THE REAL WORK

A masterful speculation on the nature and art of mastery.

Gopnik, a longtime critic for the New Yorker and a librettist, tells us the real work is a term used by magicians to refer to the “accumulated craft, savvy, and technical mastery that makes a great magic trick great.” The real work sets lasting, incremental accomplishment apart from transitory achievements, revealing what it means when we accomplish something we thought we could not do. To fully appreciate the real work in others means gaining some sense of how it feels for them to do it, so Gopnik apprenticed himself to masters in various fields—magic, drawing, boxing, dance, etc.—to grasp their singular attainments, strategies, and styles. In doing so, he discovered that mastery is not rare but all around us. It always has its genesis in practice, and it can be embodied in everything from learning to read to hitting a baseball. Within mastery, we also look for the unique human presence that injects it with personality, idiosyncrasy, and difference. As the author notes, we often “overrate masters and underrate mastery.” Gopnik builds his book around Seven Mysteries of Mastery, deciphering these matters with shrewd but self-effacing skill. The principles of magic—“an aesthetic of the clandestine”—also inform his other essays, especially the necessity of “the Other,” an audience, for an artist to find meaning. He demonstrates that regardless of our level of talent and ability, as human beings of parts, we need not be hindered by our limitations but can be goaded by them. The real work is within our capacities. Gopnik’s intelligence gleams on nearly every page, though he occasionally gets a little overly academic for a general audience. Yet, like Malcolm Gladwell, he has a gift for forging connections and making even the seemingly mundane compelling.

In top form, Gopnik makes his subject intellectually and viscerally thrilling.