The Real Work
On the Mystery of Mastery
Published on 14. March 2024
Book
Paperback/Softback
256 pages
978-1-5294-1465-3 (ISBN)
Description
Bestselling author and New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik embarks on a wildly creative inquiry into perhaps the oldest question: how do we learn a new skill?
For decades, Adam Gopnik has been one of our most beloved writers, a brilliantly perceptive critic of art, food, France, and more. But recently, he became obsessed by a fundamental matter: how did the people he was writing about learn their outlandish skill, whether it was drawing a nude or baking a sourdough loaf? In The Real Work-the term magicians use for the accumulated craft that makes for a great trick-Gopnik apprentices himself to an artist, a dancer, a boxer, and even a driving instructor (from the DMV), among others, trying his late-middle-age hand at things he assumed were beyond him. He finds that mastering a skill is a process of methodically breaking down and building up, piece by piece-and that true mastery, in any field, requires mastering other people's minds. Exuberant and profound, The Real Work is ultimately about why we relentlessly seek to better ourselves in the first place.
For decades, Adam Gopnik has been one of our most beloved writers, a brilliantly perceptive critic of art, food, France, and more. But recently, he became obsessed by a fundamental matter: how did the people he was writing about learn their outlandish skill, whether it was drawing a nude or baking a sourdough loaf? In The Real Work-the term magicians use for the accumulated craft that makes for a great trick-Gopnik apprentices himself to an artist, a dancer, a boxer, and even a driving instructor (from the DMV), among others, trying his late-middle-age hand at things he assumed were beyond him. He finds that mastering a skill is a process of methodically breaking down and building up, piece by piece-and that true mastery, in any field, requires mastering other people's minds. Exuberant and profound, The Real Work is ultimately about why we relentlessly seek to better ourselves in the first place.
Reviews / Votes
Among the uplifting pleasures of Gopnik's writing is the range and ardour of his enthusiasms. If his only truly fanatical pursuit is making sentences, he seems to intuit that his best ones - his truest - are those that are unselfconsciously committed to their subject, and vitalised by the passionate curiosity that also reins them in * New Statesman * [A] springboard for a discussion of art, family, empathy, mortality. Via memoir, analysis and criticism he assembles a celebration of the flaws that make us human... Gopnik is at his most moving when addressing the limited time we have on Earth * Guardian * [A] beautifully written, epigrammatic, penetratingly intelligent book. * TLS * Gopnik is everything, then, that you might hope a seasoned writer for The New Yorker to be. He has a mellifluous style that can lead you into deep waters, and then out again, in the space of two or three paragraphs, while still making the experience rewarding and moving seamlessly on to a new theme. The Real Work is the real deal. * Irish Examiner *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Quercus Publishing
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 197 mm
Width: 132 mm
Thickness: 22 mm
Weight
182 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-5294-1465-3 (9781529414653)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
03/2023
riverrun
€3.99
Available for download
Person
Adam Gopnik is a staff writer at The New Yorker. He has won three National Magazine awards for essays and for criticism. The author of numerous bestselling books, including Paris to the Moon, he lives in New York City.