Some time ago my brother Terry gave me a column in the newspaper by Mr. David Brooks (May 4th, Mpls StarTribune) which related to a long-standing dispute we have had (my brother and I; I don’t know Mr. Brooks) on the relative importance of training and practice versus talent in the development of a good tennis player. I have long been of the opinion that talent is what matters here; Terry (and, clearly, Mr. Brooks) contends that hard work, an early start and lots of coaching are the key.

Now, I might note that there are times in my life when I am so befuddled by the unenlightened notions of my fellow mortals that I am reduced to holding in my hands my spinning head while muttering, “They can’t possibly believe that.” How can people watch a tennis match on TV and not recognize the great gifts the players have for what they are – freakish talent? How can they not recognize the exquisite skills, the smoothness, the balletic grace and beauty of a sublime player like Roger Federer and say, “This truly is genius!” How can they read even a passage of great writing and not see the resounding gift the writer possesses? But such are people. The issue between my brother and me is of long-standing. Lord knows, I have tired – for all the good it has done me. But let that go.

Mr. Brooks, as I say, clearly sides with the drudgery theory of talent. My contention is that hard work of course is necessary to develop any talent; but, in the absence of talent, all the hard work a person can do will make scarcely a bare modicum of difference.

The fundamental question

If hard work and practice are the keys to talent, then clearly if we are to develop a talent before becoming hopelessly set in our ways – or too old – we are dependent on our parents to get us started down the road to being talented. They have to encourage and support us, nudging us as reluctant children to practice, practice and practice some more.

The question, then, at its most fundamental, gets down to this: Can we fault out parents for not providing the training, coaching and so forth that would have led to excellence, even greatness? Terry seems to be saying yes to this notion because, he avers, with that training, coaching and so forth he would have been a much better tennis player; perhaps even on the Tour (which would be a source of pride to all of us). I say he would have been about the same. He lacks the physical gifts to be a first-rate tennis player; no amount of training, coaching and so forth would have made much difference

But where Terry, in effect, blames our parents for neglecting to develop his abilities as a tennis player, I do not. The fact that I ended up as a middling scribbler – I no longer play tennis; I gave it up as a hopeless matter – rather than a good writer, I ascribe entirely to me. This is who I am. My personality is not such as to be a good writer. No amount of encouragement and training would have made any difference. My parents are innocent. They are not responsible for who I am. They could have bent every fiber to the task of making me into a writer, and I would be the same scribbler that I am now. This is not about negligent parents; this is about me.

Are we not responsible for who we become and what we accomplish? Are we dependent on others for the development of talents that would make us most richly alive? I choose to fault no one; I choose to be my own person.

Were the great writers, then, great people, who worked hard to express the talent they had, or were they more or less ordinary people, like you and me, who were the fortunate recipients of outstanding parenting necessary to develop their talent? Is great writing in the personality or is it an add-on, the product of effort and drudgery?

The development of a talent or its expression?

Drawing on two books Mr. Brooks has read, he takes the case of a youngster, a girl, whose talent is developed through hard work and perseverance. The girl is encouraged from a young age – presumably by her parents – to read and study and write, write, write, so as to internalize the practice of writing well. She trains her brain to be that of a talented writer. Along the way, she has the necessary assistance of a mentor and the role models of writers she would emulate.

By way of an historical example, Mr. Brooks takes the case of Ben Franklin. He points out that Mr. Franklin would translate an essay in a magazine into verse, and then, using the verse translation, write the essay again as prose and compare it to the original, thereby learning something of writing.

In the cases of the little girl and Ben Franklin, Mr. Brooks is making a fundamental confusion between the development of a talent (his contention) and the expression of a talent (my contention). Would the little girl be inclined to spent hours reading, studying and writing if she did not possess a talent that make the efforts a pleasure for her? No amount of prodding would succeed in getting most kids to sit down and fuss over a piece of writing. (It would not have worked for me.) Most kids, talentless, would rather be playing video games or romping on a ball field. Why would Ben Franklin go to that effort if he did not have a talent for writing? Mr. Franklin was a printer. There were lots of printers, but few of them would be inclined to spend time working at writing like he did. He had a talent for writing, which they lacked.

As another example, take Mr. Brooks himself. He clearly has a strong talent for writing. It is safe to say thousands of people have worked as hard at writing as he has and yet they do not end up writing columns for the New York Times and other papers. Did he only work harder than others?

Look at the issue another way: If Ben Franklin only developed his writing talent because he worked assiduously at it, why did he stop at the point of talent he reached? Why did Mr. Franklin not continue on and develop his talent to the same sublimity as Thoreau or Emerson? Why does Mr. Brooks himself not write essays like Mr. Twain? He probably works as hard and practiced as hard to get where he’s at as Mr. Twain did to get where he was at. Should Mr. Brooks fault his parents for failing to adequately train him? Would it have mattered if they had sat him down as a youngster, making him write, when he only wanted to go outside and play baseball, instead? If he had been properly schooled, would he then have been like Mr. Thoreau?

In the case of Mr. Thoreau, the issue was not practice, the issue was an intense sense of being connected to Nature. Would Mr. Brooks have developed such a sense – it’s called imagination – for all the practice in the world?

In any endeavor, people work hard because they have the talent for that endeavor. Without the talent, their efforts would soon flag. One does not work hard at something to develop a talent for it; one works hard at something because one already has the talent. Working hard at something is talent. Without talent one would not apply oneself. Einstein said, “It’s not that I’m smarter than others. I only stay after a problem longer.” Why did he stay after problems? Why was he inclined to work hard at physics in the first place? Talent.

