The Real Work by Adam Gopnik — the mystery of mastery

In The Real Work, Adam Gopnik — an enduring presence in the New Yorker since 1986 — sets out to discover how you get to greatness. In attempting to plumb “the mystery of mastery” Gopnik takes on a wide variety of what might be called apprenticeships. An art critic for many years, he finally decides he must learn to draw. Spoiler alert: he finds it very difficult and isn’t very good at it. His son, Luke, is fascinated by close-up magic. Although you can’t be apprenticed to a magician (they are hardly a crowd quick to share their skills), a gang of them will provide epic case studies in monomaniacal obsession.

Gopnik — and his family — recognise that there’s an aspect of hoary cliché about all this. Although an accomplished cook, he’s never been a baker; he decides to take on mastering bread-making, too. “If you’re so interested in bread-making, you should apprentice with someone big,” his wife Martha says. “Someone who yells at you a lot and teaches you what’s what. You know. Every writer does that now.”

Thankfully Gopnik is not every writer, and his lovely book is a fine testament to wonder. His previous books include Paris to the Moon, an account of his family’s move to Paris in the 1990s and At the Strangers’ Gate, the tale of his coming-of-age in New York City. Gopnik is a writer with a keen, warm eye and a generous heart. In The Real Work he draws attention to what he calls the “asymmetry” of mastery: “we overrate masters and underrate mastery,” he says. He’s got a nice quote on the back from his colleague Malcolm Gladwell, who popularised the idea of the “ten-thousand-hour rule” — that The Beatles played in the Cavern Club for 10,000 hours in order to become The Beatles, to give just one example.

Gopnik’s take is different, however. He knows that even if he worked for 10,000 hours with his drawing teacher Jacob Collins — they meet because they have kids at the same school — he’ll never be a Leonardo or a Michelangelo. But what if the practice itself is the point? It is the practice that makes Gopnik consider what we mean by “representation”. The practice makes us think about the world itself more closely, more deeply. No, these are not startling insights. But Gopnik is such an affable guide, truthful about his own foibles, that the reader is happy to reflect with him.

And he does not only worship those hierophants of the higher arts. He is that rare American, one who has never learnt to drive. When his son turns 20, he resolves that they should learn together. (The son, understandably, has his doubts.) A great hero of this book is Gopnik’s driving instructor, Arturo Leon; as soon as you meet him you too will wish to become the noodle, I’ll say no more than that. But, you may be thinking, any schmo can drive: where’s the mastery? There is, however, the mastery of fear: “Driving, I realised, isn’t really difficult; it’s just extremely dangerous.” But Gopnik conquers his terror and — spoiler alert, again — gets his licence.

Near the end of The Real Work he conquers another terror, a very private one; that he reveals it, and shares his process, his setbacks and triumphs, is extremely moving. The joy of this book is its honesty. “The real work” is a term magicians use to define who’s really got the chops. Gopnik may not be able to handle a deck of cards, but he is a magician, all the same.

The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery by Adam Gopnik, Riverrun, £20, 240 pages

Erica Wagner will be appearing at the Oxford Literary Festival on Saturday April 1 at 4pm