together with some canons of African and Western literature, we read an Arthur A Miller play as a prescribed literature text. Recall that it didn’t matter then that we were high school students in Southern Africa or other parts of the Commonwealth. Recall how challenging and eye opening that experience was to us. Then as we reckoned Miller’s time with our time; and as we realised how he had shown us a door to our deeper reflection by opening a window to our imagination, we came to comprehend life from his perspective.
Miller (1915-2005) was an outright Yankee. He was born, raised and lived almost all his life in New York City. He later made the place the setting for his prodigious creative and literary work. University education out of his home state may have honed his natural talent for playwriting, but it was after his return to his home and roots, and the harnessing of that talent, that his creative abilities shone even brighter. Significantly, although Jewish, Miller was a moralist in the philosophical sense but not in the religious sense. In turn, through his drama, he cast a penetrating light on society’s ideas of success, opportunity, ambition, consumerism, and family. These are themes found in the West as they are elsewhere. Importantly, he knew something. He knew that ordinary life was capable of being extraordinary. He also knew that the life experiences of ordinary people were as worthy of exploration as any other. You ought to read John Lahr’s unflinching biography of Miller, if not for any reason, at least for these ones.
Perceptive even at a young age, he became America's literary conscience almost all his life and a global dramatist and intellectual during all of the 20th century. Because he was slim and tall, it was understandable that he was irresistible to women. Closer to our region, Miller was the first person that Nelson Mandela allowed to interview him for public television after his release from long imprisonment. These matters and others course throughout this book and offer us Miller at the intersection of his creative genius, personal life, politics, the decades of his output and the reach of his magnum opus. His difficult political play, The Crucible - a rarity as both a tragedy and a classic - was our senior high school textbook in Molepolole in the mid 1980s. Over our few meetings before his death, Miller was intrigued that public schools in some villages and in a small African country, which naturally had close horizons, would prescribe any of his works as a textbook. He expressed the view that this country must have had excellent educationists. It was impossible to disagree with his assessment. For our generation, because he excelled in invention, acuity and language and thus knew something, Miller remains a master in the Western literature canon.
Arthur Miller: American witness by John Lahr (Yale, 2022, USD40; Amazon USD31.95; Exclusive Books BWP530)
*Radipati is a regular Mmegi contributor