Why does a good writer choose writing? Why not music? Or mathematics? Because he or she has a talent for writing, and all the training in the world would make little difference. Under the influence of dreadful parents, Keats could have bent himself backwards, in the few years he had, to be a great painter, and the results would have been, in all probability, nugatory. The fellow probably had no talent for painting.

Our parents could have driven themselves mad in their efforts to develop talents, of some kind or other, in Terry and me; the results would be, alas, the same as they are now, except our poor parents would have died sooner of frustration for the failed efforts.

Some examples of talent and the lack thereof

Why can people not see what is so obvious? In the silly arguments that someone other than the man from Stratford wrote Shakespeare’s plays, one of the contenders is the Earl of Oxford. Fortunately for the Earl his plays no longer exist, but unfortunately, some of his poems do exist. In reading the poems, it is clear that the Earl worked very hard at his poetry – too hard – and besides that, he was extremely well-educated (two Master’s degrees in a time when one was quite a distinction). His poetry is flat, lifeless, clunky, exaggerated in the use of poetic devices. The Earl was clearly not a poet – he lacked a poetic soul – and certainly not Shakespeare. Hard work only belabored the issue.

I used to write for business (this is not a happy memory). Much of the material I wrote came from engineers. Occasionally one of these poor fellows (they were almost all men) would take it upon himself to write something. Now these were some of the smartest and, often, most verbal people I have ever known. But write? It was sad to see how forced, stilted and manufactured the efforts of their literary labor were. If these engineers had been inclined to practice writing – they would not be so inclined – the results would be the same. For all their brains and effort they would no more write like Mr. Brooks then Mr. Brooks would write like Mr. Thoreau.

What about great writers who showed marked improvement in their writing over their careers? The difference between “Omoo” and “Typee” and “Moby Dick” is, indeed, striking. Did practice make this difference? Was Melville learning, as Mr. Brooks points out in the case of the young girl, how to handle a scene, so as to do a better job of it? Silliness! He grew as an artist. During the writing of “Moby Dick,” in a letter to Mr. Hawthorne, he wrote, “Not three weeks goes by that I do not turn over within myself.”

Physical talent by way of analogy

In his column, Mr. Brooks uses physical talent to show that any talent, like writing, is developed by practice. Very well. To return to my brother Terry. Here is a man who has played the game of tennis hard since he was a teenager. At times, he pursued the sport with great energy and passion. He has no doubt pushed the limits of his ability and found the most he could ever do. If anybody could develop a talent for tennis by sheer effort, Terry would have done so. Where did his ability end up? He is still struggling to beat the same tennis-playing buddies he has been playing with for years.

I can use my own case as a further example. When I was in my 20’s – a lost and drifting soul, without focus, without prospects, almost without hope – I played tennis incessantly. I played till my right arm twitched at night from the hours of repetition. This was a species of madness, for I was never any good at tennis. But, my point is, if a talent could have been developed in me, I would have had it. But, alas, I was only wasting my youth. I had no talent for the sport, and no amount of “breaking the strokes down into constituent parts,” as Mr. Brooks discusses, would have made any difference. One cannot develop a talent that does not exist. Good tennis players work hard, of course, but they are talented.

But I have not failed in tennis alone. Consider running. I still run; I have run all my life. At one point, in training to run two marathons, I ran as much as I could. I used to say, “If I am rested, I will be out the door running.” Did I then become an outstanding runner? No, I lack the talent to run well.

Consider a friend of mine named Carter, who is a good runner. Carter ran for the University track team, competing at the highest level during his University career. He had talent. Carter did not start running till the end of his sophomore year in high school. Then, with no formal training, he ran the mile in just over five minutes. It takes talent to do that (as I say, there was no training). It is safe to say that I could not have run the mile in close to five minutes in my youth no matter what I did.

In conclusion

No, my parents, I exonerate you. I forgive you for failing to support and encourage me as a writer (or tennis player or runner, either). I am not talented, but not because you neglected to encourage me. (You would not have got far had you tried, anyway.) It is not your doing; it is me. I lack talent, utterly.

But no matter. Is it a cruel turn of fate to be consigned to inferior expressions in what we try to do, no matter how hard we try? No, of course not. We can take as much satisfaction from the effort as any Shakespeare or Federer. Satisfaction comes, not in achieving a certain level of expertise, but in doing the best we can. In the satisfaction we derive from the undertaking we are the equals of any Nadal or Twain.

Is Terry a pathetic figure because he has worked so hard, and continues to do so, to so little effect on the tennis courts? Am I pathetic because I have tried so hard, and continue to try, to run well, only to end up an average runner? No, the effort is all, and my brother and I have given all we have to those endeavors.

So play on, Terry, and every time you step on the court, if you would live a little more, strive to be a little better at the game. As for me, some times, just now and then, the satisfaction writing brings is sublime. And, once in a great while, after a hard day of writing as I take my usual two-mile, evening amble around the neighborhood, the experience is like no other, for I am not walking so much as being borne aloft by a covey of angels. Does not that alone make it all worthwhile? Pursue the sport you love, Terry. And write on, Patrick, pursue this tyrannical writing you (sometimes) love. You can have as much satisfaction as Twain had.

Write on, you fellow scribblers, get all the satisfaction you can and deserve for your hard work. Leave aside, as contemptible things, the figs of money and fame, the prize is satisfaction of the deepest kind, and it is as much for us as for any great talent.

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Email Pat O'Regan: Patxtra@aol.com

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