I’m sure David Brooks works very hard. In fact, I’m sure he has spent the Gladwell-ian 10,000 hours practicing his craft. Which is why he should look to himself as an example before he starts peddling this kind of twaddle:
"Some people live in romantic ages. They tend to believe that genius is the product of a divine spark. They believe that there have been, throughout the ages, certain paragons of greatness — Dante, Mozart, Einstein — whose talents far exceeded normal comprehension…"
In their constant rush to figure out a way to elevate the ordinary– which must naturally include themselves– writers like Brooks fall into exactly the trap I was describing a few days ago… making a straw man argument of "genius is all" instead of the common (and rather obvious) argument that "genius is necessary." Genius in this context has nothing to do with IQ, of course, and everything to do with what a person can ultimately create and do.
I’m in no way diminishing the necessity for long hours of practice that the studies Brooks and others refer to accurately point out. But is this news? After all, what’s the secret to getting to Carnegie Hall? Of course those at the top of their field and craft have spent an enormous amount of time working to get there. That’s not in question. What’s at issue is whether others could get there if they just practiced as much and with the same effort and deliberation.
Without a gift one can practice any number of hours and he or she will never reach a particularly high level. And without an immense gift, they will never be an Einstein or a Tiger Woods. Call it what you want– genius, talent, innate ability, aptitude, but it exists– as easily evidenced by the masses of the average and the mediocre who nonetheless pursue their goal with admirable persistence. And as much as we might wish it to be so, these gifts aren’t subject to the best selling (and rather sad) democratization the self-help industry tries to impose.
If you took Brooks’s hypothetical young woman who "possessed a slightly above average verbal ability" that was "just enough so that she might gain some sense of distinction" and followed the prescription he outlines you would end up with a slightly above average writer who had maximized her talent through hard work. If fortune were in your favor you might have a mid-list novelist, or one of the many unknown academics who haunt the fringes of the annual MLA conference. Perhaps you would even end up with a New York Times op-ed columnist famous for her wrong-headed political predictions and deceit. But what you wouldn’t have on your hands is Jane Austen.
The necessity of talent to become the next Shakespeare or Michelangelo shouldn’t be discouraging. The reason books denying the necessity of talent sell so well is natural. And what this means for education is important. I’ll discuss each of those in future posts.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I always was inspired by Whitman’s propensity to find genius in the quotidian, and promote and idea of genius as something around us that has yet to be described in a certain way, or re-imagined. It’s almost more like a faculty than an essence. Although just this morning I was remarking to my wife how sick Mozart must have been to do all that stuff by age 5 or 6, especially when i see my son running around the house banging his head against the wall for amusement
What you say here rings true, that hard work alone is not enough for genius, but I do not know if its companion carries the same tune (talent alone…). I think the first is harder to prove than the second; we have a world filled with average folks, true, but how many of us fine average folk really go the distance each and every day?
I have encouraged myself and others to not give up because the mammoth task of practice is, in my opinion, often neglected. You say, The concept of hard work for success is not new, but I think, however, it has, implicitly at least, been in question. I haven’t until recently seen a lot of mainstream writers address the need for practice, practice, practice, but maybe I have been blind. Instead, I have seen simplistic notions of talent that neglect the need to cultivate that seed with daily toil. These notions are often jingoistic, of the “either you have it or you don’t” variety, or the cinematic “hidden talent saves the day” variety, or the more abstract “imagination is more important than knowledge” variety.
It may be that gift and work ethic walk hand in hand; I can attest that the particularly talented folks I grew up with seemed more willing to put in the hours, for whatever reason. And then I’ve seen genuine sparks of talent utterly wasted for lack of work. My conclusion, then, is to agree with the advice of Brooks in practice, though perhaps not in principle, if only for the reason that we practitioners can not easily tell if our talent is outweighed by our desire. At what point does one know when to give up? Is it the point at which joy has been extinguished?
Jared: the problem with Brooks’ piece is that what he is saying is actually damaging… I don’t think it’s good enough to agree with his advice and disagree in principle because, in principle, his advice leads to attitudes that hold back those who possess genius. Genius is rare and where it exists it needs a particular kind of cultivation. We can’t treat orchids like potato plants and expect them both to be productive.
If there’s one single attribute of the American ethos that can be singled out as most damaging, it is this kind of self-help variety leveling which causes people to persist in failed activities far longer than they should (which is sad in itself) and results in promotion of systems that don’t recognize– and thus can’t possibly support or engage– individual talent and the incredibly rare instances of genius. It’s sad that those people have to succeed despite our educational system and then have to live with the lack of respect that people like Brooks exhibit.
So, I agree with the pragmatic position that, since the work must be done in any case, one might as well pursue that angle. But that is a very different thing from actively maintaining that genius doesn’t exist and that the extraordinary is really ordinary.
We must read very different things, because perhaps the ONLY consistent and regular advice that I see given to artists is to practice, and to do so regularly and consistently. For writers and those who have balls big enough to give writers advice it’s an omnipresent theme.
In the end, genius is nothing without the work. But it is also a hard truth that the work without the spark of genius isn’t much more than nothing. Given that it’s nearly impossible to self-assess, what else is there to do but practice until one finds reason not to?
Chris, no arguments here; indeed, I think you’re right in standing up against those who, out of an overzealous notion of egalitarianism, claim that, in the end, everyone’s the same.
We are indeed living in a world that seems to want to diminish talent and genius more than exalt it; I daresay this is most insidious in education, where teachers refer to those who excel as “overachievers” (as if the consequences were similar to those of “overeaters”, or are “overstimulated”, or cakes that are “overcooked”), and to those wIth real cognitive or disabilities as “exceptional students”. The system encourages this in practical terms: GATE kids are often ignored entirely, because good enough is good enough, and why should we enlarge the achievement gap by encouraging GATE kids to achieve even more than that homogeneous standard? Meanwhile low-achievers must receive the lion’s share of teachers’ very limited time and attention. This latter point is not a complaint; but if we want to be “fair” we must grant students equal access to their teachers, and if we tailor educational practices to benefit one “type” of student, we must tailor it for all.