The limits of the will

Did you read the review of David Shenk's new book in The New York Times this past Sunday with the same sense of infuriated interest that I did?

Shenk's "The Genius in All of Us: Why Everything You've Been Told About Genetics, Talent and IQ Is Wrong" (Doubleday) is part of the mind-over-matter school that holds if we just try hard enough, we'll be able to achieve our wildest dreams. This, of course, appeals to America's Horatio Alger sense of itself as well as to our underlying mediocrity. It is reinforced by mediocre people who have succeeded.

Sandra Bullock looks like the girl next door, she seems nice and she won an Oscar. Ergo, I, too, could do that, people reason. Never mind that Bullock — who is neither a great actress nor a great beauty — came along at precisely that moment in the mid-90s when Julia Roberts went into a funk and decided to become a character actress. (We Julia aficionados refer to this as her "Mary Reilly" phase, a movie I actually like a great deal.) Bullock filled the America's Sweetheart niche temporarily vacated by Julia. By the time Roberts returned, Bullock was well-positioned to bide her time for the role that would play to her particular qualities. So forget discipline and talent. It could be said that successful people owe just as much to luck as anything else.

But according to the review of Shenk's book, he holds that discipline not talent is what drives greatness and has the scientific research to back it up. I'm not going to go there since I don't have access to his studies. Still, I always worry when science tries to explain art. And I wonder about research that can be preempted by anecdotal evidence.

I went to school with a girl who was built like a fullback but longed to be a pianist. She played with a facility I have rarely encountered, her fingers flying across the keyboard. She practiced diligently, which only increased her speed and agility. Put it this way: She could play the "Minute Waltz" in 50 seconds flat.

But she could not make music out of it or any other piece. She didn't have a shred of musicality or talent. There was no sense of phrasing, that music was a kind of conversation. No matter how many times teachers diplomatically suggested this, she just didn't get it. What she was was a very gifted typist. The other girls all snickered about this behind her back. I remember well the day we all auditioned for the music department of this particular school and the horrified look on the teachers' faces. It was as if they had encountered a freak of nature they didn't wish to deal with.

I tell this story not because I want to be cruel. Notice I haven't named her though I well remember her name. I tell it rather because I think of her every time someone debunks talent in favor of practice, practice, practice. Listen: The torch songs of the world are littered with stories of people who had great gifts and threw them away or at least, misapplied them. (I do think that if Johnny Weir had Evan Lysacek's discipline, he and not Lysacek would've won the gold medal in men's figure skating at the recent Olympics.)

But this implies a level playing field. Lysacek is very talented, and when you combine that with discipline, you have a delightful combination. Doesn't mean you're going to be a worldly success though. That takes opportunity, and opportunity takes luck. Nevertheless, you can be a success in yourself.

But when you discredit the role of talent in favor of discipline, it's as bad as thinking you can skate through life on talent alone. Those who intimate that all you need is focus and intensity do a disservice to the public. And they follow a dangerous precedent: Remember that the Nazis thought that you can will anything to happen. How'd that work out?

The truth is that life is limited. It's only when you acknowledge life's limits that you can take the first step in transcending them.