What does it mean to master a skill – drawing, dancing or driving – and how do you actually do it? That is the question New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik asks in The Real Work, and it becomes the 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.
The “real work” is a term used by stage magicians to describe “the accumulated craft, savvy and technical mastery that makes a great magic trick great”. The magician credited with having achieved the “real work” for a given trick, Gopnik explains, isn’t necessarily the one who invented it, but rather the first to master every detail of its performance. The book is structured round Gopnik’s interactions with practitioners of various crafts, from baking to boxing: he becomes an apprentice of sorts, learning just enough of each skill to develop an understanding of what mastery may mean.
