What is the opposite of sprezzatura?

[oursin]

A thought generated by Oliver Burkeman's column in today's Guardian Weekend, which has interesting resonances with this post I made some while ago about people undervaluing their own skills.

Burkeman is considering Rothbard's Law: "People tend to specialise in what they're worst at" and suggests that what it's getting at is this:

[I]f a talent has always come naturally – or if it's been decades since you last found it difficult – you conclude that it's nothing special. And so, in your efforts to achieve something impressive, or to gain a feeling of accomplishment, you gravitate toward whatever it is you can't do. You stride out into exactly those fresh pastures in which you shouldn't be setting foot.

I also wonder if in the mix there is the Protestant Work Ethicy notion that dammit, things ought to be difficult because life is real and life is earnest and we are not here to enjoy ourselves but to STRIVE (to seek, to find and not to yield). (While looking for the Stern quote below, I came across this perhaps pertinent line from Doris Lessing: 'This set of mind, this predisposition towards suffering, the unconscious belief that to understand life - or to know the score - means immersion in painful experience, shows itself in other areas.')

I'm thinking now about people who make a big deal about how hard what they do is and how they alone have the special talent/knowledge - I've vented before about archivists who want to be the sole conduit between reader and record - but this can be performative and about keeping oneself in a job (paper I heard at the conference about psychologists in WWII who produced just such great protocols for selection procedures in the military that they essentially did themselves out of a job by the time the war had ended).

I wonder also if, hovering about this, is my darling GB Stern's apercu that 'There is no delight like the illegitimate pleasure of suddenly marketing what is not quite one's own job'; I can see that in areas where one's achievements are of a hit and miss nature, having one's random hits valued may well be very cheering.

And on a further paw, I'm thinking about that sensation which sometimes comes over me that, yes, I could do that, it falls within my sphere of competencies, but I have no desire whatsoever to do that thing (and sometimes, dr rdrz, I end up somehow having to do it anyway). Which is the reverse of Thing that is challenging even if within that sphere.

Possibly also relevant here: column in the Review section by a first time novelist on the demands to self-publicise (though it goes off into other areas). Some writers can presumably do this, and others can't, and others do it badly. Though I'm not sure that there are writers out there who think more of their ability to promote themselves than to write whatever it is they write: not that I'd bet that this doesn't ever happen at all.

Comments

[sartorias]

Re writers, Jane Yolen once divided them into two camps, those who write, and those who wish to have written. Of course that's pretty simplistic. yet since the advent of ye intarwebs, it becomes clear that some writers seem to enjoy putting their energy into performing for the crowd more than in the solitary act of scribbling: they are constantly trying to drum up fresh interest in their piece, or coming up with contests to get fans to cheer their next project, or talking endlessly about said project, or posting bloody shirt posts on subjects that they know their fans actually already espouse, so their daring isn't really. But it's applauded as such. These writers tend to be enthusiastic marketeers.

the solitary scribblers seem more inclined toward the acute nausea of imposter syndrome if they try to emulate the above, because they are earnestly assured on all sides that "this is the name of the game these days." And many do it badly.

[ellen_fremedon]

I went into linguistics because it was full of challenging puzzles, and dropped out of my graduate program once I had learned enough that the puzzles were no longer sufficiently challenging. I think Burkeman might be onto something.

[legionseagle]

Does this tie in, do you think, to that odd habit Nobel prizewinners (and, for that matter, senior retired members of the judiciary) have of producing ideas that are frankly more than eccentric in later life? Kary Mullis , Francis Crick and James Watson all spring to mind.

[oursin]

I think it may be more they come to think that there's no knowledge but they knows it, what they don't know isn't knowledge, even if it's waaaay outside whatever they were Nobelled for (William Shockley and Linus Pauling spring to mind)

coincidentally

[antisoppist]

I've spent the past week at a literary translation summer school, which is the related challenging thing I don't do but want to, and was surprised to find some people there admiring of the fact that I earn my living from any kind of translation at all, when to me that is just what I do and not really very exciting.

Re: coincidentally

[oursin]

Having written a bio of a woman who earned at least part of her living as a translator in the early C20th and described it as 'usually sweated labour' when offered a job that paid rather better, I think it's possible that the idea of earning a decent living from it is remarkable? Though I think Antonia White made a reasonable income translating Colette (and possibly others, but Colette is the one I know about), when she was stuck in writer's block hell on her own novels. Though I may be guilty of romanticising the people who are doing literary translations as devoting their spare time to translating obscure novels and poetry from literary traditions little known and appreciated in the UK. Presumably the ones who are whacking out English versions of e.g. Scandi-crime are in the money.

Re: coincidentally

[antisoppist]

No literary translators are in the money. We were told of one case in the vein of your obscure literary tradition for the love of it example, where the book in question got picked up as the definitive/only English version of the epic work and every monolingual university student studying said literary tradition had to buy it but I don't know what the translator lived on in the ten years they spent translating it. Translators of Scandi-crime will be paid 10-30% less (per word) than I get paid for Scandi-commercial translation for work that takes at least twice as much time. Most literary translators subsidise it by doing something else as well.

I was expecting to get "oh you are just a commercial translator" condescenscion (because I have before) and was surprised to get a certain amount of "you are a professional translator, wow!" from people who have just emerged from literary translation MAs and seemed to find me translating things for a living impressive, even if what I am translating all day is EU regional development reports, product leaflets for mugs with Moomins on, slogans about hotel breakfasts and captions for museum exhibits about shipwrecks (to name but a few) rather than Great Works of Literature.

[supergee]

Rothbard was a libertarian who specialized in economics.

[metaphortunate]

....huh. Well, I have to think about this one.

[hunningham]

I think that one of the nice things about getting older is that I can tell the Protestant Work Ethic to back off, and shut up. Took me years to get there, and I remember selecting some of the optionals on my degree on the basis of "hard, boring, don't like it, therefore...I should do it" Looking back, I cannot believe my 20 year old self. If it's fun or easy it doesn't count.

[adrian_turtle]

That certainly might be the case in some fields. But I also see a lot of people who conclude they simply "can't do math," because math did not come quickly to them when they started studying it. They went on to focus their energies in non-mathematical directions, because it was obvious to them that they weren't cut out for it. Likewise, the people who are good at sports. There are people who do it for exercise when they aren't any good at it and don't like it...but that's different from serious competitors.