#adam gopnik

[iirulancorrino]

The idea—which has sprung to dangerous new life in America as much on the progressive as on the theocratic side of the argument—that words are equal to actions reflects the most primitive form of word magic, and has the same relation to the actual philosophy of language that astrology has to astronomy. Sticks and stones really can break bones. Words can never hurt you, just challenge your mind and categories. (And yes, of course, some words are vile and can be rejected by our calling them so. No one wants to protect authors from bad reviews, even those by autocrats; it is threats from bullies that they need protection from.) Everyone has a right to be offended by whatever offends them, and everyone on earth has a right to articulate their offense. No one has a right to maim or kill someone because our words offend them. Blasphemy is not a mighty category demanding respect but a pitiful invention of those who cannot tolerate having their pet convictions criticized. It demands no respect from anyone; on the contrary, it requires solidarity among all decent people in opposing it. An insult to an ideology is not the same as a threat made to a people. It is the opposite of a threat made to a person. To assume the criticism of ideas as assaults on people is the end of the liberal civilization. The idea that we should be free to do our work and offer our views without extending a frightened veto to those who threaten to harm us isn’t just part of what we mean by free expression—it is close to the whole of what we mean by civilized life.

Adam Gopnik, “Salman Rushdie and the Power of Words” (x)

[scenesandscreens]

Tár (2022)

Director - Todd Field, Cinematography - Florian Hoffmeister

"It is always the question that involves the listener, it's never the answer."

[toothachebench]

sources in tags

[weneedtotalkaboutcate]

Cate photographed by Pari Dukovic for The New Yorker.

[dk-thrive]

Repetition and perseverance and a comical degree of commitment

It seems that if you surrender sufficiently to allow a simple pattern to imprint itself on your mind, an inordinate gift will blossom. At least, that is the promise of mastery. Commit to the tilts or the finger patterns – or for that matter to being the noodle – and you’ll achieve something that, if not exactly mastery, is at least an actual accomplishment, a happy patch, a bit of software that you had never had before. Having it now, however poorly you install it, makes yours an expanded and extended mind and body, a significantly different self than the one you were assigned at birth. Repetition and perseverance and a comical degree of commitment – simply the commitment both to recognise the absurdity of your effort and the sincerity of its goal – are disproportionately rewarded in the real world of the real work. —  Adam Gopnik, from “The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery” (Excerpt in The Guardian, Feb 26 2023)

[addictivecontradiction]

Tár, 2022

[smokeandsteam]

god

no. 2 creator unknown // no. 4 anne sexton, “the civil war”

[theblackestofsuns]

Milton Glaser’s poster for Mahalia Jackson, illustrating Adam Gopnik’s piece in this week’s New Yorker magazine.

[hiles-fr]

Martha Parket & Adam Gopnik

[randomrichards]

TAR:

Acclaimed composer

On the verge of a breakdown

By her past misdeeds

[emmaklee]

[filmonizirani-filmo]

Steve! (2024) - Mini-serija Godina: 2024 Žanr: Dokumentarna serija Glavne uloge: Steve Martin, Jerry Seinfeld, Lorne Michaels, Adam Gopnik, John https://filmonizirani.net/steve-2024/

[dk-thrive]

We never really love an artist’s virtuosity, or if we do, it feels empty. We love their vibrato.

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)

[pleasanttumb]

Poor Meaulnes? Poor Fournier? Lucky Meaulnes, lucky Fournier, perhaps, for all that they foresaw, and for all that they were not forced to see. There are worse things in the world to be prisoners of than childhood.

_ Adam Gopnik